The Estate in transition

After an unbroken line of ownership going back to the early 13th Century, in 1600 AD, the Shipley Estate was about to be sold and pass out of the hands of the Strelley family. The next 26 years, however, tell a story of bizarre financial dealings, to say nothing of attempted fraud.

Sir Philip Strelley, although holder of the ancient title Strelley of Strelley, had inherited relatively little of the originally large Strelley land-holdings but, seemingly, had inherited the family debts. A century earlier, his great-grand-father's elder brother, John Strelley, had mortgaged the family lands and then compounded the problem by dying without male heirs. The title passed to his nephew, Nicholas (Sir Philip's grandfather) but family squabbles leading to lawsuits between relatives added to the financial problems. By 1600, Sir Philip had already tried to raise money by mortgaging (or perhaps by raising a second mortgage) Shipley to his uncle, Sir John Byron of Newstead Abbey, for £4500. Although this plan seems to have failed, Byron and his son did lease some of the Shipley Estate and a partially documented report mentions that they mined coal in the area.

An alternative course then arose following the aristocratic tradition of negotiating advantageous marriages. The plan was for Nicholas Strelley, son of Sir Philip, to marry Bridget, daughter of Sir Percival Willoughby of Wollaton Hall. The latter, already the owner of coal (mines in the Heanor district, was a wealthy man and the marriage settlement included 1600 which was to be used to pay Sir Philip's debts. A condition was for the money not to be handed to Sir Philip, rather implying that otherwise he would spend it! The marriage duly took place in 1605. A complication was that Sir Percival was to have the coal deposits at Newmanleys. However, as Sir Philip must have known, these were already leased to the Byrons and Willoughby was not prepared to pay them compensation. Further litigation ensued and from 1607 to 1610 the Strelley, Willoughby and Byron families fought each other in Court. Sir Philip, the originator of this legal wrangle, died on 29th September 1607. Nicholas died not long after, with no children from his marriage to Bridget, and it was left to his uncle George Strelley, of Strelley, to attempt to solve the situation by selling Shipley and associated land holdings in Ilkeston, Heanor, Mapperley and Kirk Hallam to Sir George Peckham of Stanley Grange.

This took place in 1610. So, rather ingloriously ended the Strelley ownership which dated back to the marriages of Sir Robert de Strelley, to Hebicabell "heiress of Shipley" (probably the part known as Owlgreaves, the second Manor of Domesday Shipley), in the mid-1200s, and his son, also Sir Robert, to Lady Elizabeth Vavasour, heiress of the main Shipley Manor, around 1280.

Sir George Peckham - Asset Stripper

Sir George Peckham, who Deering describes in his 1751 "History of Nottingham" as of Denham, in Buckinghamshire, was leasing Stanley Grange in 1610. He paid £8000 for Shipley and the Valuation of that era describes the property as having 2000 acres and 29 tenants. The Park and Demesne (i.e. the Hall, its gardens and paddocks) were worth £550. Woodland was worth £4000 and coal deposits were valued at £3000.

The main motives behind Sir George's purchase seem to have been profit. Less than nine years later, he tried to sell the estate for £11000 John Mitchell of Sussex; a Master of Chancery and husband of Mary Strelley, sister of the late Sir Philip. Before the sale was finalised, Sir John learnt that Sir George had cut and sold some of the wood on the estate. Once again the Courts were called into action and the matter was put to arbitration by Sir John in 1619. The Chancery proceedings for May 1620 record that the decision was for the price to be reduced by £'2000 but the sale must then have been called off and so ended what might have been a last attempt by the old Strelley family to reacquire Shipley.

The records of a further court case, in 1624, show that Peckham then sold even more of the wood. One of the questions put to the witnesses was; "Did they (Sir George and his wife Bridget) on February 20th 1623/4 sell to Vallemon Nicholson all manner of oaks and ashes on the ground known as Shipley Park and all other kinds of woods growing.......and were they felled with crab apples and hollies. Also oaks and ashes on Coneygrey Hill and Willow Meadow?". Interestingly, in 1651, when Sir George was called to give evidence in a court case, over the boundary between Shipley, Cotmanhay and Ilkeston Commons, he admitted to having cut and sold the wood.

