Richard Garnier, ‘The Grange and May’s Buildings, Croom’s Hill, Greenwich’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xIV, 2004, pp. 261–286
text © the authors 2004 THE GRANGE AND MAY’S BUILDINGS, CROOM’S HILL, GREENWICH
RICHARD GARNIER
Pevsner’s London II volume classified Croom’s conurbation, but then in Kent, was already gaining an Hill as urban feel, even though still distinct from London and in size more like a village; it was administered by a the pride of domestic architecture in Greenwich. parish vestry, although, with its diversified economic There are not many streets near London which give so base, it was definitely of town (but not borough) good and sustained an idea of the well-to-do private house from the C to the early C . status. The two schemes in question reflect this growing dichotomy, being of disparate characters. The This article concerns neighbouring projects in this first comprised the alteration and stylistic updating of street, initiated in the mid- s, for different patrons, what was still essentially a country house in extensive but demonstrably linked and arguably by the same grounds on the outskirts of a small town (Fig. ). The architect. Both schemes are largely extant today. second, on a parcel of ground hived off from the first, Greenwich, now a borough within the London leased by that house’s freeholder to a speculating
Fig. . The Grange, Croom’s Hill, Greenwich, view from east, as remodelled in the s, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph; another Tuscan-eaved pediment was presumably intended for the first gable obliquely seen to the right. English Heritage .
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV THE GRANGE AND MAY ’ S BUILDINGS , CROOM ’ S HILL , GREENWICH developer, produced a totally urbane terrace of four court at Greenwich Palace and was then known as tall town houses, as if in the West End of London Paternoster Croft. With some twelfth-century fabric (Fig. ). In both instances the likely architect was retained, it was first substantially rebuilt, altered or (Sir) Robert Taylor. enlarged in by Edmund Chapman, who from Pevsner’s original description of these two was Elizabeth I’s Chief Joiner. properties was as follows: By the time of the mid eighteenth-century works The Grange (No. , early C , plus C ) with a pretty that are the subject of this article, The Grange had gazebo of overlooking the street. It is square and been in the same extended family’s ownership for of brick with a pyramidal roof and arched openings of just over years. In the process it regressed from a which one has a scrolled open pediment. Nos – principal to a subsidiary out-of-London house, and are a tall, urban terrace of c. . then a let one. This had ushered in a period of This was amplified in the revision London decline, advancing an eventual process of South by Bridget Cherry to show the then current development on part of the site. That in turn proved state of knowledge: a catalyst to arrest the decline of the old house, as it was updated in the same building campaign, No. (THE GRANGE), hidden behind garden walls, is more complicated, with mid C and C plausibly in preparation for its sale in . work concealing an even older core. S front with four windows; a pedimented gable at one end with a circular window (in this corner a good upper room with coved ceiling). The W wing is mid C . The T H E P R E V I O U S H I S T O R Y O F pretty gazebo overlooking the street (restored in ) T H E P R O P E R T Y was built for Sir William Hooker (a later Lord Mayor) in , probably by Robert Hooke . Brick with The freehold had been bought in by Sir William pyramidal roof, arched openings, one with a scrolled Hooker, who had already been tenant since , open pediment. Good plasterwork inside. Continuing according to the rate books. Hooker’s holdings in the up the hill, Nos. – a terrace built between area also comprised a group of houses in London and (MK). Now altered to flats, the central Ionic Street and Gang Lane (later called Stockwell and porch brought in. Heathgate Street), all of which were regarded as part It is the purpose of the article to set out both the and parcel with the Croom’s Hill property, as they chronology and circumstances of these two mid remained interlinked in many of the subsequent eighteenth-century schemes and thereby demonstrate deeds. In his will Hooker had left the associated Taylor’s likely authorship. As a consequence it can Greenwich properties to his eponymous son, who in be shown how his office could be responsible for sold them to William Heysham, MP, evidently a comparatively humble projects in contrast to the self- connection, as his wife Diana had formerly been a Mrs consciously important ones that are sometimes Hooker. The Grange then descended to William thought the exclusive fare of leading architects. Heysham’s first cousin, Robert Heysham, and from The Grange is so called from the supposition that him to a mutual cousin, Robert Thornton the elder, it occupies the site of the grange or farm of the ‘late of London, brewer’, in . In the later s, monastic convent in Greenwich, originally governed by during the tenure of his son, John Bigge Thornton, Ghent Abbey in Flanders, but latterly a sub-house of the plot for May’s Buildings was leased out and The Sheen Abbey, near Richmond, Surrey. After alienation Grange itself was updated. to the crown under the Reformation the house seems At the time of Robert Thornton the elder’s to have been turned over to use by officials serving the inheritance he had retired from London and was
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Fig. . May’s Buildings, Croom’s Hill, Greenwich, - , here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage.
already living with his cousin Robert Heysham at the occupant, Major Henry Otway, as his sub-tenant. Thornton-cum-Heysham estate of Stagenhoe, in the The lease appears to indicate that Otway’s portion of parish of King’s Walden, Hertfordshire. By that the property included ‘the yards and garden thereto inheritance he came into Stagenhoe as well as The belonging together also with the coach house and Grange. Unlike Robert Heysham, Thornton never stables’. Falkingham was succeeded by his son and lived at The Grange and at first let it as a single unit, the status quo was unchanged until October , but from the Greenwich rate books show it as when the lease (along with the final rent due from the divided in two. This was perhaps initiated in then under-tenant, Charles Brett) was surrendered or soon after, but was not regularised until up to the then freeholder, John Bigge Thornton. May , when Robert Thornton the elder granted a He was the ‘heir at law’, who by then had succeeded, primary lease for years to one of the co-tenants, as only son, from Robert Thornton the elder, who Edward Falkingham, who thus received the other died intestate.
