The Martineau family is an intellectual, business and political dynasty associated first with Norwich and later also London and Birmingham, England. The family were prominent Unitarians; a room in London's Essex Hall, the headquarters building of the British Unitarians, was named after them. Martineau Place in Birmingham's central business district was named in their honour.
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), the sociologist and abolitionist, is the family's most celebrated member.
In Birmingham, several of its members have been Lord Mayor. They worshipped at the Church of the Messiah. As Unitarian, they married into families of the same denomination, such as the Kenricks and the Chamberlains, though Harriet eventually became an atheist in contrast to her brother, the religious philosopher James Martineau. Several of the Martineaus are buried in Key Hill Cemetery Birmingham, either in the family vault or separately.
Huguenot beginnings
The Martineaus came from a Huguenot immigrant background, and were noted in the medical, intellectual and business fields. In France, the family had registered their Arms: Azure three towers Argent. Gaston Martineau, a surgeon in Dieppe, moved to Norwich after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; the edict had allowed French Protestants freedom of religion and the Huguenots left France for safety.
French links
Initially Calvinist dissenters, Gaston and his wife raised their children to be bilingual in French and English. Gaston's grandson David Martineau II (1726–1768) was the third generation of master surgeons (Maître Chirurgien), and had five sons who made up the male line of Martineaus. David and his wife were buried in l’Église Protestante Française de Norwich where a mural tablet commemorates his "eminence in his skill as a Surgeon" and his wife, Dame Sarah Martineau, who was "distinguished for sound judgement, warm affection and fervent piety". Their eldest son, surgeon Philip Meadows Martineau, of Bracondale Estate was an active member of the French community in Norwich and lived in Paris for some time. A member of the Royal Society and the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, Martineau was spoken of in Paris as "le lithotomiste le plus éminent et le plus heureux de son époque". By the fourth generation the family was divided into Anglicans and Unitarians.
Philip Meadows Martineau and family
The eldest of the five sons of David Martineau II and Sarah Meadows (1725-1800) was Philip Meadows Martineau (1752–1829). A surgeon, Martineau was "one of the most distinguished lithotomists of his day". Apprenticed to the surgeon William Donne, who was noted for skill in lithotomy, he studied medicine at several universities. After Edinburgh University in 1773, "in 1775 he passed through London for a turn of 12 months". He then returned in 1777 to Norwich to become Donne's partner, and carried on his speciality. Henry Herbert Southey was his student. He had one daughter. Martineau and friends set up the Norfolk and Norwich Trienniel Festival to raise money for the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.
The Martineau and Taylor families were "at the head of the Whig party in Norwich" and by the 1780s, Philip's first cousin, poet and composer John Taylor (1750-1826) was hosting radical parties at his home in Norwich which Philip's family attended, including his mother Sarah, to whom John Taylor, her nephew, was "much attached". A number of other Norwich Whig "worthies" attended these events. By 1784, the two cousins, Philip and John, had established the Norwich City Library and the annual reunion of the Martineau and Taylor families which continued well into the 1850s.
Martineau was a medical colleague and friend of Dr Sylas Neville. The two men and their families accompanied Martineau's cousin John Taylor to a great banquet at Holkham Hall on the night of 5 November 1788 celebrating the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Their host was Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester who encouraged John to sing the song he had written for the occasion - The Triumph of Liberty. Over 500 guests were invited to the event, almost all of whom, including invitee the Prince of Wales were "Whig elites".
Having purchased the Bracondale Woods on the outskirts of Norwich in 1793, in 1811 he acquired the adjacent property of Carrow Abbey. He built Bracondale Hall, described in 1847 as a "handsome mansion with pleasure grounds delightfully laid out". From the ruins of Carrow Abbey, Martineau also constructed on his estate a "small gothic priory with windows of ancient stained glass". By 1879, this estate, including the Manor of Carrow, had been sold following the death of Martineau's unmarried daughter Frances Anne.