The sad story of Welton Place is well known to most Welton residents. The Clarke family (whose story can be found here) became prominent local gentry during the 17th century, investing in land across Welton and Daventry.
The grand Georgian country mansion was built in 1758 by Joseph Clarke and served as the seat for the family for over two centuries. This five-bay, two storey structure was later expanded around 1810 with a three-bay wing and stood in a huge 711-acre estate complete with landscaped gardens, a lake, wilderness and Swiss Cottage folly in its grounds. A path through the Rose Gardens and private gate set into the high enclosing wall enabled the family to walk to St Martin’s Church for the Sunday service. A large stable block and outbuildings completed this impressive family home.
However, by the 1960s the house had fallen into a sad state of decline and, after a brief period as a house of multiple occupancy in self-contained apartments, it was demolished in 1972.
The devil is in the detail
In November 2026 we were fortunate to meet a member of the Emery family whose ancestors had been residents in The Rosary on Churchill Road. You can read the full and fascinating history of this property on our website here.
The family had in their possession several fascinating legal documents on vellum dating as far back as 1737. One document buried in the pile turned out to be gold dust!
The Abstract of the title of the late John Plomer Clarke to a cottage in Welton, dated 1810 proved to be not just a list of the legal documents held in relation to a cottage on Churchill Road. It turned out to be a guide to the terrible decline in the Clarke fortune and a prelude to the eventual loss of the Manor and Welton Place in the future.
But why would the possession of a small cottage on Churchill Road be of such importance to the Clarke family estate?
To answer that, we need to look back through the archive.
A very brief history of The Rosary
In 1737 an illiterate labourer called Francis Gumley achieved almost the unbelievable. On his meagre pay as a labourer he managed to save the sum of £27 to purchase a small cottage from the then owner, William Adams.
This was a huge achievement for a labourer as this sum would be equivalent to approximately £8000 today, but, given the far lower wages then, would represent closer to £100,000 to an employee today.
We then track forward to July 1796
By this time Francis Gumley has died and the house has passed to his daughter, Ann, via her now deceased husband – Samuel Deans. Their son, Joseph Deans is a Cordwainer (a maker of fine leather shoes). Joseph would appear to have had financial difficulties and in 1796 he entered into a legal agreement with John Plomer Clarke Snr to borrow £50. Under the terms of the agreement, the loan must be repaid with interest within the year. Failure to do so would incur a fine of £100 – a sum that would ruin a man.
In June 1801 a document is listed that shows that Joseph Deans evidently did not secure his debt. This Indenture confirms that John Plomer Clarke Snr is now buying their cottage for a sum of £75 – representing the original loan and interest. The purchased plot included a property (house), orchard and the right to access common pasture.
In so doing Joseph Deans, as well as his mother, Ann, lost possession of their home and their inheritance from Ann’s father, Francis Gumley.
When John Plomer Clarke Snr bought the plot, his explicit goal was the consolidation of his estate. Surviving estate maps show that the family aggressively bought up specific fringe cottages and orchards that shared a direct fence or were close to the Welton Place parkland boundaries in the years prior to this.
John Plomer Clarke Snr died just 4 years later on March 23rd 1805… and then it all started to unravel.
John Plomer Clarke Jnr, his son inherited the estate, but he too died some years later in March 1823. He left a very detailed and through will. He was determined to preserve his estate and left clear instruction regarding lines of inheritance across various family lines, due to his lack of direct heirs. This was detailed clearly in The Rosary archive document. However, this time the inheritance would not be straightforward.
The problem was that his brother, Captain Richard Clarke, refused to act as executor and legally renounced this responsibility. The Estate was then put into Chancery and became Welton’s own mini version of Dickens’ Bleak House!
On December 11th, 1823, after 9 months in the High Court of Chancery the will was finally granted by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury to the deceased, John Plomer Clarke’s brother-in-law the Revd. Thomas Smith of Catthorpe Hall in Leicestershire. (Smith had married Clarke’s sister Mary in 1809).
Before the terms of the Will could be executed however, and because the estate was buried under a significant debt, a lawsuit was launched in the Court of Chancery by one Thomas Congreve Phillips, who was one of the many creditors.