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T H E J O I N T C A M P A I G N and, moreover, to As will be shown below, the development of May’s repair the end of the building which by means Buildings must have been well in train by the time of aforesaid will become damaged in such part or parts the surrender of the lease on The Grange, even thereof will be cut down or damaged. though Articles of Agreement concerning the scheme Clearly, to make room for the site of May’s Buildings, were not signed between John Bigge Thornton and The Grange was losing its stabling and coach houses; Henry May, a distiller, until the following these, as outlined above, had fallen in the sub-tenant’s December. For a peppercorn May leased for one half of the divided house, which the rate books make year from the ensuing Lady Day a parcel of ground clear was the more southerly. Replacement stabling slightly up the hill to the south of The Grange, on and coach house evidently required partial demolition which May was ‘to build one or more… dwelling and repair of The Grange. This accords with the houses… provided that one be fifty feet in front or ‘mid-eighteenth century’ dating of the west cross- two of half that dimension thereon in manner ’. In wing noted by Bridget Cherry in . The whole return, provided the house or houses ‘be raised and process also fits with the suggestion The Grange was covered in’ before the expiry of the year’s lease, being prepared for the sale of the house which was to Thornton undertook to grant May thereafter ‘a good follow soon after. lease of the whole said piece… of ground and the After the signing of the Articles of Agreement , said house or houses so intended to be built’ for a – is the first period when the rate books show term of years at £ s. per annum . the house as empty, and this might therefore have The December agreement specifically been the time when the works were carried out (see stipulated that the houses of May’s Buildings were to Appendix B). On the other hand, the house’s have no windows facing north, so that The Grange rateable value dipped in the early s, and rose and its garden should not be overlooked. In again in , suggesting a slightly later dating. As addition to establishing detailed specifications for will be shown below, May appears to have suffered May’s Buildings, their offices and drains (see from a dip in liquidity as early as November , Appendix A), the agreement set out various other favouring the later date. But, possibly for reasons works that May was to carry out, and it is these that suggested below, the work to the Grange may have confirm the link between the construction of May’s never been completed, as the cast of the remodelled Buildings and the improvement of The Grange, which house would seem to indicate a third Tuscan-eaved the deeds reveal was then known as The White pedimented gable, planned to balance the north side House. May was to build a garden wall separating of its east end, which was never built (Fig. ). the two as shown in a plan in the margin of the lease May’s Buildings, on the other hand, may have indenture, and to ‘build or place in the stable yard been well advanced by the time of the December belonging to The White House a good and sufficient agreement. Although the Articles stipulated that cistern lined with lead for the use of John Bigge the houses were to be covered in by the end of a year Thornton or the occupier of The White House’. But from ‘Lady Day next’ ( i.e. by March ), more significantly for the present argument, May was Georgian building agreements commonly allowed to build of good sound old bricks… in that part of the for construction within up to five years, as it took a stable yard belonging to… The White House… a good two seasons from site clearance to covering in, good and sufficient four horse stable and coach and more in which to fit up the interior. Furthermore house… sufficient for two four wheel carriages to be eighteenth-century building agreements were often used and enjoyed by the said... White House, signed some way into the project, once the developer
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Fig. . Column base from doorcase of No. May’s Buildings, inscribed by George Speer and dated . Richard Garnier.
had proved his capacity to proceed. In this case a of May’s Buildings was not occupied until , the column base from the entrance doorcase of N o. second in the following year, and the final two in May’s Buildings was found during recent repairs to (see Appendix B). The mortgages which May be carved with the inscription ‘Made by Geo. Speer / needed to raise as he proceeded suggest that the Cabinet Maker / / Tower Street / London’ cause of these delays may well have been the (Fig. ), which suggests a much earlier date, although typically eighteenth-century difficulty of raising it is possible that the builder was using pre-made working capital. The first mortgage was for £, fittings. George Speer ( – ) of No. Great from John Mason in November , followed by Tower Street, was indeed a cabinet-maker, but was two further sums of £ and £ raised from apparently associated with his cousin John Speer, Abraham Julien on the security of two other sub- who also undertook joinery and even carpentry, parcels of May’s holding in April . Thus May and George Speer evidently designed shop-fronts. was indebted to the tune of £, , but raised a total May’s campaign must initially have proceeded as of only £ more than this when he came to sell his planned, as on December Thornton duly interest in May’s Buildings in two tranches in granted the promised leases on the four houses, which and . Although disregarding the rental income were to run from the following Lady Day, April from the houses (much of which was anyway . However, the scheme dragged on for over ten surrendered to cover the interest payments on the years before the first tenant took up residence mortgages), this calculation at first seems to show the (if it is reckoned as having started before the date on narrow line he was treading. But, as discussed in the the column base). While the rate books note the previously cited footnote, there must have been a existence of the four houses in – , presumably third sale, for which the indenture has not survived, for much of this time still in carcass, the first house which would have increased May’s profit.
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Fig. . No. May’s Buildings, Tuscan doorcase, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage .
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Fig. . May’s Buildings, canted bays not of full height to back facades of No. and . Richard Garnier.
T H E A T T R I B U T I O N T O T A Y L O R Many of the houses in the surrounding area were of This is based both on style and circumstances. The only two storeys, and, of those with more in Croom’s most immediately arresting features of May’s Hill, their top storeys were dormered attics. Buildings, besides its urbanity, are its towering scale Along the north terrace of Grafton Street (five floors, including basement, three full floors, attic alternate houses sported canted bays to the street and parapet concealing the roof), and its large-scale facades, which rose only two storeys, leaving the Tuscan doorcases (Fig. ). Both are more typical of chamber and attic storeys above them flat-fronted. what has now become central London, and the The rear elevation of May’s Buildings can now be doorcases in particular of Sir Robert Taylor’s revealed as having just such canted bays: one to each surviving houses in Grafton Street, Mayfair. There of the four houses (Fig. ). With such a similar Taylor’s houses dwarfed their neighbours in Bond doorcases and canted bays it was as though the Street, so the similar height of May’s Buildings must respective west and north street facades of Taylor’s have been all the more remarkable in Greenwich. Grafton Street houses were wrapped round May’s
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Fig. . Asgill House, Richmond, Surrey, - , by (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage.
Fig. . St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, London, - , by Inigo Jones, from a late eighteenth-century engraving by Thomas Malton.
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Fig. . Lodge or Farmhouse at Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, a vignette from an estate survey of by Isaac Taylor. English Heritage.
Buildings, front and back. However, the Greenwich are shown in an eighteenth century print by Malton houses were not derived from the Mayfair ones, as (Fig. ). But the same plain eave-brackets are shown might be expected, since the latter were demonstrably in a vignette on a estate map of Bayfordbury, not even designed until . Hertfordshire, depicting a pedimented farmhouse The Grange similarly exhibits characteristic evidently of then recent construction, ‘which at this features of Taylor’s style. The pedimented Tuscan date points strongly to Taylor as the architect’ barn-like eaves with oeil-de-boeuf windows in the two (Fig. ). pediments (Fig. ) recall those which Taylor The first-floor cantilevered outshot for an oriel employed at Asgill House, Richmond, Surrey, built window on the south front of The Grange (Fig. ), – (Fig. ) and at Chute Lodge, Wiltshire, of housing an internal apse, is also a device of Taylor’s, c. . With the few precedents of Roger Morris’s once visible on a now-demolished arm of a staircase stables at Althorp, Northamptonshire, of – , at Delapré Abbey, Northamptonshire ( c. ), and the church attributed to him at Mereworth, Kent, in still extant at Parliament Street, Westminster –, James Paines’s house at Youngsbury, Herts., ( – ), both attributed to him. of , and at Town Hill, Bradford, of c. . Taylor Taylor is known to have been fond of short is generally reckoned the first to have revived these internal columns, first commented on by C. R. Tuscan eaves from the original English example at Cockerell (whose father was a pupil of Taylor’s), and Inigo Jones’s St Paul’s church, Covent Garden. The enlarged on by Marcus Binney. Such columns, undulating-shaped brackets to the eaves of Asgill and typically supporting an isolated section of complete Chute differ from the plain ones which perhaps entablature, are found at The Grange, in both the existed originally at Covent Garden, but certainly Entrance Hall (Fig. ) and the upstairs Drawing Room existed following Burlington’s repairs in ; they at the east end of the first floor (Figs. and ).
