The origins of the house
Joseph Clarke, a hugely wealthy Welton landowner, built the Georgian mansion, Welton Place, in 1758 approximately on the site of present numbers 4 and 6 Clarkes Way. Welton Place was known to the locals as ‘The Big House’ and it was in the possession of the Clarke family for a further two centuries after its completion.
It stood in 711 acres of grounds planted with trees collected worldwide, including rare Cedar trees some of which are protected and can still be seen today, mostly collected by Lt. Col. Richard Trevor Clarke (see below), who was awarded an RHS medal for his work in plant hybridisation. Mickle Well supplied the owners with soft, pure drinking water and feeds into a man-made lake, still existing, which hosted winter skating parties.
Inheritance through the Clarke family
Joseph died in 1773 and his brother Richard Clarke of Nortoft (near Guilsborough) inherited Welton Place, although he died shortly afterwards in 1774, leaving the estate to his widow.
The heir to the Clarke fortune was Richard’s grandnephew (through his sister Mary), John Plomer, who changed his name to John Plomer Clarke (senior) in 1774, a condition of Richard’s will. He was married to Mary Child. Whilst he attained the Clarke estates at this point, he did not actually own the house until 1804 when he purchased Welton Place from Richard’s widow and became lord of the manor in Welton.
John PC senior died shortly afterward in 1805, and the house passed to his oldest son John Plomer Clarke junior. This John was another influential man, serving as High Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1814 and raising the Daventry Volunteers.
John Plomer Clarke junior married the daughter of Sir John Nelthorp, Miss Anne Marie Charlotte Nelthorp.
He also commanded the West Northants Militia. He enlarged the building, extended the plantings and shrubberies, and built a new approach to the house through pastureland.
When John PC died in 1826 without any children, the house passed to his brother, Captain Richard Clarke, who continued to manage the estate and farmland at nearby Thrupp.
He was a captain in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. Richard died in 1829 and the estate was left to his nephew Richard Trevor Clarke, a noted horticulturist who had worked with Charles Darwin. Here he is in the photo below sailing on the lake at Welton Place (left). He died in 1897.
The 20th century – the Garrards’ tenure
Captain James Richard Plomer Clarke JP was associated with the house in the early 1900s. He was Richard Trevor’s nephew.
He served as a Justice of the Peace and upheld the family’s social status locally. By this time the family faced mounting debts and high mortgages, leading to the gradual sale of their estate, starting in 1915 when 11 Lots were sold off by James, Styles and Whitlock of Rugby (now part of Cluttons).
In 1907, the house was leased to Major Sebastian Henry Garrard, a director of the renowned Crown Jeweller, and folklore states royalty visited during the twenties and thirties.
Until recently we had no proof of this, but have now found this photo showing the Duke of York – later King George VI – attending a hunt meeting at Welton Park in 1928. Other press cuttings suggest the Duke and his brother were regular visitors.
The Garrards remained at Welton Place until the Major’s death in the mid 1940s. (see The Garrard Family).
During the Garrard’s tenure the house was a social hub, hosting summer garden parties, hunt balls, easter egg hunts and May time fetes. Many of the village residents worked at Welton Place, which employed a large staff.
The Garrards were active members of the community and seem to have been generous in allowing villagers to effectively use the grounds of Welton Place as a public park.
A hut for Brownies and Guides was built in the grounds, and the village cricket pitch was sited at the end of the close until its closure in 1970 after 57 years.
The scene of a tragic discovery – and later decline
Tragically a newborn baby’s body, wrapped in London newspaper was found on the ice of the lake in 1929 by two local boys. This was a particularly gruesome occurrence as the baby girl was cut in half. Click here for more information.
After the death of Garrard in 1946 the house was occupied by the last member of the Clarke family to live at Welton Place, Lt Col Richard Alexander Owen Clarke, a career soldier who returned to England after the second world war, having been a Japanese prisoner of war.
In 1947 the decision was taken to convert the house into five flats. The report left is from 1948.
Adverts to let the flats appeared regularly throughout the 1950s and early 1960s such as this one in 1954.
