Seymour Robert Delmé: The Last Delmé of Cams Hall

Seymour Robert Delmé was born in 1807 into the family that owned Cams Hall, one of the grandest houses in the Fareham area.

The Delmé family had acquired Cams Hall in the late eighteenth century and transformed it into a substantial country residence overlooking Portsmouth Harbour. Seymour eventually became the last surviving male member of the family to live there. Fareham Borough Council records that Cams Hall remained in Delmé ownership for more than a century.

He was also a significant local benefactor. His charitable interests extended to churches and to people in need. At Crofton, for example, he paid £600 towards decoration of the church in 1892, gave a stained-glass east window in memory of his brother Henry Peter Delmé, and in his will left money whose interest was to support both the church and the poor of the parish.

His Fareham benefaction followed the same pattern. He left £1,000 for the benefit of poorer residents connected with the parishes of St Peter and Holy Trinity, continuing the Victorian tradition in which wealthy local families supported parish charities through permanent endowments.

Seymour died in 1894, bringing the male line of the Cams Hall Delmés to an end. His death also marked the dispersal of much of the family estate and collection. One of the most famous possessions at Cams Hall was a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was sold after Seymour’s death for 11,000 guineas, an extraordinary sum at the time.

His memorial at St Peter & St Paul therefore preserves the name of a family that had shaped the landscape and social life of Fareham for more than a century.

Cams Hall survives today, although its use has changed completely. The mansion and surrounding estate now form part of a business park, but the Delmé name still appears across the site, preserving a reminder of the family who once lived there.