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Fig. . The Grange, view from south- east, showing the oriel of the first floor drawing room, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage .
Fig. . The Grange, entrance hall, the screen here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage.
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Fig. . The Grange, first floor drawing room, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, looking north-east, photograph. English Heritage.
Fig. . The same, looking south-east, photograph. English Heritage.
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Fig. . The Grange, bedroom in the cross-wing, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage.
Fig. . The Grange, ceiling of first floor drawing room, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. English Heritage .
A band of guilloche ornament characteristic of Taylor frames the flat bed of a ceiling at the head of a surrounding cove in a bedroom in the west cross- wing (Fig. ). The plasterwork of the first-floor drawing room ceiling (again coved), with its circles of ribbon-tied husk decoration (Fig. ), is a simplified relation of Taylor’s surviving wall decoration at Grafton Street and that attributed to him in the ballroom of The Oaks, Carshalton, Surrey, now demolished. Closely related ribbon-tied husk ovals occur on the pendentives to the vaulted corridor at Truman’s Brewery, Spitalfields, of c. , also attributed to Taylor. (Fig. ). Finally, the serliana (Fig. ), which was inserted in the garden house in place of the doorcase attributed to Hooke, had a feature characteristic of Taylor, used by him on the staircase at Asgill (Fig. ). It is the narrow separation between column and adjacent wall; Marcus Binney calls these tight Venetian openings of Taylor’s ‘compressed’. I have previously summarised Taylor’s clientèle,
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV THE GRANGE AND MAY ’ S BUILDINGS , CROOM ’ S HILL , GREENWICH on the basis of Marcus Binney’s monograph on the architect, as ‘City men, particularly bankers and directors of the East India Company, men with interests in the West Indies, government financiers and army contractors,… lawyers, [and political] clients of the Duke of Newcastle and the third Duke of Grafton’. So the link with Taylor could be directly due to Robert Bigge Thornton, the owner of The Grange and the site of May’s Buildings. First he was a lawyer, being described in the indentures as ‘of Lincoln’s Inn’, where Taylor was to be commissioned to design Stone Buildings in – . But Thornton also sprang from an extended family with varying commercial, mercantile and colonial interests, members of the City patriarchy, providing several MPs (see Appendix C). They were comprised largely of Barbados and Virginia-tobacco merchants, including a Bank director, an Alderman, a Lord Mayor and the Masters of the Drapers’ and Haberdashers’ Companies, while the Sir William Hooker who had originally bought The Grange had also been a Lord Mayor. Equally an introduction to Taylor could have come from one of Thornton’s tenants. Charles Brett, the sub-tenant who is mentioned in the endorsement surrendering the Falkinghams’ lease pending the building campaign at The Grange, was a family connection of Thornton’s, having married Elizabeth Fig. . Truman’s Brewery, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, London, first floor vaulted corridor, c. , Hooker, the granddaughter and heiress of Sir William attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, photograph. Hooker. But more relevant to the present enquiry, English Heritage. Brett was at the time of the surrender Paymaster of the Navy, a post he owed to the patronage of Lord Howe, a repeated patron of Taylor. Brett’s previous Thornton briefly installed in pending the patron had been Admiral Boscawen († ), building campaign at The Grange, might be documented as one of the earliest patrons of Robert considered as having switched in the opposite Adam. But Boscawen’s death and Brett’s close direction, from Taylor’s circle to Adam’s. In – linkage with Howe from then on, seemingly marks Whitworth abandoned any hope in securing Brett’s transfer into the circle of Taylor’s patrons. preferment from his uncle the Duke of Newcastle and It was Howe to whom Brett was later indebted for in the expectation of a place crossed the House to his appointment as a Lord of Admiralty when Howe support the Earl of Bute’s ministry. But Whitworth was First Lord. had a close connection with the some of Taylor’s Next, Charles Whitworth, the tenant whom patrons; he was married to a niece of Newcastle’s and
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Fig. . The Grange, garden gazebo, , attributed to Robert Hooke, with Serliana inserted in the s, here attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor, now removed, s photograph. English Heritage.
adopted for Sir Kenrick Clayton’s pocket borough of leasehold property by collecting ground rents and Bletchingly in the general election of . Sir sourcing replacement tenants as occupiers moved Kenrick was the brother of William Clayton, who on. Thus Mark Weyland, the first occupant of N o. was twice or even thrice-over a patron of Taylor. May’s Buildings, was a Director and Governor of the While the developer Henry May was evidently a Bank of England, where Taylor had held the post distiller successful enough to have spare profits to of Surveyor since . Mark died in and was engage in such a speculation, he was also a man who followed at the house by his nephew, another Bank gravitated towards London and the City. For by the director, but, more importantly, he was succeeded by time he came to sell part of his leaseholding in his long-lived sister Mary Salwey. In she had he was described as ‘of London Wall’. Yet it is the married Richard Salwey ( – ) , a South Sea tenants who took his four houses in Croom’s Hill director who has been twice noted in connection who are just as relevant in pursuing likely with Taylor. He was the first resident of No. John confirmation of a connection with Taylor. This is Street, Holborn, a street firmly attributed to the because Taylor, noted by Walpole as having architect, and he was responsible (as an executor) ‘surveyorships out of number’ was not only an for the monument in Ludlow parish church to his architect but also a proto estate-agent, managing Bank Director brother Theophilus († ), which
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV THE GRANGE AND MAY ’ S BUILDINGS , CROOM ’ S HILL , GREENWICH
Fig. . Asgill House, Richmond, Surrey, compressed serliana openings to the staircase, by (Sir) Robert Taylor. English Heritage.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV THE GRANGE AND MAY ’ S BUILDINGS , CROOM ’ S HILL , GREENWICH follows a drawing by Taylor now at the Taylorian Gibson, for together they surveyed and condemned Institution, Oxford. Mrs Vansittart, first resident at the old parish church there in . Wiggens’s son, No. , was the daughter of a Governor of Madras and on the other hand, was never associated with the the widow of a Governor of Bengal, who was latterly building trade and aimed to build on the improvement an East India director, and the sister-in-law of of the family’s social standing that had been marked another director of that Company. John Bodicoate, by the acquisition of The Grange: he was trained a the initial resident at N o. is less easy to fix, but his barrister, latterly became an MP and in had name is suggestive: he may have been the son of the married a daughter of th Lord Kinnaird, but died like-named director († ) of the Royal Africa suddenly in , intestate. Company, and there was another member of that The chronology of the Wiggens family’s family who was a West India merchant and Manager involvement is as follows. First, a Thomas Wiggens (i.e. director) of the Sun Fire Office, whose offices occupied The Grange in – (with a part-year in Bank Buildings ( – ) Taylor designed. The break in ) as the first long-term resident callings and connections of the earlier residents at following the presumed building campaign there No. are as yet unplumbed, but