Westbury House History – compilation of material.

Victoria County History WESTBURY (Wesberie xi cent.; Westburia xii cent.; Westbyrie xiii cent.) was held by Ulnod of King Edward the Confessor. At the time of the Domesday Survey it was held by Gozelin, not directly of the king, but of Hugh de Port as part of his barony which he held of the king. (fn. 47) It was assessed at 3 hides both in Edward the Confessor's reign and at the time of the Survey.

…. Much detail about Westbury in mediaeval times.. including: “In the reign of Henry II or even earlier it seems to have been granted to a family who took the surname of Westbury. (fn. 50) In the reign of Henry III John de Westbury held in Westbury one knight's fee of the ancient enfeoffment of Robert de St. John, and the same Robert of the king. (fn. 51) John de Westbury seems to have been succeeded by a certain William de Campania, who demised it for a term of five years to a certain Peter de Campania and Margery his wife.”…

“In 1294 this Peter was in custody in Westminster gaol for the death of Adam Houel, but his lord, John de St. John, interceded for him, and obtained his pardon. After the death of Peter his widow Margery married Robert le Ewer the king's yeoman, (fn. 55) evidently before 1316, since in that year he was holding the manor in right of his wife. (fn. 56) In 1322 Robert obtained the king's permission to fortify his house at Westbury, (fn. 57) and about the same time the king granted to him and his heirs for ever free warren in all their demesne lands of Westbury.” “For some time he rose steadily into favour with King Edward II. In 1308 he was farmer of the gaol of Somerton, and of the hundreds of Cattesashe and Stone. (fn. 60) In 1309 the reversion of the manor of Warblington was granted to him for his life, (fn. 61) and in 1311 Odiham Castle was committed to him to hold during the king's pleasure.”

(Fell out with the king, but later made his peace, then fell out again.) “The king accordingly laid the matter before Ralph de Bereford, John de Scures, and John de Tichborne, when it was decided that Robert le Ewer having only held the manor in right of his wife Margery, it should be restored to her, and in addition she should be awarded £160 damages. (fn. 75) It seems probable that shortly after this Margery married, as her third husband, a certain Nicholas de Overton …” (Westbury subsequently passed to 'Margaret who was the wife of James de Molyns’

“In 1428 her second husband John Golafre was holding in Westbury half a fee which Nicholas Devenish formerly held. (fn. 85) Westbury passed with Greatham to the recusant family of Fawconer, (fn. 86) who held it for about two centuries.”

The crest of the Fawkoner family “In 1694 Richard Holt of Nursted (Hants), son and heir of John and Katherine, sold the manor for £4,000 to Richard Markes of . After the latter's death his widow Mary and his son and heir Richard became involved in financial difficulties, and in 1722 were forced to sell the manor to their tenant Philip Cavendish, obtaining a sum of £7,400 for it. (fn. 90) Philip dealt with the manor by fine in 1737, (fn. 91) no doubt on the occasion of his marriage with Anna Isabella Carteret, the daughter of Edward Carteret and Bridget his wife.” Now we come gradually to the Gage family …

Admiral Warren Within the next ten years (from 1722) Westbury had been purchased by Admiral Sir Peter Warren, K.B., (fn. 93) an Irishman by birth. He obtained his commission as a lieutenant in 1722, and from that time his promotion was rapid. He aided the New colonies in the war with , and in 1745, with General Pepperell, captured Louisbourg, as a reward for which he was made rear-admiral of the Blue. After the capitulation of Louisbourg Warren captured three French ships valued at £1,000,000, and from his share of the spoils of war realized a large fortune. In 1747 he won a great naval victory off Cape Finisterre, and for his gallantry on this occasion was made Knight of the Bath. On his retirement from active service in 1748 he received many civic honours, being elected M.P. for Westminster in 1750. He died of a violent fever in 1752 while at Dublin…” “In 1735 he had married Susanna daughter of Stephen de Lancey, a wealthy citizen of New York, and by her he left three daughters and co-heirs—Anne, who married Lieut.-General Hon. Charles Fitzroy, first Lord Southampton, in 1758; Susanna, who married in 1767 Lieut.-General William Skinner; and Charlotte, who married Willoughby Bertie, fourth earl of Abingdon, in 1768. (fn. 94) The manor was at first divided among the three sisters, but in 1772 Charles Fitzroy and Anne and Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon, and Charlotte gave up their moieties to Lieut.-General Skinner and Susanna, (fn. 95) whose daughter and heir Susanna Maria married her first cousin Major-General Henry, third Viscount Gage, in 1789. Their son Henry, fourth Viscount Gage (1808–77), sold the manor to Mr. John Delawar Lewis, from whom it has descended to Colonel Le Roy-Lewis, the present owner.”