On 26 May 1626, Sir George Peckham and Dame Bridget, his wife, succeeded in selling Shipley to Sir Edward Leche but the price by now had fallen to £6100! We do not know what profit Peckham had made from his sales of timber but from Shipley he moved to Nottingham, dying on 25 July 1655. In his will he gave "to the Town of Nottingham one hundred pounds of lawful English money the Use and Benefit to be yearly distributed to the poor inhabitants there". Perhaps we can conclude that he repented of his devious money dealings!

The start of the new line of owners

Sir Edward Leche, appointed a Master in Chancery in 1619 and knighted in September 1621, owned a number of properties in Derbyshire, such as Duffield, Hathersage, Over Padley and Nether Padley, and in Suffolk but his main residence was Squerries in Kent. His family originated from Lancashire but, on grounds which are not clear, he held or adopted the crest and arms of the ancient Leche family which had held much land in Derbyshire, including Chatsworth. Francis Leche, described as the last of the main line of the family, had sold Chatsworth and the other lands by 1550; the family having become impoverished. During the Commonwealth period, 1649-60, Sir Edward seems to have benefited greatly as he rapidly acquired the wool and lamb tithes for a number of northern Derbyshire parishes. He died in 1652.

An Abstract of Title in the Miller Mundy archives, at the Derbyshire County Record Office, with a final entry dated 1734 but with the entries in a single hand for the period covering 1626 to 1713, provides much of the information on the Leche ownership of Shipley.

In December 1649, a marriage contract was made between William Leche, eldest son and heir apparent of Sir Edward, and Jane Evelyn, daughter of Sir John Evelyn and a relative of the diarist John Evelyn. The Manor and tithes of Shipley were settled as the marriage portion. According to his will, probated at Canterbury, Sir William, who had been knighted by Charles II in May 1660, died at Squerries in 1676, leaving two sons, Edward and John, and a daughter, Jane. Their mother, Jane, lived on until 1682.

Young Edward Leche, who was underage when he inherited, died only four years later at Shipley and was succeeded by his brother, John Leche, of Maidstone, Kent. A year later in 1681, John married Elizabeth Duke, the daughter of Richard Duke of Maidstone, and the Shipley Manor formed the marriage portion or dowry. The couple appear to have lived at Shipley only occasionally and the estate was let the John Fowle on 1st October 1682.The apparent wealth of his grandfather, Sir Edward Leche, must have been lost, as John Leche raised a mortgage on part of the Shipley Estate in 1690 and then had two further mortgages in 1700.

In his will, dated 1701 and probated on June 9th 1704, John left the Derbyshire and Suffolk estates to his wife, Elizabeth, and his daughters, Hester and Elizabeth. However, he advised that the Suffolk estates should be sold to redeem his debts. The option was given of selling the Derbyshire estates but, fortunately for this story, it was the Suffolk lands that were sold. In 1707, a court called for a magistrate's report on the remaining debts and, in 1708, decided that, given its greater value as a single estate, Shipley should be mortgaged as one block. The outstanding debts were £2456.12.2d but the rent income was £393.9.8d and there also were coalmines (their value was not stated). Initially, a Mr William Kinsey provided £2400 to redeem the three old mortgages.

On April 18th 1713, Hester Leche (her sister Elizabeth no longer is mentioned) married Humphrey Miller, Esq., of Hyde Hall, Sandon, in Hertfordshire, and of Wrotham, Kent (in some summaries of the Miller Mundy pedigree he is described as being Nicholas Miller but this is wrong). With the marriage, a new single mortgage held by Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, came into being - the Abstract of Title and the earliest surviving map of the estate, by John Holmes, dated 1713, surely relate to this agreement. In July 1716, Mrs Miller paid £3000 to redeem the mortgage.

Hester and Humphrey's only child also was named Hester. She was born in 1714 but was left an orphan when her mother died in 1719. The infant Hester was reared by her grandmother, Elizabeth Leche, who lived to see her safely married, at Allestrey on 29th May 1729, to Edward Mundy. Yet again Shipley formed part of a marriage agreement, which was finally signed and sealed in January 1735. The estate then comprised 20 houses, 20 cottages, 600 acres of land, 600 acres of meadow, 600 acres of pasture and 300 acres of furze, heath and common.