a subsequent (see Appendix B). In August it was probably the occupant, Mrs Polhill, was the daughter-in-law of an same man who bought the freehold from John Bigge eminent London banker and tobacco merchant in Thornton, and so became the ground landlord of Southwark, for which he was MP, and he may also May’s Buildings, which was then nearing completion have been connected to the Edward Polhill who lived on part of The Grange grounds. One and a half years from in Great George Street, another street after purchasing the freehold, in January , firmly attributed to Taylor. Thomas Wiggens mortgaged in sums of £, and £ from two different parties in one indenture and the sealing of the document was witnessed on the reverse by one John Nash. In an indenture POSTSCRIPT : THOMAS WIGGENS concerning one of the May’s Buildings houses AND JOHN NASH mentions ‘all that stable erected by the said Thomas As set out above, these two schemes at The Grange Wiggens late of East Greenwich deceased as part of and May’s Buildings make an unexpected pair, yet the ground comprised in the said leases’, the leases their proven interlinkage, the combination of their referred to being those for May’s Buildings. dating and style in relation to known works by the Events at The Grange subsequently developed architect, and the associations of the patrons and the into a complicated wrangle in the Court of Chancery residents alike all make a compelling case for an on non-payment of interest from July , itself attribution to Sir Robert Taylor. The credibility of preceded by non-redemption of the mortgages by that attribution could at first seem to be challenged the specified dates, and then compounded by by the documented involvement of the surveyor- Wiggens’s death intestate in January . The architect Thomas Wiggens and his eponymous son complication is increased by an implied confusion at The Grange. However, on further examination the between Thomas Wiggens the surveyor and his attribution to Taylor could be strengthened by their barrister son in the deeds, which have anyway presence there. Wiggens père , of Greenwich and survived incompletely. The son entered Lincoln’s London, was active from c. , and perhaps Inn in , which suggests that he was born in crucially for the present argument, was a sometime / , and thus too young to purchase property in associate of the Lewisham-resident architect George or mortgage it in . He must have inherited
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV THE GRANGE AND MAY ’ S BUILDINGS , CROOM ’ S HILL , GREENWICH from his father, who therefore must have died up to the exacting standards Taylor maintained? between January (the date of the mortgages) Certainly the character of the Wiggenses’ tenants at and July (the date the son ceased paying another property of theirs in nearby Lee might interest). In accordance with this, the indenture of suggest that the Wiggenses had links to the circle of sale on settlement of the Chancery case in Taylor’s patrons and their associates: the house was provides a full history of the dispute wherein the tenanted successively by Sir Thomas Fludyer and creditors had moved to foreclose, but from the [Henry] Pelham. The second tenant was a cousin of narrative it is clear that it was Wiggens fils who was the Duke of Newcastle, while the first was brother at fault in failing to pay. This is so from the fact that to Sir Samuel Fludyer, ‘a massively wealthy clothier it is his widow, Hon. Mrs Margaret Wiggens, who is and West Indies merchant’, who had been Lord a party to the settlement (along with their three Mayor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. infant sons) in association with her brother’s late The Fludyer brothers were in partnership and it was father-in-law’s partners, the Pall Mall bankers thus that Sir Thomas, always in the shadow of his William Morland and Thomas Hammersley. . elder brother, was ‘a big subscriber to Government Wiggens père was a surveyor who could turn his loans.’ The brothers’ joint memorial by Robert hand to designing buildings, but it remains unclear Chambers in Lee churchyard has already been noted from the deeds (whose wording was customarily in an earlier number of this journal as in Taylor’s style copied from one to the next) whether it was father or of sepulchral Rococo. And if Wiggens’s putative son who was responsible for the erection of the stables linkage with Taylor is credited, the John Nash who to the May’s Buildings houses. It is also unresolved witnessed Wiggens’s mortgage indenture in January whether it was merely under a duty as landlord or would be indubitably identifiable as Taylor’s additionally as designer that the relevant Wiggens built former pupil, then newly independent, having left his them. The former seems more likely, since the master’s office ‘by … to establish himself as an implication of the deeds, notwithstanding the implied architect and speculative builder in London’. confusion between father and son, is that the stables That in turn leads the argument full circle to a were due to the younger Wiggens, and he was a final, persuasive possibility, notwithstanding Nash’s barrister without connection to the building trades. known antipathy toward Taylor. This is that Thomas Meanwhile the father’s association with the Wiggens père , resident at The Grange before the architect George Gibson may be suggestive, especially May’s Buildings terrace was finished, had been the in the light of the Nash signature witnessing the surveyor on the spot supervising the joint campaign mortgages which Wiggens entered into in . at both properties in Croom’s Hill to Sir Robert Gibson, of nearby Lewisham, was described by his Taylor’s design. Perhaps unwisely he had stepped in own pupil James Eames as one who ‘would rather sip to purchase the incompletely refurbished Grange on his claret, drink his Madeira, chat about Art and May’s lack of financial liquidity to complete both Music, and take snuff with a gusto, than ascend schemes. But on the evidence of the building as it ladders, tramp scaffolds to see how Bricklayers filled stands today he was unable to complete the project in their work, or try the scantlings of wall plates and himself. bond timbers… [like] the practical men of Sir Robert Taylor’s working school’. This choice of exemplar seems deliberate: when surveying Lewisham church did Gibson have need of just such a practical man, and did Thomas Wiggens fit the mould of being trained
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APPENDIX A stock brick’; window stools and copings in good Portland stone, and the roof covered in ‘in a BUILDING SPECIFICATIONS FOR substantial and workmanlike manner with good plain MAY ’ S BUILDINGS tiles or slates’. The gutter must be laid with lead of a As set out in the Articles of Agreement between gauge not less than seven pounds per foot, feeding Thornton and May, dated December, , the ‘proper and substantial rain water pipes of good lead latter for the consideration of £ was thereby to ‘be and wood in order to convey the water away’. enabled to build one or more tenements or dwelling The houses were to have ‘good strong outside houses provided that one be fifty feet in front or two doors with suitable and sufficient hinges and of half that dimension thereon in manner’. fastenings’. Otherwise, structural timber was to be The houses, to be provided with ‘suitable offices Baltic and of ‘the best Onega or Riga timber with and conveniences thereto’, were ‘to be raised with good and sufficient girders joists plates and quarter good sound bricks faced with good hard graystocks’, partitions’, as follows: laid two and a half bricks thick up to the ground floor, Girders in. by ⁄ in. thereafter ‘to one pair stairs’ of two bricks thick, and Joists in. by in. finally to ‘the plate thereof’ of one and a half bricks, Upper floor girders in. by in. o while party or partition walls were to be of two bricks D . joists ⁄in. by ⁄in. and thereafter of one and a half. Drains were to be Plates in. by in. ‘well and sufficiently arched in brick’. Shafts of the Rafters in. by in. chimneys were to be ‘in good and sufficient hard Quarter partitions in. by in.