Colonel and Mrs Clarke were still living there in the early 1960s with their golden labradors Nerna and Wendy. Another family living in the flats was the Bordmans, for whom Jean Emery (see The Rosary) looked after their children at the weekends when their nanny went home! After centuries of continuous family ownership, the Clarke family finally sold the estate to developers during the 1960s. The mansion fell vacant and into dereliction and was sadly demolished in 1972.
Before it went, a clearance sale was held with many villagers buying items.
“I remember going to the house clearance sale. I went with my Aunt Nell and cousin Yvonne. Yvonne bought a portable Dansette record player.”
The lake, which was part of the grounds, remains to this day.
The photo below shows redevelopment of the site to Clarke’s Way, the people being Norman Cooper the developer and Stephen Bichener who worked on the site. The old stable block can still be seen top right of photo behind the caravan (compare this to the ‘cricket’ image earlier).
“I worked on that site, building the new houses. The old house stood where second and third houses on right hand side going into Clarkes Way are. One house is over a well. The stone was used and sold as were timbers and tiles – I used some bits of oak flooring to repair a chest at Ashby church. All the spoil was tipped around the lake to increase its depth.”
A current resident of Clarke’s Way has the remains of ‘vaults’ – believed to be part of the heating system for the greenhouses – in his garden. We are looking forward to seeing what he uncovers!
The image below shows Clarke’s Way in modern times from across the lake alongside the same view of Welton Place.
🏛️ Click here to read Description of Welton Place (written in 1811)
A description of Welton Place written in 1811
This spot has many natural advantages and has been improved exceedingly by the good taste of its last, but most particularly by that of its present, possessor.
It is situated in one of the most eligible parts of the proverbially pleasant county of Northampton and was selected for the site of a mansion about the middle of the last century by Joseph Clarke Esquire. To him and his brother Richard, succeeded John Plomer Esquire, their nephew who assumed the name and arms of Clarke in 1775, and having made considerable improvements, closed a life of great and general utility in 1805, and was succeeded by his eldest son John Plomer Clarke Esquire, the present possessor, who married the eldest daughter of the late Sir John Nelthorpe, Bart., of Scawby in the county of Lincoln.
By the present possessor very tasteful improvements have been made; He has enlarged the building, extended the plantations and shrubberies, and formed a new approach to the house, by means of a road through the several pastures, now thrown together and planted in a park like style. The mansion is built of a remarkably hard stone of a pleasing grey tint, found near the spot and contains many excellent apartments, adorned with some good paintings.
It is situated on the South side of and half way down a bold, abrupt hill on a terrace commanding a most delightful prospect of the town of Daventry, 2 miles distant, which, with adjacent country, forms a most delightful landscape. The hill rising immediately from the back of the house, planted with forest trees and shrubs of all sorts, sheltering it from the north, conceals a large and excellent kitchen garden, orchard, and nursery ground, surrounded by very picturesque and sequestered walks. A steep sloping lawn upon the principal front is terminated by a broad sheet of water, whose boundaries are well concealed and fringed with shrubs.
Not far from the house a very fine spring of water rises, in a curious ancient, vaulted cave of hewn stone and good masonry; It is called Mickle Well perhaps from its never failing abundance, and flows through several fish ponds, falling at length into the water before mentioned. One of these ponds, which is made to assume the form of a small meandering rivulet, is also part of the large sheet of water in front of the house. On the same hill with Mickle Well, two other springs also rise; The one of pure soft water, which by means of pipes supplies the mansion, the other a strong chalybeate.
The church, (the tower of which containing a set of well-toned bells, four of which were cast by Watts of Leicester in 1629), is seen over the centre of the house and is dedicated to St Martin and is a venerable edifice, built of a red stone, early in the second period of the pointed style. The windows, however, are none of them primaeval but have been constructed in the last or perpendicular period of the before named architecture.
The number of inhabitants of the parish was in 1811, 567. The Vicarage is but of moderate annual value. Near the house skeletons, Roman earthen urns, copper coins, glass, green and wooden beads have been dug up and are now in possession of Mr. Clarke.