The Leche home at Shipley

The sale document of the early 1600s tells of "The Hall" but has no description of it, although a decade or so earlier there was a house, part stone and part timber and plaster, which was well seated and dry. The court case from the 1631 Commons dispute has a map submitted in evidence which shows a crude outline of the house. In 1670 the records of Hearth Tax list Sir William Leche as having 11 hearths, i.e. there were eleven rooms with fireplaces.

The documents, held at the Public Record Office, relating to the clearance of the debts left by John Leche contain an inventory of the house. Such inventories commonly were made on the death of a gentleman and can be very detailed. After John Leche died in 1701 a full listing and valuation was made and this gives all the rooms and their contents.

The ground floor rooms in the Hall were :- The Great Parlour with a closet adjoining it. The Little Parlour. The Kitchen. The Brewhouse and the Washhouse. The Pantry and a cellar.
On the first floor were :- The Parlour Chamber with a closet and a passage adjoining it. The Red Room with the Old Closet next door. The Chequer Chamber. The Green Chamber.
On the top floor were :- The Maids' Room. The Presse Room, The Yellow Chamber. The Men's Room (servants).

The standard of furnishing was very high. In the Great Parlour and the Old Closet there were gilt leather hangings on the walls. The Red and Chequer Chambers had linen hangings, and there were hangings in The Green and Yellow Chambers. Some idea of the decoration of the rooms is given by the name of each of the bedrooms (or Chambers), although quite what was meant by the name "Chequer" is not clear. A "Closet" would seem to have been anything from a storeroom, as in that of the Great Parlour where the china and glass were kept, to the closets of the Little Parlour and Red Chamber which are more like dressing or sitting rooms. The Presse Room probably was where the household linen was stored. The value of linen was given as £18 (£700 in our terms) but there are no details; other than the linen hangings and window curtains, and that there was a napkin press in the men's room.

The value of the silver plate was £180 (about £7000 in today's money) but again no details were given. The cooking pots and kitchen utensils were made of iron, brass, copper, tin or wood; and the plates and dishes for general table use were of pewter. In the brewhouse the coppers, saucepans and a stewpan were of copper but the still for making spirits was of pewter. Bowls, washing tubs and bread-making tubs were wooden. Mention was made of a "parcel of' earthenware" and of "30 dozen glass bottles" - the latter presumably being for the homemade spirits and for wine which was bought in barrels.

The kitchen fireplace must have been huge, as the fittings included a pulley and weights, 6 spits, an iron fender, an iron poker, an iron peele (what this is is not known but in the house were 6 others), an iron grate, a firepan, tongs and bellows and an iron sifter for cinders. Curiously there were no flat irons for pressing clothes. Of particular interest were the copper coffee pot and a tea kettle. Coffee had first been sold in Britain at Oxford in 1648 and by 1662 it was 5 to 6 shillings (15p to 30p) per pound. By 1701 coffee was in common use among the gentry but tea was much more expensive. Mainly coming from China, tea sold at 20 shillings (£1) per pound and would have been kept in a padlocked, leadlined, wooden tea caddy. A servant boy of those times would be lucky to earn £1 in a year with a grown man getting around £5! No mention was made of an oven being attached to the kitchen fireplace but there was an "iron roaster", which perhaps fixed on the front of the iron grate. Curiously, there was no bakehouse listed.

In the two Parlours, there were a number of interesting items. Ornamental china, particularly Delft ware, was displayed on a shelf near the fireplace in the Great Parlour and there also was a bird cage in that room. In the Little Parlour, which actually must have been of quite a large size, there were 3 tables and 18 chairs, plus other furniture. More unusually, there was a large collection of guns :- "5 fowling pieces; 5 blunderbusses; 2 carbines; 5 cases of horse pistols; and 2 pairs of horse pistols". I'n the room above, an "old hanger and silver sword" are listed, indicating that this may have been John Leche's own bedroom. The Stableyard inventory includes two horse-drawn carriages and four geldings; also saddles and bridles and 20 loads of hay.

The total value of the contents of the house and outhouses was £321/18/7d; a sum equivalent in modern (1986) terms to £12000 to £15000.

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