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APPENDIX B
THE OCCUPANTS , AND RATEABLE VALUES WHERE RELEVANT [Based with kind permission on the unpublished research by Neil Rhind into the Greenwich rate books.]
The Grange, Croom’s Hill May’s Buildings, – Croom’s Hill Sir William Hooker No. ( May’s Buildings) ; initially rated at £ William Hooker, jr., MP £ Andrew Barlow William Heysham, MP £ Shovel Blackwood Robert Heysham £ Mrs Fisher s Peter Seignoret; Mr Dambrieux [+ £ s. coach-house and stable] Mr John Hand Mrs Raddin/Radden North part of house Mrs Ursula Polhill Edward Falkingham – Thomas Wilkinson £ Commissioner (Capt.) John Falkingham No. ( May’s Buildings) ; initially rated at £ South part of house £ John Bodicoate Maj. Henry Marsh Otway £ Governor Brown Capt. Peyton – £ Governor Brown Capt. Marsh [+ £ s. coach-house andstable] – Mr Rowland; Mrs Rowland William Bythesea £ Charles Brett, MP Catherine Bythesea Whole house £ Charles Whitworth, MP No. ( May’s Buildings) ; initially rated at £ £ Empty £ Mark Weyland – Empty John Weyland £ James Motley Mary Salwey Empty – £ s. Thomas Wiggens No. ( May’s Buildings) ; rated at £ in £ Mrs West, part year only; £ / Mrs Emilia Vansittart Thomas Wiggens by Michaelmas [+ £ s. coach-house and stable, £ Mr Wiggens from ] – £ General Pattison £ Empty – Governor Brown (moved from [+ £ s. coach-house and stable] May’s Buildings) William Atkinson – No listing in rate books – Dr Samuel Gillam Mills († ); Mrs Mills, Charles and Charlotte Mills
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APPENDIX C
GENEALOGICAL TABLE SHOWING INTER - RELATIONSHIPS OF THE THORNTON AND HEYSHAM FAMILIES . Owners of The Grange shown in bold italics.
Robert Thornton of Oxcliffe, nr. Lancaster MP
Edward Thornton Giles Heysham = Elizabeth Thornton ? Thornton draper of London, MP, of Lancaster of Oxcilffe, Lancs. and Stagenhoe, Herts
Elizabeth Thornton = [ ] Robert Heysham William Heysham = Elizabeth, dau. of ( - ), MP, ( - ) Humphrey Brockden Barbados merchant, MP, Barbados of Barbados Jane Thornton = [ ] Master, Drapers’ Co., merchant [sisters; co-heiresses] Alderman , Richard Perry, merchant, Pres., Christ’s Hospital Bank director, - Robert Heysham ?= Mrs Diana Hooker = [ ] William Heysham =[] Sarah Micajah Perry, MP † /, unmarried, ( - ) Perry tobacco merchant. of Stagenhoe. of East Greenwich, MP. Master, Haberdashers’, Inherited The Bought The Grange, Ld. Mayor, / Grange, ?
Charles Brett = Elizabeth Elizabeth = Robert Thornton Giles Thornton = Anne MP, tenant of Hooker Bigge the elder, brewer, of St. Botolph, The Grange [granddaughter of London. Aldgate - and heiress of Inherited Stagenhoe Sir Wm. Hooker] and The Grange,
John Bigge Thornton Robert Thornton of Lincoln’s Inn. the younger Inherited The Grange, ? s and sold it
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS especially (so soon after their office’s relocation to Debts of gratitude are owing to Mr Nicholas Elliott, Woolwich Arsenal) in locating the uncalendared the owner of The Grange until , for much deeds for May’s Buildings in their collections, and information about the house, and particularly to Mr for putting me in touch with Mr Neil Rhind, local Howard Slight of May’s Court, who gave me an historian of Blackheath and Greenwich residents, initial insight into the chronology of these two who so generously allowed me access to his schemes and then so kindly loaned me for study the unpublished research, followed by permission to collection of surviving deeds that had until recently publish material (copyright still subsisting with him) descended with the ownership of The Grange. In relevant to this article. Lastly, I should like to thank addition I should like to thank the staff at the English Heritage for permission to publish Greenwich Heritage Centre for their unstinting help, photographs in the care of their London division.
