About Werescote View

The People

 

Werescote was owned by the Were family and the history of the family is noted first before the wider history surrounding the house and the local area.

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The Werescote name comes from the instruction of Ellis Were that bought the land in 1800.  He decided to build a house on the site and used the family name of Were, adding Cott – from the old English for the place a person lives.  So “Were’s Cott” was created.  Over time it became Werescote – even though our strictly incorrect pronunciation of the current name has reverted to the original.

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Ellis Were was descended from John Were of Pinksmoor Mill, born in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  He had two sons with one called Nicholas.  Nicholas had two sons with one called Robert that died in 1702.

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Robert Were had many children, with one named after himself that married Elizabeth Darby.  Robert died in 1750.

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Robert Were likewise had many children.  One was Thomas Were that married Elizabeth Berry.  Another son called Peter Were married Elizabeth Ellis and these were the parents of Ellis Were – born in 1740.

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Ellis married Anne Jenner and themselves had six sons and two daughters but on his death in 1804, it was found that Ellis Were’s marriage was not recognised formally and so this created problems in the distribution of assets in his will to his “illegitimate” children.

 

Nevertheless, as the eldest born in 1784, Thomas Waltham Were inherited the landed estate and finished the Werescote building project for his father.  He married Anne Saunders Bowden with whom he had nine children.

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On Thomas’ death in 1862, the estate was handed to Robert Arundel Were (born in 1821) whom married Henrietta Ann Thomson.  They had three daughters and one son, Robert Ellis Were, that was born in 1857. He emigrated to Australia and established a very successful business in south east Australia. That part of the Were family has on occasion visited Werescote.

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Following the death of Robert Arundel in 1892, the Werescote estate was held in trust for the benefit of the daughters.

 

The trust ultimately sold Werescote the estate between 1921 and 1923.  In that time Werescote was leased to various people as the local directories, registrars and census’ of the times show.

 

It seems that Thomas Waltham Were was the last Were to actually live at Werescote until about 1831, with the property being leased to various tenants after that.  Being: Sir Edward Denny until 1835.

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Thomas Bidgood leaving sometime before the 1851, with the Census showing Alfred Augustus Malet in residence, then followed Charles Arthur Kitson that was survived by his widow until 1873 when she died.

 

Then followed Horace Mansfield, Lt Col Davis (noted in an 1882 directory) and Robert Bowen.

 

The house passed to John Lewis and Emma Lloyd until about 1904.  We also have a written account from Janet Llewellin, one of their grand-daughters of what life was like at Werescote at that time.

 

The last three occupants until 1914 were John Pike, W. Carnegie Barnes and lastly Col. Francis Bernard Richardson until the First War.

 

We do not know the owners/occupants after it was fully sold between 1921-1923 until Werescote was next sold at auction on Saturday 16th March 1946. Mr Wright purchased it for farming and raised his family at Werescote until 1995.  His daughter Kay still lives locally and has been of great assistance with this history. She married Richard Lee, the celebrated Bath Rugby Union prop.

 

The only references citing Werescote in that period we can find between the First and Second Wars were an obscure reference to Elizabeth Emma Snow in the London Gazette of 15th September 1922, citing her as a married pig and poultry farmer that was made bankrupt in the Taunton Courts. Then Francis and Daisy Authers, whose son Ivor W Authers, (born in 1920) died during the Second War serving his country in the Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry in 1941 (Burlescombe Church plaque).

 

Mr Moberley bought the property from the Wright family at auction and started its renovation.  Then Werescote was sold to Mr West in 2005, who continued the project until its subsequent sale to Harry and Karen Langley in an unfinished state in 2011.

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The following is a written account of living at Werescote given to Karen and Harry by the descendants of Janet Llewellin (nee Harding) 1895 – 1982

 

“Whenever I look back to my childhood, I see the Lloyds in the foreground of the picture.  This is not surprising, as until I was married I spent every Christmas of my life with them, and also paid many other visits to them in the course of the year – I can remember long hot Summer days in the warren with my brother as my companion; early Autumn days, with my grandfather setting off in the game-cart for his shooting at Wiveliscombe; and happy days in the Easter holidays.

