Author: Karen O'Mahoney

Until some time in the late 1960s, there was a row of cottages going down High Street from Garth Cottage to the corner of what is now Welton Park. You can see them behind Frank Emery Senior in this photograph on the left and in the shot taken going down the road on the right.

Garth Cottage is the first, higher roofed building in the right hand photo and still stands today. You can see on its gable end where the demolished cottages were once adjoined,

They were just little cottages, much like many others in the village. But they drew our attention because of their connection to the Farr family. Jane Farr was a woman who brewed beer from her home – and now we know where that home was. She is mentioned in Tom Pearcey’s memories of Welton which you can read here.

We discovered documents found in the loft of one of the houses now standing on the same land the cottages occupied. And because it’s the kind of thing we like to do for fun in the Welton History Group, we put together a timeline of whose hands they passed through. We discovered that Jane’s husband, Isaac, a baker, actually built some of the cottages around 1819. One of the properties included, not surprisingly, a bakehouse.

If this kind of thing interests you too, you can see the details below and click through to the additional documents at the bottom of the page. We’ve rewritten them into modern language for ease of understanding.

From Cockerill to Roberts to Farr – tracing the evolution of the cottages and bakehouse from 1783 to 1877

We find census evidence of John Blundell still being in the village in 1881 and 1901, although by the latter date he has moved to Bragborough Road (Ashby Road)

If you would like to read a fuller summary of the history of the cottages you can find one here

This is a great example of how stories develop as more information emerges. We didn’t know the name Farr until we saw Tom Pearcey’s memory. Now we know about Jane’s home, her family and what happened to the properties that her husband built.

As a final thought, she was obviously confident in her beer – selling it from her home almost opposite the White Horse!

Picture for illustration purposes. Not really Tom! Or even Welton.

Early on in our community history project we were sent an interesting document – a musing about Welton, written in 1841 and signed by Tom Pearcey.

It’s a fanciful piece of writing – you can read the full document here. But what it gave us were some wonderful clues to characters in the village in the mid 19th century.

The first pair that we meet are Jane and John Farr:

In the 1841 census, Jane Farr appears as the wife of Isaac Farr, a baker. Living with them were their SON John, then 35 and also working as a baker, a woman named Mary, and young William, aged four. We know the couple had a daughter called Mary and so this may be her, or it may be John’s wife. We also know they had a daughter Elizabeth although she is not on this census.

However, the Farr’s residence in Welton goes back much further. We have details of a transaction in 1819 on a cottage opposite the church (demolished in the 1960s). It is described as “that new erected messuage tenement or dwelling house with the baking shop outbuildings.”

Isaac Farr had purchased three cottages on the site from William Roberts which were demolished. Isaac built a new house on the site, and our document records the legal transfer of the newly built property to Isaac Farr and Samuel Arlidge, a trustee. We don’t know for sure if Issac was married to Jane at this time but they were certainly together as their son would have been born in 1806.

By the time we reach the 1851 census, Jane is a widow in her seventies, Isaac having died in 1848, and is now recorded as a Beer House Keeper. She’s running the beerhouse with the help of a servant, Hannah Houghton, while her nephew Thomas Brouth also lives with her.

Next door lives her son John, now 45, listed as both a tea dealer and a baker. His wife is recorded as Elizabeth — older than he is — suggesting this may have been a second marriage. So the John referred to in the memory is Jane’s son, not her husband.

Next is a name we knew – Richard Travo Clarke of Welton place.

“He farmed the fields on Monks moor for prior of the town, our Daventry.”

Colonel Richard Trevor Clarke inherited Welton Place from his uncle and made a name for himself in the world of horticulture. He was a founder member of the RHS Scientific Committee, is quoted in one of Charles Darwin’s books and spent considerable time developing hybrids of common garden plants and cotton plants.

He was also a Northamptonshire County Magistrate.

He died in 1897. Here he is on the lake at Welton Place (left hand side). Learn more about the Clarke family here.

Tom then goes on to reminisce about the inns in the village ……….