Westbury House in the 18th century Plan of Westbury, 1761

Viscount Gage (from Wikipedia) Viscount Gage, of Castle Island in the County of Kerry of the Kingdom of , is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1720 for , along with the subsidiary title of Baron Gage, of Castlebar in the County of Mayo, also in the Peerage of Ireland. (Note from Deborah Gage: Thomas Gage of Highmeadow was created Baron Gage of Castlebar and Viscount Gage of Castle Island, under the Irish Peerage, in 1720.) In 1744 he also succeeded his cousin as eighth Baronet, of Place. The titles remain united. The Gage family descends from John Gage, who was created a baronet, of Firle Place in the County of , in the Baronetage of England on 26 March 1622.[1] His great-grandson, the seventh Baronet, represented Seaford in Parliament. He was succeeded by his first cousin, Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage, the eighth Baronet. He sat as a Member of Parliament for Minehead and Tewkesbury and also served as Governor of Barbados. In 1720, 24 years before succeeding in the baronetcy, he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Gage and Viscount Gage. His second son was the military commander the Hon. Sir Thomas Gage. Lord Gage was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Viscount. He represented Seaford in the House of Commons and served as for many years as Paymaster of Pensions. In 1780 he was created Baron Gage, of Firle in the County of Sussex, in the Peerage of Great Britain, with remainder to heirs male, and in 1790 he was made Baron Gage, of High Meadow in the County of Gloucester, also in the Peerage of Great Britain, with remainder to his nephew and heir presumptive Henry, the eldest son of his younger brother, the aforementioned Sir Thomas Gage. On Lord Gage's death in 1791 the barony of 1780 became extinct while he was succeeded in the barony of 1790, the baronetcy and the Irish titles by his nephew Henry, the third Viscount. He was a Major-General in the Army. As of 2010 the titles are held by his great-great-great-grandson, the eighth Viscount, who succeeded his elder brother in 1993.

Information provided by Deborah Gage Westbury House, with its celebrated gardens designed by Charles Bridgman, was inherited by the 3rd Viscount, Henry Gage who married on January 12th, 1789, his cousin, Suzannah Maria, only daughter and heiress of Lieut. General Skinner (whose wife was the daughter and co-heiress of Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who lived at Westbury). Henry and Suzannah divided their time between Firle and Westbury, their eldest son, Henry Hall Gage became the 4th Viscount, he married Elizbeth Maria Foley. Their eldest son, Henry, pre-deceased Henry Hall, so the line to the 5th Viscount Gage, skipped a generation.

Meanwhile, the 4th Viscount Gage’s younger brother Thomas William Gage lived at Westbury, he was born in 1796, and married Arabella Cecil, daughter of T. St. Quintin of Southampton. They had two children Arabella Elizabeth, who in turn married her cousin, Edward Thomas Gage in 1856, and their son William born in 1828, died at the age of 18. Effectively as there was no one to carry on at Westbury after Thomas William, the 4th Viscount Gage rented the property in the late 1850s/early 1860s to Edward and Adelaide Sartoris and his family, his connection being through a maternal uncle, Edard Tunno, who lived nearby at Warnford Park, whose sizeable fortune Sartoris stood to inherit. Frederick Leighton was a frequent visitor and painted a portrait of their daughter May.

Westbury, from Malcolm Warner’s book “Their (the Sartoris’) new residence was Westbury House, a stately Palladian mansion leased from Henry, 4th Viscount Gage, of Firle Place in Sussex. The approach to the house was along a tree-lined drive off the road between the villages of and West Meon. The drive looped into an oval on the north side of the house, and on the south side were pleasure grounds designed by the celebrated early 18th century landscape gardner Charles Bridgeman. Surrounding the house and gardens was a working estate with a farmyard, barns and stables, fields and timber plantations.”