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NOTES Parliament, The House of Commons – , Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England, London, , II, – ]. Indeed Heysham’s will, London Volume Two, except the Cities of London and made in , makes it clear that the maiden name of Westminster , Harmondsworth, , . his then wife Sarah (whom he married in ) was But the interiors of May’s Buildings have suffered Perry [Slight, doc. ; the date of marriage is given in from the effects of lateral conversion into flats, Sedgwick, loc. cit. ]. But he was first married to a Mrs entailing the destruction of its original interiors and Diana Hooker, at St Luke’s, Old Charlton, Kent, on plasterwork. I have latterly gained access to the February , by special license from the Bishop common parts and discovered Gothick detailing in of Rochester [ ex inf. Neil Rhind, extracted from cornices and half-landing soffits. Apparently one GHC, Old Charlton parish registers]. So at the time bedroom retains its decorative plaster ceiling, but I of purchase he was buying from the family of his have not seen it. earlier wife’s first husband (see Appendix C). Pevsner, loc.cit.. Slight, doc. ( ). Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry, The Buildings Slight, doc. : ‘Attested copy of Robert Heysham the of England, London : South , Harmondsworth, son’s will’ of . Robert Heysham was still alive on , . The initials MK in the gazetteer entry July , the date in an attested copy of a denote a contribution from Michael Kerney. ‘Recovery with double voc.’ [Slight, doc. ]. Beryl Platts, ‘The oldest road in London? Crooms GHC, uncalendared deeds collection, Croom’s Hill Hill, Greenwich- ’, Country Life , CXL, November [hereafter GHC deeds, and using the lawyers’ , . However, Platts also considers the sequencing numbers later-annotated in red crayon], alternative possibility that The Grange might be the doc. : ‘Articles of Agreement’ of . property occupied by a ‘messuage or barn’ of Robert Thornton the elder’s retirement from Paternoster Croft, bought from the Crown by London to Stagenhoe occurred between May Jerome Lanier in . when he is described as ‘of London’ [Slight, Idem ; but London, Woolwich Arsenal, Greenwich doc. ] and July of the same year when he is Heritage Centre [hereafter GHC], Crooms Hill described in Robert Heysham’s will as ‘late of (anonymous and undated typescript note), argues London but now residing with me’ [Slight, doc. ]. that Paternoster Croft was the adjoining property to Slight, docs. and : Robert Thornton is thus found the north. to have inherited Stagenhoe from the Heyshams, Platts, loc. cit. . According to information from Mr but they in turn had inherited it by marrying the Nicholas Elliott (owner of The Grange until ), heiress daughters of an earlier Edmund Thornton. Chapman was the son of a ship master of Deptford, The two families repeatedly intermarried, both a rich shipbuilder, a friend of Drake, and, as Chief having originated from the environs of Lancaster Joiner from , in charge of naval shipbuilding (see Appendix C, above). Nikolaus Pevsner and under Elizabeth I. Bridget Cherry, The Buildings of England, GHC, rate books, parish of East Greenwich Hertfordshire , Harmondsworth, , , lists [hereafter GHC, rate books]; e x. inf . Neil Rhind Stagenhoe, in the parish of St Paul’s Walden, as (see Appendix B, above). rebuilt after a fire of . Mr Howard Slight, privately owned property deeds GHC, rate books, ex. inf . Neil Rhind. relating to The Grange [hereafter Slight, and using The date when Falkingham took tenure [see the lawyers’ sequencing numbers later-annotated in Appendix B, above]. red crayon], doc. – ( ) and doc. ( ). Slight, doc. : the indenture cites the already existing The inheritance and subsequent sale both cited in tenures as ‘one part in the occupation of the said Slight, doc. . The indenture of this sale has not Edward Falkingham… the other part now in the survived but it is recited in the subsequent deeds tenure of Major Otway with the yards and garden [idem ]. At first it might appear that Hooker was thereto belonging together also with the coach selling out of the family, as The History of houses and stables… ’. Parliament , which notes Heysham’s second Idem ., endorsed on verso , ‘This lease delivered up marriage, records no connection between Hooker to Mr Thornton October and the rent due and Heysham [Romney Sedgwick, The History of from Michaelmas from Charles Brett esqr’.
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Slight, doc. . purchase money of the sale of the first tranche , So called to distinguish him from his nephew, ‘only leaving him still indebted for £ from the Julien son’ of his brother Giles Thornton, of St Botolph, £ mortgage (the £ Julien mortgage being Aldgate, London [Slight, doc. ]. already ‘paid off and discharged’) suggests that the GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. . deeds are incomplete and that there was another, At some later date windows have been inserted in subsequent tranche sold at a later date, thus both the north end wall, lighting an inserted stair at this clearing his debt to Julien’s heirs and increasing his end of the terrace. own profits [GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. ]. Donald J. Olsen, Town Planning in London, the The two central doorcases have been removed, one Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries , New Haven since replaced by an introduced Ionic one [Pevsner and London, and , ; Richard Garnier, and Cherry, loc. cit .]. ‘Two ‘Crystalline’ Villas of the s’, Georgian Richard Garnier, ‘Grafton Street, Mayfair’, Group Journal , VII, , . Georgian Group Journal , XIII, , – . E.g., as at Beaver Hall, Enfield and Dover House, Although there is a terrace of four five-storey houses Putney Heath, both of which were also built in the at the bottom of Croom’s Hill, as Neil Rhind s [Garnier, op. cit. , – ]. reminds me. In the possession of Mr Howard Slight. Colvin, op. cit. , . Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert (eds.), Colvin, op. cit ., . While the Tuscan-eaved Dictionary of English Furniture Makers – , stables at Packington, Warwickshire, of – [Leeds], , . [ibid. , ], by the Hiorn brothers, might be Anthony Coleridge, ‘George Speer: a newly reckoned as predating Taylor’s use of Tuscan eaves, identified Georgian cabinet-maker’, Apollo , XCII the payments from the bank account of another ( ), October , – , and fig. . Hiorn patron, William Mackworth Praed, both to GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, docs. and , and : David Hiorn in October (£ ) and to Robert two pairs of lease and counterpart, but otherwise an Taylor in November (£ ) and September incomplete survival of the original series. (£ ) [London, Gosling’s, Fleet St, Barclay’s Bank Presumably if completed by – the houses archives] might suggest an already-existing link would have been noted as ‘empty’. between the architects by the time of the Packington GHC, rate books [ ex. inf. Neil Rhind]. stables. Recited in GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, docs. and , Peter Leach, ‘The Thompson Mausoleum and its the former an indenture of wherein Mason re- architect’, The Georgian Group Journal , VIII, , assigned at the inflated value of £, to Charles –; Terry Friedman, The Georgian Parish William Boughton Rouse of Rouse Lench Court, Church , Oxford, , plate . Worcs., and again recited in GHC, doc. . The Richard Hewlings, ‘Youngsbury’, The Georgian inflated value was perhaps underpinned by May’s Group Journal , IX, , . completion and tenanting of the houses in the Colvin, op. cit. , – , sv. Bayfordbury. interim. Colvin, op. cit. , . Jones’s exact detailing is not Cited in GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. , an known because of the building’s history of repair indenture of March , assigning part of May’s and re-instatement: first Burlington’s repairs of leasehold interest in May’s Buildings for £, to , secondly Hardwick’s first campaign of repairs William Bythesea of Cornhill, woollen draper, in – and thirdly his thorough ‘restoration’ in occupier of No. May’s Buildings from that year. – , following the fire of [ibid. , ]. But The sale of the second tranche in was for the eaves at The Grange follow the then status quo £, to Richard Foster of Greenwich, esquire, and at St Paul’s. Such a reference to a seminal work of comprised two houses (Nos. and May’s Jones’s might be deemed appropriate by a Buildings) then occupied by Mark Weyland and Palladian-revival architect for a ‘country’ house with William Atkinson, two three-stall stables and two a view over Greenwich Park towards the Queen’s coachhouses [GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. ]. House, also by Jones. However, the fact that May retained £ ‘for his James Lees-Milne, The Age of Inigo Jones , London, own proper use and benefit’ from the £ , , fig. .