The 1851 census for Welton records the following for the cottage we believe to be the Red Lion and confirms the Pearcey account that “Jo Benjamin” was indeed both innkeeper and builder:

• Joseph Benjamin – Head – 45 years old – Builder and Publican – born Welton
• Catherine Benjamin- Wife – 50 – born Kilsby
• Eliza Benjamin – daughter – 17 – unmarried – dressmaker – born Welton
• George Benjamin- son – 14 – scholar

As for Harry Harris, in 1841 Henry Harris and family are living in Welton. Harry is a common diminutive of Henry. The press cutting below from 1892 shows the Harris family ran the pub for 50 odd years.

But then Tom mentions something revealing –

This was our first clue to the third pub in the village – read our blog about how we discovered the Wheatsheaf had existed by clicking here.

“What a funny place is Welton. Churchill House was once Manor House, a seat of Edmund Singer Burton.”

Another very familiar name, Edmund Singer Burton was a solicitor and in 1828, from his offices at the Moot Hall in Daventry, managed the letting of Welton Manor on behalf of the Clarke family. Perhaps he then took on the lease or purchased the property, as by 1844, the property was owned by him.

That year, newspapers reported an attempted arson attack on the house. Burton’s wife, Anna Maria, spotted flames and an intruder who had entered, it seems, through a larder window. All in the house escaped safely.

The Burtons remained in residence for many years and ultimately had twenty children, eighteen of whom survived to adulthood. Learn more about Welton Manor here.

Tom then goes on to say

Yes Daniel Darnell was the vicar – Welton’s longest serving – from the late 1840s to the late 1890s and indeed, Henry Jackson was a butcher – and organist! The advert below is from 1840. He was clearly selling up, however he remained in Welton as in 1851 he’s listed living in the village with his wife Maria, their daughter and Maria’s father.

The next characters were trickier – the census couldn’t help us.

“Then there was Wokley Roberts he was of the school. Wilbe of the Warf. And John Field, came every Wednesday and Saturday. Carrier he was to Daventry.“

But the Fawsley Hundred listing could. On this document we see: Wilbee, F agent at Welton Wharf, a William Wokley who may have been a relative of Wokley Roberts, and there in black and white – Carrier to Daventry – John Field, Wednesday and Saturday.

Absolutely – where IS the urn of Welton? We’d all like to know! We found this information about it. But where it is now, we have no clue.

Finally, we looked more into the identity of Tom himself –

“But I was just a sheepherdsman, merely passing by.”

Well, we don’t believe you Tom.

Literacy levels for agricultural labourers in mid 19th century Welton would be extremely low – maybe Tom could have signed his name. He certainly wouldn’t be able to construct the flowery language and complex vocabulary of this piece of writing.

We think he was being a little self effacing – Thomas Pearcey was a farmer and landowner born in 1803 and dying in 1884. He owned land in the vicinity of Well Lane and he farmed 37 acres, employing at least one man. He married Mary Shaw in Coventry in 1851 and seems to have lived in Welton all his life.

So yes, he may have been a shepherd in the way that Elon Musk is a car salesman! But whatever his status, his memories have allowed us to unearth some of the characters of the village, giving a wonderfully personal snapshot of a moment caught in time.

It was a fabulous historical find and we thank David Grainger for sharing it with us.

Regular readers will be familiar with Welton House, the home of Sir Halford Reddish that stood on the site of Halford Way. 

But it’s unlikely that you’ve heard of its namesake in Marlborough, New Zealand – yet interestingly, the New Zealand property takes its identity from our village.

Welton House in Marlborough is built high on an ancient sand dune, to avoid the floods that came regularly from the Wairau and Ōpaoa Rivers. 

Once used as a refugee centre, it is today known for its striking Victorian main house and celebrated seven acre garden; visitors come to see its sweeping lawns, restored villa architecture and the creative planting schemes developed by owner Wendy Palmer and her garden designer brother Ross.

The grounds once bore crops and supported sheep farming, today they contain gardens and acres of the world famous Sauvingnon Blanc grape.

But behind this modern success lies a story of more than a century old that begins on the other side of the world – in our village.

The link comes through Sarah Elizabeth Knibb, born in Lincolnshire in 1875 and raised in Welton. Her family were agricultural labourers who moved to the village around 1880.

