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Miss Nightingale’s father William who had changed the family’s name to Nightingale from Shore. As Florence’s aunt, Baroness Farina, pithily put it, ‘
The Nightingales were Shores, but changed their name when certain property was bequeathed to them
.’ The property in question was a very valuable bequest from Peter Nightingale, William’s great-uncle, commonly known as Mad Peter. In a letter to Florence Shore, Florence Nightingale would once comment that she was ‘very fond of the name Shore.’
    The Shore family had come into the manor of Norton, four miles south of Sheffield, in the 17 th century. In about 1666, the manor had been purchased by Cornelius Clarke of Ashgate. When he died, he bequeathed it to Robert Offley, his nephew, from Norwich. In 1751, Stephen Offley of Norton died without leaving children to inherit, and the manor of Norton became the property of Samuel Shore, who had married one of Stephen Offley’s sisters. Samuel had two sons, the eldest of whom, also called Samuel, married a woman called Harriet Foye of Castle Hill, Dorset. Their son Offley Shore inherited the manor: his son, Offley Bohun Shore, was Florence’s father.
    The Shore family was well-known in the area, and involved in all kinds of local activities. Offley Shore senior – Florence’s grandfather – lived in Norton Hall as Lord of the Manor. The Manor was ‘
a handsome stone mansion in a finely-wooded park’
, and Norton itself ‘
a small, well-built village, situated on an eminence ... a scattered parish, undulating and well-wooded, very fertile ground, with many herds of milch cows’
, according to the local Directory. The area was noted for the manufacture of scythes, sickles, files and cutlery. Offley Shore senior was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Derbyshire in 1832. He lived the busy and varied life of a country gentleman, subscribing to sweepstakes at Chesterfield races, attending dinners and presentations with local MPs, and speaking at meetings about the Corn Laws. He gave an annual gift of bread to the poor at Christmas, put up a prize of three guineas for ‘the best stallion of the draught kind’ at the local show, and was President of the North Derbyshire Agricultural Society. In 1841, he served on the Grand Jury hearing the case of the murder of the Earl of Chesterfield’s gamekeeper.
    Offley Shore senior was also a business man, but not ultimately a successful one. His financial dealings would cause the family enormous problems and eventually lose them the manor which had been theirs for nearly 150 years.
    In the 1830s, Shore sat on the provisional committee investing in the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Line & Manchester Railway. Proposed capital was £800,000 in 8,000 shares of £100 each. He was also on the provisional committee of the Sheffield & Midland Railway, with even higher capital; and he was an Honorary Director of The Farmers’ and General Fire and Life Insurance, Loan and Annuity Institution. With partners Hugh Parker, John Brewin and John Rogers, Shore was also a banker; and it was this, rather than speculation on the railways, that ruined him.
    Parker Shore & Co. of Sheffield had been in business for more than 70 years, and two generations. Their bank was so highly-regarded in the area as ‘a legend of trustworthiness’ that a local saying grew up: ‘As sure as Shore’s bank’. But in 1843, the Sheffield Bank failed, and all the partners were bankrupted. Debts proved at the first meeting of creditors amounted to nearly £120,000, which was said to be around one third of the whole amount: an extraordinary amount of money, equivalent to many millions today. Among the creditors were many members of Offley Shore’s own family: Maria Shore, Urith Lydia Shore, Amelia Shore; and the Reverend George Brewin, Offley’s brother-in-law. In December 1843, following several stormy meetings with creditors and the