With thanks to Jackie Hibbert for her invaluable help on parts of this article
The Stone House—known at various times as Hillside, Hillcrest House, Chetwynd Cottage, The Cottage, and Welton Cottage—has a long and complex history.
The main structure dates back to the 1600s and began life as a tenanted farm. The L‑shaped wing was originally a three‑bay hovel with a cobbled yard, likely used for livestock.
Records trace the house through the Northamptonshire archives as a working farm. By the mid‑18th century it formed part of the Lucas family’s Welton estate.
Lucas → Harris (1767–1799)
In 1767, John Barlee Lucas died, leaving the estate to his son JKB Lucas, who sold it to Thomas Harris of Rugby. The sale included the house, its homestead, and over 144 acres in Crockwell Field, formerly occupied by William Haslock, now by Edward Perkins.
By 1799, land tax documents describe two houses with barns and closes—around 150 acres—occupied by John Perkins and owned by Harris. When the estate was later broken up (see Harris – Darby below), one portion was likely purchased by John Plomer Clarke. Church records show he exchanged it for an old dilapidated vicarage with 1/3 acre plot which he incorporated into his garden – sited approximately on the corner of Welton Park opposite the church.
February 1801 – see reference to John Perkins
Harris → Darby (1801)
In 1801, Ann Harris (possibly Thomas’ wife) sold the remaining property to Richard Darby for £101. The sale covered an old cottage, garden, and home close. Several cottages had already been built on parts of the homestead and sold to local buyers including one of the Welton Clarkes, Robert Starmer, John Elliott, William Darby Howard and Thomas Howard.
Darby → Dobney → Howard (1815–1856)
After Richard Darby’s death, (the Richard Darby referred to in the article being his son) trustees sold the property in 1815 to Michael Dobney of Daventry. Dobney built three cottages on the homestead—these were maybe St Martins, Craven, and Virginia although we can’t be totally sure.
1st July 1815 – Northampton Mercury
When Dobney died in 1830, his beneficiaries sold the main house and the three cottages to Samuel Howard, a Welton brickmaker, for £400.
Howard later mortgaged his Welton and Braunston holdings in 1853, listing three cottages occupied by Rebecca Bird, Lydia Dean, and John Baseley.
In 1856, Howard’s creditors sold the estate to Charles Coleman for £400. The sale included the main house, two adjoining cottages, and a special right to use a well on neighbouring land owned by Clarke, Starmer, and Elliott.
16th February 1856 – Northampton Mercury
Coleman → Andrew → Darnell (1863–1864)
Charles Coleman died of typhoid while serving in the American Civil War, and his mother Mary Andrew inherited the property. Mary left her estate, including the house, to her sons‑in‑law to sell, William Clarke (no relation to Welton Clarkes), husband of her daughter Elizabeth and Arthur Dix, surgeon, husband of Mary. The 1864 sale listed:
- Lot 1: A detached house with brewhouse, stabling for six horses, dairy, coach house, cowshed, piggeries, wagon hovel, and two cottages.
- Lot 2: An orchard behind Lot 1.
Rev Daniel Darnell, Welton’s longest serving vicar, who had already been renting the house and orchard for £20 per annum, purchased the property for £400.
Rev Daniel Darnell (1846–1897)
By 1846, Rev Darnell was renting the house and using it as part of the vicarage. The two buildings were physically joined (see Darnell – Liddell below) and The Stone House operated as a boys’ boarding school for children of friends in the West Indies where Darnell had also lived. Census records from 1851–1871 show up to seven boarders, although by 1881 the school had closed and it is just the family and staff listed.
Darnell’s school at The Stone House
A beam in the ‘L’ part of the house still bears the initials FD, the only children with the initials FDs found on census information are two of Rev Darnell’s children – Francis and Frances so we like to think they were inscribed by one of them.
On 5th July 1847, just one year after moving in, Darnell was granted a £350 mortgage by the Governors of Queen Anne’s Bounty, taking advantage of a law passed in 1767 that allowed the fast tracking of mortgages applied for to help maintain houses owned by the clergy. It was taken over 35 years, with interest payments of £3 10s per year, and was witnessed by Henry Louis Jackson, a Welton grazier.
The plans below were drawn up and these original documents still exist today. The red areas are the improvements Darnell wanted to make – however there is no evidence that these were ever implemented. These plans also make us aware of a cellar in the house – something that no longer exists today.
