More Combe Down cousins

Following last month’s movers and shakers post I have discovered more Combe Down cousins for that link them to other families who lived in the ‘big houses’. Those are the Allen, Atherton, Bennett, Bryan, Cruttwell, Daubeney, Disney, Falkner, Fortt, Gabriel, Gore, Hope, Howard, Maude, Morley, Richardson, Vivian and Wingrove families who are mentioned on this site in numerous places This post is probably best read with last month’s post open in another tab for easy Read More …

A shaggy dog story

Things that are new on the site recently are a small section on Combe Road – something of a shaggy dog story given that it, unfortunately, has so little of consequence in it. But one can’t just make things up for a site like this. There’s also a brief article on Mulberry Park the the 48 acre Read More …

Tucking great! I’m broke!

Things added recently include: An ‘upgrade’ to the history of Prior Park. This explains how it was, originally, the deer park for the Priors of Bath Abbey monastery. It was broken up after Henry VIII‘s Dissolution of the Monasteries and brought back together over a 30 year period by Ralph Allen. A section on the Tucking Read More …

John Thomas – the forgotten man of Prior Park

One of the owners of Prior Park has been almost forgotten. Ralph Allen, Gertrude Tucker, Viscount Hawarden and Bishop Baines are all reasonably well known, but John Thomas (1752 – 1827) is not. Yet he was a Quaker who owned Prior Park for over 15 years between 1809 and 1827 and certainly deserves to be Read More …

Particulars of Prior Park sale in 1808

I just love old handbills and maps. Bath Record Office has a small treasure trove of them. Here are some prepared for the Prior Park sale in 1808 before John Thomas bought in in 1809.  The language is wonderful. “A capital mansion, seated on an eminence, erected, in the most substantial manner, about the Year Read More …

Prior Park sale

When Gertrude Stafford Smith (née Tucker, previously Warburton), Ralph Allen’s niece and heir died in 1796, the estate passed to Cornwallis Maude, 1st Viscount Hawarden by reason of his marriage to Mary Allen, another niece of Ralph Allen, even though she had died in 1775, as they had a son Thomas Ralph Maude. I indicated previously that Read More …