 

The very first event I can remember is my Brother’s christening – 25th April 1898 – at Sampford Arundel.  I was standing tip-toe on the seat of a pew just inside the church door, Aunt Jessie holding me firmly, lest I should slip.  It must have been a Spring or Summer day, as I can remember wearing a floppy white hat, and I can still see in my mind’s eye the bright sunlight flooding the nave beyond the christening party round the font, with golden light.  Sampford Arundel was the church where my Mother and her sister Nellie were married, and where I myself was christened.  My grandparents, John Lewis Lloyd and Emma nee West, at this date had been living at Werescote for over twenty years.  It was a preasant house, build I should imagine, about 1800, of small soft-coloured reddish bricks, a square, three storied house.  It stood exactly on the boundary of Devon and Somerset.  The Somerset (or back) drive pursued a somewhat devious course thro’ some woodland, and round the walled kitchen garden where, in front of the stable, it met the Devonshire drive which had come proudly up an avenue of beeches straight from the main road.  They then joined forces and ended as a broad gravel weep in front of the porch.  This side of the house was clothed with a small yellow banksia rose, and I can still remember the warm honey smell of its clusters.  On the far side of the drive lay the croquet lawn (the Lloyds were all keen players).  Some iron railings fenced the lawn off from a lush meadow, tree-bordered, where my grandfather’s Jersey cattle grazed, in Devon.  On the Somerset side of the house the lawns ran downhill to a sunk fence.  On the left stood a huge cedar tree, and on the right a tall shrubbery hid the buildings of the farm and the cow-houses.  Beyond the sunk fence there was a stretch of splendid undulating country, gradually rising in the distance to a line of low blue hills crowned with the slender spire of the Wellington Monument.

 

The kitchen garden was one of our joys.  It was presided over by Mr. Stone, a grave, dark man, whose only other interest in life, besides gardening, was trying to discover the secret of perpetual motion.  Years afterwards, this affected his brain and the poor man was taken to a mental hospital.  There was also a garden-boy, but Mr. Stone is the only one I can remember well.  As a special treat he sometimes allowed us into the greenhouse which always smelt of wet warm moss.  There were box hedges round all the plots of vegetables, and just inside the door was a large patch of pale and dark purple primroses, which we were allowed to pick if we were careful.  A small pond with gold-fish in it was in the exact middle of the garden, where the where the four main paths met.  Then there were the horses, with Mr. Page, the coachman, and a lad to help him, in charge.  Bank Holiday was an enormous bright bay horse, whose parents and great-grandparents had been coach-horses, (possibly farther back, than parents’ but my grand-father always told me he was directly descended from the real old coach-horse.)  He was used for drawing the family wagonette which always took my grandmother and anyone else who wished to go when she drove into Wellington to do the shopping.  Mr. Page and Bank Holiday partook of some refreshment whilst my grandmother enjoyed herself spending money and having lunch with friends.  There was a good, solid, dark-brown cob who was used in a farm-float for light haulage jobs, fetching coal, feeding-stuffs etc.  Living in the country in those days involved collecting all one needed.  There were no delivery vans or anything of that sort.  The post, both letters and parcels, was brought to the house; the postman either walked or rode; but I can remember nothing else that we did not have to fetch for ourselves.

 

My Grandfather always kept too, a fast driving horse to go in his dog cart.  He never went in the familiar wagonette.  I can remember very well a dark chestnut mare named Fidget, she was tremendously fast, when she was between shafts the hedges seem to flash past at a tremendous speed.  Even when she walked uphill she had a very quick step and I had to run to keep up with her.  Either Page or the stable boy always had to stand in front of her holding each rein firmly close to her bit while my grandfather climbed into the dogcart.

 One day he invited me to drive with him into Wellington, I was delighted and clambered in with the help of Page, the boy standing by her head.  My grandfather was just gathering the reins when Fidget sprang forward knocking the boy sideways and made a dash for the gateway.  Unfortunately, her aim was not quite true and the wheel side got wedged between the stable-yard wall and the gate-post.  Mr. Page hurriedly lifted me out of the dog-cart before Fidget started kicking it to pieces.  She was not vicious; she had not been broken in property, that was all.  I remember feeling rather grand that I had been involved in this adventure. 

 

Another favourite haunt of ours was the dairy.  Aunt Dora was always in charge of the butter-making, with one or two maids to help her.  The dairy was cool and stone-flagged, with water continually pouring out of a spout into a stone trough which was in a corner, and it then ran from the trough into a stone gutter and out thro’ a hole in the dairy wall.  Aunt Dora used to allow us to use, as a great treat, the wooden butter-pats with an impress on them of ducks and chickens.  The butter was delicious and of a deep yellow colour, being made from Jersey milk.