Darnell resigned as vicar of Welton in 1894 due to age and infirmity but continued living in the house, then known as The Cottage, until his death in 1897.
Darnell → Liddell (1897–1927)
In 1897, the property—now called Hillside—was sold to new vicar Rev Canon Edward Liddell. Although Liddell lived in the new vicarage behind the Stone House, early maps show the two buildings attached, and later legal disputes confirm they had once been treated as a single property.
The Liddells let the Stone House out over the next 25 odd years. Rev Liddell died in 1914 but his wife Christina maintained ownership of The Stone House, at this time seemingly reverting to the name of Welton Cottage.
Tenants included:
1897: Rev John Henry Stork – who clearly responded to the advertisement below. He was the vicar at Ashby St Ledgers.
1901: Leonora Howard‑Vyse the widow of Granville William Richard Howard-Vyse, with her nephew Hubert Kelly, cousin Katherine Dyer, a governess Alice Smith, and servants Alice Oliver, Emma Overton and Florence Overton. Leonora’s husband had been a major in the Royal Artillery and had died aged just 38 in Kashmir
1911: Mrs Maud S. Hunter, living alone apart from her servant Francis Bullas. By the 1921 census she had moved to Newnham.
In March 1917 Welton Cottage was advertised to let. The Liddells had moved to Guildford after the Rev Liddell retired in 1902 to be near Mrs Liddell’s sister, the renowned artist and ceramicist Mary Watts.
1920 – 1925: Robert Ashby of Watford Lodge. He is shown on 1921 census with wife Sarah, his son, two grandchildren and a servant.
1924 – 1929 : Mrs A. F. Summers of Woodford Halse
By 1927, ownership interest had passed to Captain D. Liddell, likely a relative, although the Liddells had no children themselves, so perhaps a nephew.
1930s–1940s: Van Den Arend → Ernest Martin
By the early 1930s a Rugby businessman and his wife, Captain Frederick and Isabelle Van Den Arend, were living at ‘Welton Cottage’. He was in the cigar business, and his name crops up repeatedly during this time in newspaper clippings.
He is noted as leaving Welton around 1933 and it seems he returned to Rugby as he and his wife appear there in 1939 records, living on Hillmorton Road. No other census information is showing for him.
We can perhaps sympathise with Captain Van Den Arend as he complains of a problem a we are all familiar with.
The house seems to be offered for sale in February 1933 – possibly after the Van Den Arends returned to Rugby?
It may have been at this point that it was bought by Mr E. B. Law as the house was sold again in November 1937 under his instruction.
Between 1938 and 1947 the house, now known as Hillcrest House, was occupied by Ernest Martin, a former commissioned officer of the RAF during the 1914 -1918 war who subsequently became Managing Director of Cedos Saunders Engineering Co Northampton, as referenced in the 1934 Who’s Who in the Motor Trade.
He owned an astonishing collection of military paraphernalia which was displayed all over the house – see newspaper report below:
Read more…
took up his hobby when he was only 8. The result – over 10,000 different military badges and buttons, more than 200 medals, between 70 and 80 muskets and rifles and over 100 swords. He has over 100 different badges of the Northamptonshire regiment alone. And in addition to this Mr. Martin is recognised as an authority on badges and has written treaties for the Army Historical Research, along among many other authoritative bodies. Mr Martin’s chief difficulty is where to house this mass collection so that he may adequately display his trophies. At present they are in a room only large enough to accommodate the bulkier specimens on the floor and around the walls. The badges and buttons are relegated to large packing cases, where they are mounted upon layer after layer of cardboard. Another room in this by no means small house is entirely given over to a library of military books. A copy of almost every book on military matters ever published is there and one of the oldest in a perfect state of preservation is an army list dating 1642. Back in the ‘armoury’ I edged between the various exhibits the better to examine some of the lesser familiar pieces. On the floor at my feet was a naval mortar with the date 1773, together with a cannonball as big as a croquet ball. Overhead, hung from an old oak beam, were two tattered flags relics of the First World War. On one with the words in red lettering ‘flag of the 100th MG Coy’ and on the other a double three domino upon which were the autographs of sixteen officers of the company. These flags were obtained from the late Lieut Colonel Hutchinson whose death recently robbed the country of another keen collector. I saw 4 racks of rifles and muskets each with its bayonet fixed and in a corner a German machine gun captured by the late Lieut Colonel Hutchinson. On a shelf above the fireplace were bombs, hand grenades and mortars, some cut into sections to show the mechanism. On a window cill was a captured German Periscope. There was a case full of pistols and revolvers and Mrs Martin pointing out an old Verey Light pistol told me that on VE Day her husband fired from it Verey catridges taken from the Germans during the 1914-18 war and they were in perfect condition. Mr. Martin has a collection of OTC badges given by schools all over the country. Mounted were many ENSA badges and press correspondent shoulder flashes which he has shown in the Museum of the Royal United Services Institute in London. Tray upon tray of British medals were there, many of them bearing the full compliments of bars. One VC was valued at £95.