He was also directly related to the famous Restoration dramatist, William Congreve (1670-1729). The family had originated in Staffordshire where they held the manor of Stretton since the Middle Ages.
He was determined that all Plomer Clarke’s debtors should be recompensed before the estate was divided up under the terms of the will. It was this determination on his part that led to the break-up of the Clarke estate.
Phillips himself held a financial bond against the estate and so he sued the first executor, Richard Clarke – which may explain why Clarke stepped back from the executor role.
The lawsuit also requested that if Clarke’s personal cash assets were insufficient to meet his debts, the Court should force the sale of Welton Manor – the lands and properties – thereby settling the funeral costs, administration fees and all outstanding debts.
On March 1st, 1825, the Vice-Chancellor of the Court of Chancery stepped in to legally establish the validity of Plomer Clarke’s will and order a Court Official (a Master of Chancery) to catalogue every single debt tied to the estate so these could be finally paid off and the will be settled as far as possible.
From The London Courier and Evening Gazette – Tuesday 11th April 1826
In addition, the Revd. Thomas Smith – the new administrator – was ordered to hand over a full account of the immediate finance and physical assets of the Clarke estate. He was required to hand over all paperwork, land deeds, titles and accounting books.
Finally, it was ordered that the proceeds of any property sale could not be taken by the family or their legal representatives but had to be paid directly to the Bank of England.
For a family who had presided over the Manor of Welton for over a hundred years, this must have been a humiliating and painful time. There was worse to come.
Not unsurprisingly, the financial assets of the Clarke family were insufficient to meet the huge sum owing to many creditors. And so, in June 1828 the High Court of Chancery officially ordered the sale of the Manor of Welton.
From the Morning Herald – Thursday 19th June 1828
In order to meet the total debt on the estate, the sale was ordered of Churchill House, several village cottages and 550 acres of prime arable land.
It was this sale that gave Daventry solicitor, Edmund Singer Burton, who had been acting for the Clarke family in the years before the sale, the opportunity to buy Churchill House for himself and his family!
So, alongside his purchase of Churchill House in June 1830, Burton brokered a massive clean-up purchase of several remaining cottages for £174, across a number of buyers, paying the cash directly to the Bank of England as stipulated.
A 1914 Land Survey records the details of all properties in Welton, many of which reveal two possible outcomes of this upheaval:
- A significant number of clustered cottages are recorded as owned by absentee owners from London, Essex and elsewhere in the country
- Many of these cottages had fallen into disrepair despite the owners being responsible for maintenance, with many being described as ‘uninhabitable’. The cottages on the site of The Rosary being an example of this.
So why are the Clarke Probate Summary and subsequent deeds so important?
The documents in The Rosary collection show us how difficult and tenuous home ownership could be in the 18th and 19th centuries. An unpaid debt could cost you the ownership of your home – as we saw with Joseph Deans.
When you were a tenant, your future was inextricably connected to the financial stability of the property owner. When John Plomer Clarke’s will was contested, the lives of many ordinary villagers were affected both at the time and for a long period thereafter.
And what about the Clarke family?
Somewhat surprisingly, Welton Place escaped the sale and so passed to John Plomer Clarke Jnr’s younger brother Captain Richard Clarke, who continued to live there briefly, until his death in 1829.
He in turn was succeeded by his oldest son, the nephew of John Plomer Clarke Jnr, Colonel Richard Trevor Clarke, who held the property until his death in 1897.
The house was leased out on at least two occasions, in the 1840s for a few years to George Whieldon, son of a Staffordshire pottery tycoon Thomas Whieldon – by 1851 he had moved to Staffordshire. And again to the Garrard family from 1907 until the death of Major Garrard in 1946.
The final fall of Welton Place came after the Second World War. Inherited by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Alexander Owen Clarke, a WWII and Japanese PoW survivor, Clarke struggled to manage soaring post war maintenance costs.
In 1947 he converted the house into multiple flats, to maximise use of space and yield some financial return. These were occupied until 1960 but did not generate sufficient income and so the property was sold to a developer. It remained derelict and, ultimately, was deemed beyond repair, leading to its demolition in 1972.
A sad and undignified end for what was once a graceful and elegant home.
Discover more from Welton History Group
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.