Frederick Leighton’s painting of May Sartoris at Westbury House. The painting features May Sartoris who lived at the time with her family in Westbury House (the westernmost property in the parish of East Meon, despite the fact that it borders West Meon). Malcolm Warner, curator of the Kemble Museum in Austin, Texas, asked for help in identifying the two buildings featured - the mill at the top right of the painting and the church at May’s right shoulder. He wanted to establish where May would have stood for the painting to be made.

The Sartorises were a colourful family. May's mother Adelaide was one of the illustrious theatrical family, the Kembles, and one of the greatest opera singers of her time. Adelaide and her wealthy husband Edward lived at Westbury as tenants from 1859 to 1863, in which year they inherited the nearby Warnford Park and moved there. Adelaide was a great hostess and friend of many of the great artistic, literary and musical figures of their age - including Robert Browning ... and Frederick Leighton. There are two buildings in the painting. The windmill on the hill was almost certainly Marland's Mill which sits on a hill a mile north of the village and which couldn't be seen from Westbury House.

The second building is the tower of a church. It is harder to establish which church this might be. It is certainly not the church of East Meon . The present church of West Meon was built after Leighton painted this portrait. In the grounds of Westbury are the ruins of St Nicholas chapel (at the right, above) which is reputed to be 13th century in origin. It is much smaller and ruinous today than at the time of the painting. Our colleagues in West Meon have found reference to the chapel being restored in the 1790's or thereabouts for use by the family of the third Viscount Cage. However, it is a small building and would never have had a square tower. It is most likely that the church tower is that of West Meon's previous church. There is no viewpoint from which Marland Mill and West Meon Church could have been seen together (still less St Nicholas Chapel) so it is most likely that Leighton painted May first, then walked around the neighbourhood with his easel, filling in the background from items which caught his fancy.

The staff of Westbury House in 1897

The fire of 1904

From The Times, November 24, 1904 In this disastrous fire which destroyed a Mansion, it was through the strenuous efforts of the owner, Colonel Le Roy-Lewis, that his wife, five children and some 30 servants were all saved.

A fire, which resulted in the almost total destruction of Westbury House, West Meon, near Petersfield, the residence of Colonel Le Roy-Lewis D.S.O, occurred early yesterday mroning. Owing to the efforts of Colonel Le Roy-Lewis himself, no lives were lost by fire, but the housekeeper, an elderly woman named Jane Henley, who had been in the service of the family for many years, died on the roof from shock and fright before she could be rescued. The cook, whose name is Hall, jumped from the roof in her fright and broke her wrist. She was removed to Winchester Hospital. The escape of the occupants was most exciting. The French governess, who occupied a bedroom at the rear of the main part of the house, raised the alarm at about 3am. Her cries were heard by Colonel Le Roy-Lewis, who immediately did what he could to rouse the family. Rushing out of his bedroom he found the staircase burning and the corridors filled with smoke, and all means of escape cut off. His first impulse was to save his five children, and he ran through the flames to the children’s wing and found that that part of the house was safe. Getting out of a window, he scrambled along a narrow ledge to a stack pipe, down which he slid to the ground, a distance of about 40 ft. He rushed to the stables, and with some difficulty roused the stablemen, and with the aid of three of them tried to raise a heavy ladder to the French governess’ window, but it fell and broke. A messenger was despatched to Petersfield on a bicycle, some eight and a half miles distant, and the Petersfield Fire Brigade arrived about 6 o’clock, but they could do no more than play on the burning building and prevent the fire from spreading to the childrens’ wing, a new part of the house which had only been built some three years. The mansion itself is an old one, standing in a well-wooded park of 500 acres, and is in the Queen Anne style. It contained many fine pictures and some rich carving by Gibbons. Most of the rooms were wainscotted in oak, and there was a fine library. All these have been destroyed, only a few articles of furniture being saved. The family lost all their personal belongings. Note that The Times has got it wrong … Westbury House is, and always has been, in the Parish of East Meon

Aftermath of fire, from Freddie Standfield’s book The building was completely gutted, apart from the recently-built schoold wing, the destroyed contents included fine pictures and a valuable library….

