A Howard County Historical Commission marker preserves the history of this nondescript building at 121 Main Street in downtown Big Spring, the first permanent building constructed in what was then a rowdy frontier village of tents, shacks, and lean-tos by Big Spring's most legendary citizen: The Seventh Earl of Aylesford, who came to Big Spring from Warwickshire England.
The marker reads as follows:
"A HISTORICAL BIG SPRING MEAT MARKET
In 1884, a most unlikely fellow bought a lot and had built on it a structure of naïve limestone to house Big Spring’s first meat market. Joseph Heneage Finch, the Seventh Earl of Aylesford, Warwickshire, England (forced out of his country in the wake of a divorce scandal) went on a hunting and investment expedition in the West Texas area. He set up one of his headquarters in Big Spring, and, being very particular about the source and quality of his meat, had in his retinue his own butcher, Von Paussen, who performed this service for him and for the public in the stone structure at what is now called 121 Main Street, the first permanent masonry building in Big Spring.. An immense marble slab covered the counter.
The Earl’s preference in meat was mutton. While sheep outnumbered cattle in this western frontier village, the natives did not butcher them, so the earl had an unlimited supply for himself and his English brothers, friends, and servants.
The generous and amiable “Judge”, as he was locally known, died January 13, 1886, at the age of thirty-five from excessive drinking. His body was returned to England for burial. His brief two years in Big Spring were legendary, ad he is remembered with great esteem.
The inventory of the estate of the Earl of Aylesford included, among other properties, “One meat market, $1800.” In later years the storefront was faced with brick."
The Earl of Aylesford was famous for his hospitality, the excessive nature of which eventually killed him. From Bryan Mealer's article on the nearby Hotel Settles in Texas Monthly, come a couple of vignettes of the Earl's short in Big Spring: (
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"IN AUGUST 1881 AN UNUSUAL FIGURE STEPPED OFF THE train outside Big Spring, dressed in gray corduroy, despite the summer heat, and wearing a cravat. Heneage Finch, the Seventh Earl of Aylesford, had fled England to escape a public scandal involving his adulterous wife and had headed west for an extensive lost weekend. Shortly after arriving, Finch was reciting his distinguished lineage to a bartender in nearby Colorado City when the barkeep cut him short, saying, “Look here, Earl, all that stuff won’t go down here. We’ll just call you Judge, and that way nobody will get hurt.” The Englishman received a $50,000-a-year allowance from his family, enough to build a “modest castle on the prairie,” in the words of one reporter. For the next four years, the Judge traveled extensively around the region, shooting wild turkey and antelope and buying copious rounds of drinks for any cowhand who would let him. Said to consume several quarts of whiskey and gin a day, by 1885 the Judge had managed to drown more than just his broken heart. One afternoon at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where he’d since relocated, the Judge calmly stood up from a card game, said, “Goodbye, boys,” to the friends seated around the table, then crawled into bed and died.
The Judge is now ingrained in local lore, in part because he is perfectly emblematic of a certain kind of outsized character that, throughout the years, has been drawn to Big Spring."
The Judge also owned the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where he died. That old hotel building has since been torn down, but its location is marked with a state historic marker that reads as follows:
"THE SEVENTH EARL OF AYLESFORD
Joseph Heneage Finch (b.1849), an English nobleman. Left his ancestral home in 1883 after a scandalous divorce. Attracted by cheap land and good hunting, the Earl of Aylesford came to Texas and settled on six sections in Howard County. His generosity and tales of hunts with the Princes of Wales intrigued local cowboys. A lavish host, he bought free drinks for friends. When his hunting lodge burned, he purchased the Cosmopolitan Hotel, located at this site. He died here in 1885 and was buried on his English estate, Packington Hall. (1980)"