 

They also made a small amount of Devonshire cream; the big pans of milk waiting to be skimmed stood in a row on the long wooden table.  I think a certain amount of the skimmed milk was given to the pigs.  These were kept on the far side of the shrubbery, where there were the cow-houses and the cart and implement shed and the stable for the farm horses.  To the right of the path which led to these buildings, was a duck pond, and ahead was the gate which opened on to the warren.  We loved the warren’ the turf was short and cushioned with wild thyme, and there were dozens of gorse bushes and dozens of sandy rabbit burrows.  My brother and I used to dig and enlarge the entrances to make coming and going easier for the rabbits.  I can only remember sunny days in the warren, with the scent of the gorse heavy and intoxicating, and there was always the sleepy drone of hundreds of bumble-bees.  I imagine we never went there on wet days!  But the thing which really brings Werescote back to me more than anything else is the strange raucous cry of a peacock, so wild, so melancholy; for of course there were peacocks at Werescote.  I used to watch them, fearful and fascinated at the same time: fearful because of their plaintive cry, but fascinated by their gorgeous colouring.  I used to watch them from a safe distance, coming out of the shrubbery and behind the big bushes on the lawn; and after their departure I would go and see if they had left any feathures behind.  If they had, I picked them up and gave them to my grandmother, who put them in a brass engraved vase which stood on a black marble mantel shelf in the morning room.

 

The Lloyds were a noisy, affectionate family, very emotional and demonstrative in every way, in marked contrast to my grandmother, Emma Frances nee West, who was quiet and composed and placid. She was a great letter-writer and sent a weekly epistle to each of her children.  She made the most exquisite lace in a truly professional manner, in which dozens of bobbins and a long green cloth pillow played a prominent part.  She used the lace on her afternoon tea-cloth and on guest towels.  I still possess some.  She ran her large house-hold in exemplary fashion and carried her store-cupboard keys etc. in a silver chatelaine suspended from her waist-belt.  I think she must have resembled her Portuguese mother, Caroline de Frates (Defrates) – ancestry goes back to 1720 Rochester, Kent – in appearance, as she was dark-haired, sallow skinned and hook-nosed, with lively, dark brown eyes, and she loved beads and jewellery and bright colours.  When she was young she was fond of acting and started an amateur theatrical company, composed of her own friends.  They gave their performances in the big drawing-room with the bay window overlooking High Street, Newport, Monmouthshire.  Completely undaunted, they appear to have tackled anything from Shakespeare to Murder in the Red Barn.  This activity had to come to an end when the family moved to Werescote; but even there the charades were insisted upon at Christmas time.” 

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Werescote - History

 

Werescote is built on land that was bought by Ellis Were (a banker based in London) from a gentleman called James Barker in 1800. The wider Were family had lived in the parish since Elizabethan times (noted above) whereby Ellis consolidated the families dominant land owning position by buying the lordship of the Sampford Arundel Manor. This meant 40% of the parish was owned by the Were family. Ellis started construction of “Were’s Cott” but died in 1804 before completion in 1805 so his eldest son and primary heir, Thomas Waltham Were, oversaw its completion.

 

The Were family had established a Wellington based business in the cloth and wool industry in the 1700’s. Wellington was ideally situated because of its close proximity to the abundance of sheep farmers providing the raw material from the local agricultural community including Exmoor. The coastal port of Minehead allowed wool imports from Ireland. Then processed and exported via Topsham port near Exeter, to the continent.

 

Before the construction of the mills in Wellington, wool was processed into yarn by a multitude of smaller home based businesses that were co-ordinated by the Were business.

The Were and Fox family combined through marriage, so the business secured its management future with the additional new management talent from 1772 (Thomas Fox) into the nineteenth century and beyond.

 

The old woollen mills of Fox and Sons can still be seen today in Wellington and records indicate that the same bricks ordered for building the mills also built Werescote. Bulk ordering and discounts were clearly available in those days as well.

 

Whilst bricks may seem an everyday item, at that time bricks were more unusual because of their bulk and weight, which made the cost of transport very high.

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The canal network was still being established and did not arrive in Wellington until 1835 and the rail network had not developed properly beyond Bristol. In that time horses and carriages ruled transport – but there was the threat of Highwaymen.