By the 1891 census, her parents Samuel and Harriet Knibb were living in a modest two‑up, two‑down cottage on Lower Church Street, (Churchill Road) with daughter Annie. Sarah herself does not appear – she was working as a servant in London for Elizabeth Major, living in St George Hanover Square.

Her younger sister, Annie Elizabeth, would later marry Ernest Porter at St Martin’s Church in 1906. They had a daughter Doris who died as a baby and another daughter Cicely, and would settle at The Firs. But Sarah’s life took a very different turn.

Sarah had an illegitimate son, Frank, born in 1900 in Oakley, Buckinghamshire, with no father named. At the time, Sarah was employed in Buckinghamshire as a servant, but by 1901 she had returned to Welton, while baby Frank was taken in by John and Jane Brooks of Oakley — relatives through the Causby (Harriet’s parents) line — assisted by a young girl Nellie Hawes. It’s likely that the return to Welton was prompted by the loss of her job after Frank’s birth.

Soon after this, Sarah met Arthur John Mills, a New Zealander from Marlborough. The son of pioneering settlers John and Ann Mills, Arthur was unusual among early settlers in that he had been born in New Zealand rather than arriving from Britain. In 1878, while still a young teenager, he began clearing dense native bush to create a plot for a cottage. His parents had bought land for him and his brother to “break in”, and Arthur spent years shaping the beginnings of what would become Welton House.

Early in the 20^th century, Arthur travelled to England to find a wife, though the exact circumstances of his meeting with Sarah remain unclear. What is certain is that Sarah made a life‑changing decision: she left behind her young son, and sailed halfway around the world to live with him.

They married in Welton in 1906 – Arthur having travelled from New Zealand with his relative Alice – and all three sailed back after the marriage, on the ship Athentic, on 21st September 1906.

It was a trip that would take 70 days; the emotional cost of leaving her child must have been considerable. Returning to Marlborough, Arthur built a new house on his land, replacing an earlier smaller dwelling. He named it Welton House, honouring Sarah’s home village and it was the core of the house that remains today.

This naming was a touching link between the two Weltons: one a small English parish, the other a growing agricultural settlement on New Zealand’s South Island.

Sarah (left) and Arthur went on to have two children together in New Zealand – Cicely Beatrice in 1907 and Eileen Mary in 1909.

In 1925 Sarah bought the freehold of The Firs in Welton from her great uncle Francis Knibb. The property was held in trust with daughters Cicely and Eileen being the trustees.

Arthur died in 1933, and is commemorated on Sarah’s memorial stone. It states he died ‘in England’ and the following obituary appeared, showing he was in Derbyshire at the time along with with wife and daughters.

After Arthur died in 1933, Sarah went to Welton and made her will there, witnessed by Clement Porter, her sister’s brother in law. She must have returned to New Zealand by 1936, the date on personal correspondence of hers left in Welton House, and she died there in 1946. In her will, she left the Firs and its land to her son Frank!

Sarah and Arthur’s memorial stone at Blenheim Anglican Cemetery is shown below.

Their elder daughter, Cicely Beatrice McHugh, maybe named after Annie’s daughter, her cousin, lived her life in New Zealand, marrying  Joseph Lindo McHugh. She died in 1986, the stone below Arthur and Sarah’s commemorating her. Her sister Eileen married Henry Joseph Stace, whose descendants are the Marchs – the branch of the family that owned Welton House for many years.

As for Sarah’s son Frank – he joined the Royal Navy, serving as a telegraphist on HMS Renown in WW1 and HMS Faulknor in WW2. He married in Welton in 1941 – his wife was his cousin Cicely – Annie’s daughter! Did Frank and Cicely know they were cousins? We can only speculate.

Frank sold The Firs to the Ellisons (yes the famous Mill Ellison) in 1958.

Today, visitors to Welton House see a beautiful garden and restored villa, but few know that its name carries the memory of a young woman from Northamptonshire who crossed oceans to begin a new life. 

You can read a much more detailed story of Sarah’s family here.

A revised history of The Firs is now live on the website giving a fuller history of that property.

Photos of Welton House and Sarah courtesy Wendy Palmer

Photo of Frank courtesy of Phil Knibb

With thanks to Wendy and her Knibb family connections for generously sharing knowledge