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The family were living in Meadow Street in 1843 (as was George Wilkins), remaining there until
1846, when Richard's older sister Jane became pregnant and the family's association with
George Wilkins ceased. In 1846-47 the Honeycombes were living in Dove Street. But about
then Richard left home.
He was 17 in September 1846. For three years or so he had been working as a stonemason's
apprentice, possibly under the guidance of his father or some other master mason. But in 1847
he moved to the north of England to Carlisle, led there by a sense of adventure, by another
stonemason, or by the promise of some interesting work. There he lodged with a Scottish family
called Ryder, and there he married one of the daughters, Elizabeth, in circumstances that
became a family legend.
I first heard about the union of Richard and Elizabeth from one of their grandsons, Charles
Regelsen, who shakily wrote to me in April 1972, when he was 85.
He said: 'How they married is remarkable. The Ryder people lived in the North of England a
few miles from Gretna Green. One day was a great day, and Elizabeth Ryder, aged 19, wanted
to see the anvil over which couples were wed. Richard Honeycombe 14, then boarding with the
Ryders, offered his escort. Accepted. They got there. The names of those wed that day were
put on a
147
Richard in Stinkopolis
After living in Noble Street, Geelong, Richard and his family moved to Queens St in 1859, to a
suburb called Kildare. His sixth child and third son, Thomas, was born there on 15 September
1859. Elizabeth was still claiming to be three years (and not seven years) older than her
husband, who was 30 a fortnight after Thomas's birth. Three weeks later, Richard's 19-year-old
sister, Martha, gave birth to an illegitimate baby boy, the father being an Irish farmer old enough
to be her father. Although she married him two years later, Martha's indiscretion must have
earned the disapproval of her brother Dick - who little knew then that one of his daughters
would also be as indiscreet.
The following year (1860) Richard's younger brother, Henry, aged 24, died in hospital of
Bright's Disease, in Geelong. Both brothers were stonemasons, like their father, and both were
presumably employed on the preparing of stones for municipal buildings, churches and more
opulent homes. As Lawrence Mountjoy notified the registrar of Henry's death, it is probable
that Henry had been living with his older sister and her husband and not at Richard's place.
There seems to have been little family feeling between William the stonemason's sons, and
certainly when Richard's next son was born in November 1861, Henry's name was not
bestowed on him. Christened John Albert, he was later known as Jack.
Like Thomas, Jack was born in Queens St - as were Harriet (1863) and Louisa (1865) - after
which Richard and Elizabeth's brood of nine was complete.
By this time Elizabeth, who must have been a very good and careful mother to have born and
reared nine children without loss, was 43. She continued to care for them all in Queens St until
1870, when the whole family left Geelong and moved 35 km west to Winchelsea, where they
remained for two years or so.
The move was probably determined by some particular building enterprise in that town,
although it may have been prompted by the expanding ambitions and territories of the
Mountjoys, whose Temperance Hotel in Lome was opened in 1868. As Winchelsea would not
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