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Colvin, op. cit. , – . Boscawen employed Robert Adam on the interiors Richard Garnier, ‘Speculative Housing in s at Hatchlands, Surrey, in – [Colvin, op. cit. , London’, Georgian Group Journal , XII, , ]. and figs. and . Howe engaged to take No. Grafton St. in the Marcus Binney, Sir Robert Taylor, From Rococo to development designed by Taylor for the Duke of Neo-Classicism , London, , . Grafton on December , and employed Taylor Taylor’s attributed work at The Oaks has traditionally soon after at Porter’s Lodge, Shenley, Herts. been dated to c. , but on the basis of payments in [Richard Garnier, ‘Grafton Street’, cit. , , the client’s bank account, an earlier date of c. Appendix C; Colvin, op. cit. , bis ]. has been put forward [Garnier, ‘Grafton Street’, cit. , Namier and Brooke, loc. cit. , n. ]. For the attribution of Truman’s Born c. , died ; of Leybourne, Kent and Brewery, see Colvin, op. cit. , . Blackford, Somerset; chairman of Ways and Means, Taylor’s serliana was replaced by the original Hooke –d. Succeeded his father as member for design in by Mr Nicholas Elliott, then owner of Minehead, and having married a niece of Duke of The Grange, and by whom the information was Newcastle, constantly worried him for preferment, communicated to me. but repeatedly disappointed therein. In February Binney, op. cit. , . applied and got Lt. Governorship of Garnier, ‘Speculative Housing…’, cit. , . Gravesend and Tilbury Fort at £ p.a ., but Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The History of thereby suffered a shortfall of £ on the pension Parliamnet, The House of Commons, – , he had previously been receiving on the secret Oxford, [hereafter Namier and Brooke], II, service. In had been brought in for Bletchingley ; as Charles Brett sprang from a naval family, by Sir Kenrick Clayton ‘without any trouble or presumably it was a relation of his, Robert Brett, expense’, but on account of Newcastle’s failure to who in married Mary Hooker at Old Charlton ‘recommend me to some public employment’ church, both being described as of St Nicholas, switched to support of Bute’s administration in Deptford [ ex. inf. Neil Rhind]. /. [Namier and Brooke, III, – ]. Brett, of Greenwich, Kent; married in Elizabeth Bute secured Adam one of the two newly created Hooker, granddaughter and heiress of Sir William posts of Architect to the King’s Works in , and Hooker; paymaster of navy, – ; lord of employed him at Lansdowne House, London in Admiralty – and – . From a naval – and at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, in family, Brett ( c. – ) had probably left the navy – [Colvin, op. cit. , , and ]. soon after his marriage (by which he acquired William Clayton employed Taylor first at property in Middlesex and London); having been Harleyford Manor, Buckinghamshire, building in flag lieutenant to admiral Boscawen in , in , secondly in the commissioning of a monument he was in charge of Portsmouth dockyard. After the to his first wife († ) in Marlow church and finally death of Boscawen, his early patron, in , Brett as a member of the corporation in possibly became connected with Lord Howe, thereby being providing the introduction that secured Taylor the appointed paymaster when Howe became navy job of designing Carmarthen Town Hall, c. treasurer, and leaving office with him in January [Colvin, op. cit. , and ; Richard Garnier, . He may also have owed his first seat, at ‘Postscript’ to Thomas Lloyd, ‘Carmarthen Town Lostwithiel in , to Howe and for where he sat Hall, the Architect Revealed’, Georgian Group on Lord Edgcumbe’s interest. Next, in , he Journal , , – ]. vacated that seat in favour of Sandwich, where he GHC, Croom’s Hill deeds, doc. . was returned on the Government interest at a time Binney, op. cit. , . when the Howes were high in Government favour; For a prior exploration of this facet of Taylor’s career again, in Pitt’s administration, on the admiralty see Richard Garnier, ‘Speculative Housing…’, cit. , board under Howe, and became one of its principal – , and ‘Grafton Street’, cit. , – . spokesmen in Commons, leaving office at the same Of Swaffham, Norfolk and George Lane, London. time as Howe in . [Namier and Brooke, III, He was a Bank director and governor, dying , – ]. aged [monumental inscription to several
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generations of the Weyland family in Woodrising the Company’s election in a fruitless attempt to church, Norfolk]. bring his friends back into the directorate, and the Colvin, op. cit. , . expense of a successful contest for a This date, previously unpublished, is extracted parliamentary seat at Reading, in the Company from the Church of Latter Day Saints Family Search election Henry Vansittart and his associates website. succeeded in gaining the directorate, but a crash in Richard Garnier, ‘Speculative Housing…’, cit. , , stock prices rendered his own situation desperate. figs. and , and nn. –. Appointed under a compromise to the commission Idem. sent out in that year to reform abuses in India, he Daughter ( – ) of John Morse, late governor was lost en route with all hands on the frigate of Madras; widow (married ) of Henry Aurora . His widow and family were initially left in Vansittart, governor of Bengal and latterly East India much straightened circumstances, but after long director; and sister-in-law of another director, efforts friends and relations in India succeeded in Charles Boddam: their mother, Mrs Morse’s salving some part of his fortune. [Namier and obituary († Sept., ) in the Gentleman’s Brooke, III, – ]. See also Richard Garnier, Magazine gives that lady as ‘mother of the late lady ‘Downing Square in the s and s’, Georgian of Charles Boddam esq. of Bulls Cross, Enfield, Group Journal , IX, , , and n. , for East Indies Director, and of the widow of the late Leonard, another member of the Morse family with governor Vansittart’ [ Gentleman’s Magazine , , putative connections to Robert Taylor. Mrs ]. Emilia Vansittart’s father may well have Vansittart next moved to Bexley House, No. West sprung from the like-named family of which two Grove, Greenwich, where she lived until her death, earlier members were partners in Child’s bank, to be followed in occupation of the house ( – ) namely Henry, in – , and John, in – by her daughter Miss Sophia Vansittart ( – ) [Gentleman’s Magazine , , ; and London, [ex. inf. Neil Rhind]. Royal Bank of Scotland, archives dept., Child’s Information from Neil Rhind. ledgers and partnership records]. Henry and his A Richard Bodicoate, connected with the African brother George Vansittart were both in East Indies Company family, was a Sun Fire Office manager (i.e. service. George, having risen to senior merchant director) – and a West India merchant and member of Bengal Board of Trade, retired and [P.G.M. Dickson, The Sun Fire Office, – , returned from India in reputed to be worth London, , ]. £ , . Henry won the approbation of both Clive Colvin, op. cit. , . in India and Laurence Sulivan at East India House, Daughter of Ebenezer Maitland, Esq. and widow of London, was a member of council, Madras, in , Nathaniel Polhill († ), of Howbury Park, Beds., and soon after being transferred to Bengal in , whose father, also Nathaniel († ), of Peckham, became governor there, – ; rumoured to have Surrey, an eminent banker in London and tobacco acquired a great fortune in India, but does not seem merchant in Southwark, for which he was MP, to have succeeded in remitting more than part of it bought Howbury in , presumably for the son. to England. On returning home he lived the lavish Nathaniel Polhill the younger’s widow subsequently lifestyle of many a prominent nabob, purchasing married James Ware [Sir Bernard Burke, Landed Foxley, Berkshire, in and amassed a fine Gentry , th ed., London, (hereafter Burke’s collection of Eastern curios, animals and objets Landed Gentry ), I, – ; Namier and Brooke, d’art , but was effectively living beyond his means. III, ]. The Edward Polhill, living at Great Unfortunately for him, the feud in the directorate George St., Westminster, from , a street between the Clive and Sulivan factions was then at attributed to Taylor [Garnier, ‘Speculative its height and despite attempts at impartiality he Housing… ’, cit. , ] could have been Nathaniel was forced into the camp of Sulivan, at that time out the younger’s brother of that name given in Burke’s of power. This blocked Henry’s desired return as Landed Gentry , II, loc. cit. , as ‘of Clapham, and governor of Bengal and he was even threatened with afterwards York Place [who married] Sarah, prosecution for his activities in India. After an dau. of John Spooner, Esq., of Barbados’, thereby expensive role in the creation of fictitious votes in giving a further colonial connection.
