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Thomas Ward and the Warwickshire country house

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

Among the many collections of topographical manuscripts deposited in the British Library are 525 foolscap sheets of detailed notes and drawings bound together in two bulky volumes and entitled:

Collections for the Continuation of the history and Antiquities of warwickshire by Sir William Dugdale Knight and Dr. Thomas to the Present year 1830. in which are Numerous View‘s in Drawings most Accurately taken On the Spot of Ancient Mansion Houses & CHURCHES now not a Vestige scarcely remaining and of many others, which will soon be eradicated . . . Faithfully and Carefully Taken by A Sincere Admirer & indefatigable Searcher into the beauties of Perishable Antiquities.

Type
Section 7: Recording and Criticism
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984

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References

Notes

1 Add MSS 29264-5. In quoting from Ward’s writings I have preserved his idiosyncratic syntax and use of capital letters.

2 Add MS 29264, f. 2.

3 A second edition by Dr Thomas, rector of Exhall (Worcs.), was brought out in 1730. The subject is fully discussed in Ronchetti, B. ‘Antiquarian and Archeological Scholarship in Warwickshire 1800-1865’, Birmingham University MA thesis (1952), especially pp. 101-17.Google Scholar

4 Add MS 29265, f. I72v.

5 Foster, J. Alumni Oxonienses 1715-1886, p. 1500.Google Scholar

6 Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, ER 20/135. I 3m indebted to the Archivist, Dr Robert Bearman, for this reference.

7 In 1841 he was living at 38, Portland Place: Pigot and Co’s . . .Directory. . .for the Midland Counties.

8 Information from the Department of Manuscripts, British Library, and from Dr Bearman. Ward’s son Charles inherited the Welcombe estate, just outside Stratford-upon-Avon, from his uncle John Lloyd in 1837, and set himself up at Clopton House as a country gentleman, scandalizing the locality by his amorous excesses.

9 Bellew, J. C. M. Shakespeare’s Home at New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon (1863), pp. 146-47.Google Scholar Some loose sheets and rough drafts are preserved at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, DR 272.

10 Add MS 29265, f. 233.?

11 His grandfather, Thomas Ward, who died in 1742, had kept ‘a noble library & numbers of choice valuable manuscripts and a large cabinet of ancient curios’ in his house in Castle Street, Warwick: Add MS 29265, f. I72v.

12 e.g. Grove Park, near Warwick: Add MS 29264, f. I30v.

13 The so-called ‘Aylesford Collection’, Birmingham City Reference Library Archives Section, 87736-7.

14 Add MS 29264, f. 227v.

15 For Chesterton, see Colvin, H. M. ‘Chesterton, Warwickshire’, Architectural Review cxvm (1955), 115-16.Google Scholar Ward’s illustration of the house is in Add MS 29264, f. 190. Snitterfield, a square hipped-roofed building articulated by giant pilasters, is illustrated in Add MS 29265, ff. 87, 89.

16 e.g. Hasely Manor: Add MS 29264, ff. 119-20; Berry Hall and Henwood Hall, both near Solihull: Add MS 29265, ff. 117, 119-23.

17 e.g. Warwick Priory: Add MS 29264, ff. 64-70; Wroxall Abbey and Whitley Hall near Coventry: Add MS 29265, ff. 8, 153.

18 Add MS 29265, f. 32. The house seems to have been demolished in the 1730s, and one of the stable blocks fitted up as a house for the new owners, the Landor family.

19 Ibid., ff. 225-27.

20 Little Kineton Manor: Add MS 29264, f. 253.

21 Add MS 29265, f. 166.

22 Ibid., f. ii8v.

23 Add MS 29264, ff. 243-44.

24 Ibid., ff. 74, 244v.

25 Ibid., f. 4.

26 Ibid., f. I30v.

27 Add MS 29265, f. 225.

28 Add MS 29264, f. 3V.

29 The Torrington Diaries, ed. C. B. and Andrews, F. see for example the one-volume edn (1954), p. 273.Google Scholar

30 Add MS 29264, f. 2V.