REAR ADMIRAL WILLIAM H HAM
William Henry and Florence Elizabeth Ham (Residents 1922-1928)
Ashton was acquired by Commander William Henry Ham and his wife Florence Elizabeth Spink in late 1922. William Ham was born in Portsmouth in 1875 and his wife in Bradford in 1882. They married in Christchurch in 1910. They had three children, Gordon (b. 1912), Vivien (b. 1914) and Roger (b.1915), who would all have been living at Ashton House.
He had enrolled in the Royal Navy in 1896. He was an Engineer Commander when he moved into Ashton House and was promoted to Engineer Captain in 1923. From the end of 1923 he was based at HMS Dolphin which was the Royal Naval shore establishment sited at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport.
In 1926, Captain Ham was seconded as an observer to the sea trials of HMS X.1, an experimental submarine. The 'X' stood for experimental and it was the world's largest, most heavily armed, and deepest diving submersible of the day. As British diplomats at the Washington Naval Conference in 1922 were trying to outlaw the use of submarines against commercial shipping, the Admiralty was designing and building the world's most powerful submarine.
Ham retired with the rank of Engineer Rear Admiral in 1928 and sold Ashton House around the same time.
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The Ham’s moved to Poole, Dorset. William Henry died there in 1949 and his wife in 1961.
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For more information on the submarine, see X.1: The Royal Navy's Mystery Submarine, by Roger Branfill-Cook