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Garnier, ‘Speculative Housing… ’, cit. , . University, , by Daniel M Abrahamson, Money’s Colvin, op. cit. , – : Wiggens was under Architecture, the building of the Bank of England , years old when in he won a premium from the ]. Society of Arts for his designs for a ‘Temple of Pelham’s identity behind the appellation ‘[blank] Fame’; in either he or his own like-named Pelham esquire’ in the deeds is revealed in Namier father designed the Greenwich parish workhouse; and Brooke, III, – , sv. ‘Pelham, Henry in , now styled ‘of London’, he competed for (? – ), of Lee, Kent’, who was returned in the design of the Dublin Royal Exchange; in he as the Administration candidate at Tiverton… designed the Clothworkers’ Company almshouses and in succeeded in obtaining through in Islington; and finally he is recorded in Newcastle a commissionership of customs. conjunction with George Gibson as condemning Roger Bowdler, ‘Rococo in Lee: The Fludyer Tomb the old parish church of Lewisham in following by Robert Chambers’, Georgian Group Journal , their survey of the structure. [III], , . Idem. Namier and Brooke, II, – , sv. Samuel and Namier and Brooke, III, ; the intestacy is Thomas Fludyer: Samuel ‘joined his father’s recorded in GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. . business which he greatly developed; became one of GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. . the foremost cloth merchants; and from until GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. . his death appears in the London trade directories in GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. . partnership with his brother Thomas as Clearly the son was in financial difficulties and warehousemen, of Basinghall Street.’ He was Lord possibly hiding behind his indemnity as an MP to Mayor in – and repeatedly a Bank director escape his creditors. His election was anyway under from , holding the deputy governorship from challenge and he was posthumously unseated in to his death in . Sir Thomas ‘goes through April [Namier and Brooke, loc. cit. ]; was his life as junior partner to his brother, in business and death a suicide as suggested by his intestacy? in politics’ and died in . Namier and Brooke, loc. cit. Bowdler, op. cit. , – . GHC, deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. . Colvin, op. cit. , . L.G. Pine (ed.), Burke’s Peerage , London, , See note , supra . – , sv. Kinnaird: the Hon. Mrs Wiggens’s Sedgwick, II, – . brother, th Lord Kinnaird, had married in Seignoret’s calling is unknown; Dambrieux was a Elizabeth, daughter of Griffin Ransom, of New schoolmaster [Slight, doc. ]. Palace Yard, banker in partnership with William Attorney, of Austin Friars († ) [ ex. inf . Neil Morland and Thomas Hammersley of Pall Mall. In Rhind]. further confirmation of the link with these Pall Mall – , Comptroller of the Navy [ ex. inf . Neil bankers, one of the infant Wiggens children was Rhind]. called Thomas Morland Wiggens [GHC, Croom’s See n. , supra . Hill, doc. ]. The partnership is cited in LS Presnell See n. , supra . and John Orbell, A Guide to the Historical Records See Postscript, and n. , supra . of British Banking , Aldershot, , , sv. Grandson of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Ransom, Morland & Hammersley, established . See n. , supra . Colvin, op. cit. , . See nn . and , supra . Taylor, in C. R. Cockerell’s words, ‘was in the – , buried at Lee, Kent [ ex inf. Neil Rhind]; constant habit of visiting the buildings early in the Bythesea is designated ‘of Cornhill London woolen morning before the men had come to work, and draper’ in the indenture of whereby he bought wherever he found anything defectively done, to the leasehold of No. May’s Buildings [GHC, disturb or push it down, and so leave it for them to deeds, Croom’s Hill, doc. ]. reconstruct.’ [James Ayres, Building the Georgian See n. , supra . City , New Haven and London, , , citing the Of Woodrising, Norfolk and Woodeaton, Oxon, the quotation of C.R. Cockerell, Architectural Progress , latter of which he rebuilt in [Jennifer – , in the unpublished thesis, Harvard Sherwood and Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of
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England, Oxfordshire , Harmondsworth, , ] West Grove, Greenwich, a house that she and in my opinion attributable to (Sir) Robert occupied – ; the current house on that site Taylor. Also a Bank Director, this John Weyland was seems later, has been stuccoed and been converted nephew of the previous resident, Mark Weyland to flats [ ex. inf. Neil Rhind]. (see n. , above), and son of that banking uncle’s See n. , above. elder brother, John Weyland († ), previously of Sedgwick, II, . Woodrising and Woodeaton; these brothers were Idem. sons of a previous Bank director, Mark Weyland Sedgwick, II, – . († ) [monumental inscription, cit .; Burke’s Ex.inf. Neil Rhind. Landed Gentry , , II, ]. Micajah Perry († ), tobacco merchant, Master of Sister of Mark Weyland, supra ; see n. , supra . She Haberdashers’ /, Alderman , Sheriff was widow of Richard Salwey († ), South Sea /, Lord Mayor /; his grandfather was the director and, as executor of Theophilus Salwey, his greatest tobacco merchant in England and to his Bank director brother’s will in , responsible for business he succeeded, also handling the affairs of the erection of the monument in Ludlow church, the Virginia planters in London and thus frequently Shropshire, firmly attributed to (Sir) Robert Taylor consulted by the Board of Trade about the colony [Garnier, ‘Speculative Housing… ’, cit ., , figs. [Sedgwick, II, – ]. – and n. ]. Mary Salwey had moved from No.
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