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In 1791 mail coach was attacked near Whiteball on its way to Exeter and 3 men apprehended. They were hung at Gallows Close, Spy Post - being the look-out spot for highway men. In 1850 a post boy doing his rounds at the Whiteball cottages witnessed the hold-up of the Exeter bound stage-coach. But later when the highway man was drinking in the Castle Inn (now the Coop in Wellington) he saw the boy who recognised him and chased the boy up Lamb Court behind the Coop and then strangled him. The Highway man was caught, prosecuted and hung.

 

Wellington was developing as an industrial town.  This was at the expense of Taunton stemming from 1754 when a less business friendly governance was elected to the important Taunton Town Council.

 

In contrast as Quakers, the Fox family progressed through the industrial revolution with a benevolent approach to its staff (like that of the Cadbury family of the chocolate dynasty) that included provision of pensions and the like. The family also had its own legal tender and related bank in Wellington from 1787 to 1921.

 

The Fox family business continued to flourish in the eighteen hundreds and into the 20th century. During the warring decades of the early nineteen hundreds the business became more focused on military fabric and has been attributed the invention of khaki cloth that eventually replaced the traditional red cloth of the British Military. During the First World War, Fox Brothers delivered the largest fabric order to the Ministry of Defence being 852 miles of cloth.

 

However, as the 20th century progressed, the business saw a changing business landscape as the woollen cloth industry encountered competition from new man made fabrics and other international producers.

 

But, the Fox business continues today with the involvement of Deborah Meaden (from the Dragon’s Den television series) producing niche high quality cloth and tailoring.

The railway arrived in Wellington and was officially opened on 1st May 1843. This saw another interesting chapter in the history of Werescote. Many of us have travelled on the London to Penzance railway line, but you may not know that the track travels under Werescote through the Whiteball Tunnel.

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The famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel is responsible for the design and build of the tunnel. The hill on which Werescote sits was a barrier for a complete connection from Bristol to Exeter and beyond. Initially the railway finished at the Beambridge at the bottom of the hill in front of Werescote, so passengers had to disembark onto horse draw coaches to take the journey across the hill to the side of Werescote and down to Burlescombe station to get on the train again.

 

Construction on the 999m tunnel started in 1842 and at its peak a thousand navvies camped to the rear of Werescote.  Each moved a contracted 20-tons of earth per man per day – all by hand. 14 vertical shafts were sunk from the surface to the tunnel during construction and one remains in evidence in front of the house in the valley below. 

The Were family sold land to the company of Brunel (Bristol and Exeter Railway company – later to become part of the Great Western Railway Company in 1876) to enable the construction of the tunnel for the sum of £1500.

 

The tunnel was opened on 1st May 1844 and was a great success. But as a result, ultimately the tunnel saw the demise of the Grand Western Canal (which the Fox family had bought shares in) between Tiverton and Taunton. The canal and in particular the Somerset section was bought and then closed by the Great Western Railway Company. (The Tiverton section is still open today and is well worth a visit as you can ride on their horse drawn canal boat through the countryside)

 

There were safety concerns in the 1800’s about the dangers to “the internal organs of the body” when travelling at speed and many will be aware of land speed records held by trains like the Mallard.  However, not many will know that the first train to breach the 100mph barrier was the locomotive named the City of Truro on 9th May 1904. This was measured on the “Wellington Bank” in front of Werescote down the 1 in 90 incline past the Beambridge Inn. However, it was not officially recognised and published until 1922 (because of the safety concerns this could have created with the travelling public).

This speed record was unique because it was the first commercial vehicle (by land, sea or indeed the air) to breach the 100mph barrier.

 

There followed a lull in the excitement that surrounded Werescote. It was sold by the Were family on Saturday October 8th 1921 (having been recently decorated at the time – according to the sale particulars).

 

In the Second World War, we understand the American Army were stationed at Werecote above the strategically important Whiteball Tunnel to protect it from attack during the Second War but no documentation is available. The tunnel was the only rail link that could supply weapons, ordinance and troops to the south coast of Devon including Devonport Dock Yard, Dartmouth and Slapton Sands where preparations took place for D-Day including a practice landing – operation Tiger.

 

After the war the Americans abandoned the site but local legend has it that in doing so, the Americans buried equipment in the local fields that was supposed to include boxed and un-used military Harley Davidson motorcycles.

 

After the war, Werescote was farmed after it was sold on Saturday March 16th 1946 to Mr Wright who farmed the land until his retirement in 1995.

 

Today Karen and Harry Langley are your hosts finishing the renovation of Werescote.