The gallant Colonel lost no time in rebuilding the mansion, regardless of cost. Ground-floor rooms included a ‘saloon or lounge’ (45ft by 27ft), with oak- panelled walls and housing a ‘three-manual organ, electrically blown’, an elegant drawing room (72ft by 21ft), fitted with mahogany glazed bookcases of Chippendale design, a dining room (32ft by 21ft), with painted panel walls; plus a study, boudoir and billiards room. Approached by a massive carved oak staircase, the first room comprised three suites, each having two large bedrooms and bathrooms, and three more large bedrooms. These nine rooms were doubtless for use by the owners and their guests, for there were seven more bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor for female domestic staff, a nuersery wing with yet another seven bedrooms and a bathroom, and a school wing containing a schoolroom and two more bathrooms. The second floor also included a squash court, while the ‘domestic offices and servants’ accommodation’ consisted of a butler’s pantry, housekeeper’s room, box-room, wine cellar, huge kitchen, scullery, boiler room and coke stove, with five bedrooms and a bathroom above for men servants. The house had an electric passenger lift, a dinner lift from the kitchen, and electric light throughout, electricity being generated by two 25 hp Hornsby Stockport engines. Heating of the whole building was by radiators, two reservoirs held 80,00 Gallons of water pumped from a deep well, and (predictably) there was ‘an elaborate system of fire-alarms and well planned fire-escapes’. Apart from the mansion, detached buildings included ‘commodious stabling’, with grooms’ rooms above, a coachman’s house, an estate office and steward’s house, an elaborate cricket pavilion and numerous ‘estate buildings’. The gardens and grounds covered 21 acres.

This information, and much more, was contained in the auction catalogue when, in July 1981, the mansion and Westbury Estate of nearly 5,000 acres was offered for sale in 10 lots. Although several outlying farms duly sold, the main property and the large adjacent farms failed to reach their reserves; and the estate was not finally broken up until 1924, when a second auction sale, this time conducted by Knight, Frank and Rutley. Thereafter, Westbury House became a well-cknown and successful preparatory school, a use that continued for many years, until comparatively recently when it was converted into a nursing home.

Westbury House cricket team, 1909. The stable block (Perhaps the cricket field was within the West Meon boundary!)

The new house from the park. From the west

The School - hall The School - library

The School - Classroom The School - Bathroom

Westbury House School, from interview with Denys Ryder I can visualise my father turning to my mother and saying “It is about time that Denys went to school with his brothers.” School of course was Westbury House, which is at the western end of East Meon parish where we now live, and that is the story of how we came here. I was seven and a half at the time. Now, Westbury, before the First World War was in the hands of the Leroy Lewis family – I don’t know how they acquired it – but in 1925, Thomas Whitehead and his sister acquired the house as a private preparatory school for boys. They stayed there until the mid-60s, when they handed the school over to a former pupil of theirs, Sherrard Manners, who I think a lot of us in the village may remember, Sherrard and Jane Manners took on and ran the school until 1977, when it closed, either due to lack of pupils or financial reasons. A school with 70 pupils was probably unprofitable, but that is what happened, and that is where I came, ten days later than the third of September 1939. At that time the school and all its activities centred towards West Meon, because the church was there , the railway was there – a very important railway because it was the Fareham to Alton line, known as the Meon Valley flyer line, and I have been on it many a time, going forward and backwards to school. Life at Westbury Westbury had a real influence on my life, and my memories of the war years at Westbury between 1939 and August 1945 were of years in which I had a real freedom. We were allowed the ability to roam there, because outside the house was 125 acres in which boys could go on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, which were the half days of the week, boys could go and play and bully each other and climb trees and build tree houses and did everything out there until we were called back into the school. Discipline Oh well, discipline. You’re talking about when I became a naughty boy and Tom Whitehead, the headmaster, decided to beat me. Tom had two places where he beat boys, one was in his study, and he had the cane on the top of a tall cupboard, a drinks cupboard, he had there, and the other was in the squash court – at the top of the house we had a squash court, right next door to his bedroom, and inside there he had a very whippy cane, and he had occasion to beat me once on two occasions within 24 hours – I can’t remember why I had been naughty the first time, but obviously the second time I had annoyed him tremendously doing something so he beat me – I got three strokes first time, which didn’t really hurt me so much, but then I got three strokes the second time when he beat me, and that really hurt because it hit the same place Sister Edith Now Edith was a very interesting character. She was a spinster, very much so. She was in charge of all feeding arrangements, as well as teaching us how to play the piano. She was what one might call a bit of a battle axe, she had a well- puckered upper lip – it made her look like a concentration frau, if one can put it that way. But having said that, when I left school, I became very good friends with Tom Whitehead and his sister Edith and we remained so until his death in the early 1960s and hers in the late 1980s, so I had a long association with Tom and Edith Whitehead.