Mr Martin sounds like a rather entitled individual. He frequently appeared in local newspapers for minor offences such as causing an obstruction with a motor vehicle, inconsiderate driving and displaying a light after blackout. He became embroiled in several disputes, including:
- A controversy involving the forced removal of belongings from a tenant’s cottage
- A rent tribunal brought by tenant Walter Stoddart, a Daventry BBC employee who was renting Virginia Cottage from him.
He also had a legal boundary dispute with his neighbour, the vicar Rev John Whitehall Cheshire, in 1945. It is in the report of this dispute that we see proof of the vicarage and The Stone House having been one property at some time in the past.
Poor Mr Martin also suffered the loss of his chickens in a fire. Maybe sabotage, maybe bad luck. Some might call it karma.
Martin appears to have put the house up for sale in 1947 with an advert appearing several times in the Northampton Mercury during the spring of that year, advertising Hillcrest House as an ‘attractive old world L shaped country house with many oak beams and old world features’. Advertised as separate lots were a gardener’s cottage (St Martin’s Cottage) and Virginia Cottage (next door to Craven Cottage).
He also tried to sell off some of his armoury with several advertisements appearing, including one for a 12-bore hammerless shot gun selling for ‘best offer over £20’ – around £650 today.
Mid‑20th Century Owners (1947–1996)
Subsequent owners included a Mr Bertram Howell Bishop, a caterer, who, in 1953, was jailed for gross indecency!
The next resident was Welton’s vicar, James Edwin Wright – as referenced in the house deeds.
1958 saw the house sold to Mr Cyril Douglas and Mrs C Abbott, Mr Abbott being a bank manager in Daventry. They lived with their son Nigel, who went on to be a vicar in Tiffield.
Mr Abbott acted as church warden – the crucifix above the pulpit in the church is recorded as being given in 1964 by churchwarden’s wife, Mrs. C. Abbott of The Stone House. (although this was after they left the house).
They put the house up for auction in July 1962 – under the only reference we can find to Chetwynd Cottage.
The Cox Family (1963–1996)
Edwin and Jean Cox purchased the house in 1963. Jean’s mother and aunt lived in St Martin’s Cottage, which formed part of the estate.
Jean had grown up in London, moving to Welton (from ‘a semi in Muswell Hill’ according to their son) when her husband took a teaching post at Birmingham University.
She got involved in the village hall committee and then the local conservative party, despite rather left leaning politics. This led to her becoming leader of Daventry District Council, a position in which she was much respected and was ultimately awarded an MBE in 1992 for services to local government.
Here she is drawn by local cartoonist David Davies in an edition of Welton News and Views.
Edwin Cox was a respected religious educator and author. On finishing school, he became a clerk in Holy Orders and then the school vicar in Cheltenham.
He studied at London University and taught at Birmingham University, was Emeritus Reader of Education, University of London and Associate Fellow, University of Warwick.
Edwin had many books published on religious education and was known for challenging the traditional way the subject should be taught. Their children were daughter Nicky, son James, a BBC Scotland journalist who presented the Radio 4 Sunday show The World This Weekend for more than a decade from the mid-1990s, and son Tony, a music producer, who featured The Stone House’s garage on an album cover.
Fox Ridge bungalow was later built on the vegetable patch for Jean. After her death, the Stone House was briefly offered for sale without any luck in 1991.
Ultimately Tony Cox bought out his siblings and lived there for a while . Fox Ridge was sold separately in 1993 to the current owner. Tony eventually sold the house to Dr Chris and Mrs Meryl Lovatt in 1996. It was then that St Martin’s cottage was sold as an independent dwelling.
The Stone House was bought by the current owners in 2016.
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