The War in Evidence I think there must be four occasions on which war affected us. One very much affected me, because I can remember a day on which a German fighter plane was being chased, I think by a Hurricane, and they came across the roof at tree-top level. And as it passed over the school, the Hurricane took a shot at the German fighter which was chasing, and the canon shells, they all fell out of the sky and fell right down in between us – I was on the lawn there with some friends, and these shells fell between us, and they were quite large shells, 100 millimetres or four inches long, the casings, and if they had fallen on our heads, you wouldn’t be interviewing me now. The second incident was when friendly fighters, from Goodwood and Tangmere, caught a whole group of enemy bombers somewhere over the East Meon/West Meon area, we believe it was over Seven Copse, Seven Copse is where the sewage works is now – it was in the form of a 7, a very clear 7 of woodland - they were probably doing a loop, bypassing Goodwood and Tangmere air fields on the Sussex coast, and decided to come down on the rear of Portsmouth, and drop their bombs and away they went. And of course the fighters caught them, and you get one of them caught by fighters with a lot of bombs on board, and the fighters caught them, and the next thing we knew was that Hen Wood was alight – Hen Wood is now Westbury Forest. Westbury Forest at the moment has big trees, 50 feet high, but at that time it was a series of small little hummocks, anthills, it was downland, ungrazed downland, there were a few little bushes and trees in there, and they dropped these incendiary bombs, and the whole area went alight that night and it burned for two or three days after that. Then we were allowed out of the school, on one of our afternoons, and the Headmaster said ‘No, not to go into Hen Wood’. Of course, boys are boys and you know what exactly happened, we all went in there. There was one lad, I can’t remember what his name was now, what we were doing was to find these fin shells, of the incendiaries, they were small things, about six inches, and we were trying to pick these up as souvenirs, and one of these boys picked up a complete bomb, unexploded, and started throwing it around.

The third time was when we believe the German bombers were trying to cut the Fareham to Alton line. There were lots of bridges along that line, and lots of tunnels as well, and the most important part of that line was the viaduct – it has now been taken down, but you can see the remnants of it there, just before you get to Doctor’s Lane, going into West Meon from East Meon. They came one night and they used land mines, the only thing they could use. The nearest they came to it was on John and Henry Marks’ farm, about two miles away, they weren’t very good with their navigation, and they dropped their land mine, and when these land mines went off, it was really a tremendous noise – we heard it in Westbury – and the whole hillside was very visible to everybody, from the East Meon/West Meon road, right up till the 1960s, when I think the Markses decided to fill it in.

I suppose the last of the interesting events which happened, near the end of the War – I think it was a week or ten days before D-Day, when we heard the noise of vehicles entering Westbury Drive, and entering the gates to the park, close to the house. This was the Canadians. At that time there were armed forces of all nations, situated right along the roads, right from London, along all the roads until the coast, where they were going to embark. The Canadians came and parked in Westbury Park. They stayed there a few days, we were told not to go near them, I don’t quite know why, of course I do know now why, and those people moved off. What is interesting to note is that a year or so ago from today, we took down the old cricket pavilion on the Recreation Ground in East Meon, we were taking down part of the old packing cases of the Canadian Army, and I have souvenirs of it here, and they were old packing cases that were used to make the old cricket pavilion in East Meon. Storage of records. Westbury is a very extraordinary house, it is only two rooms wide although it is a large, long and high building, three storeys high – four if you include the basement, and it was in the basement, where we had our changing rooms and the larder and all the other things down there, there was a great big dark, empty room with no windows in it at all, and inside there was stored a whole lot of records. Now we boys, when we heard they were records, thought they were 78 playing records, and of course they weren’t, they were worthwhile records come down from London – they went all over the country of course, the records, in case of bombing – and we sat down there whenever there was an air raid, and we sat down there until the air raid finished.