Part Seven - A Trek through old Mumbles Village by Stuart Batcup

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A Trek through old Mumbles Village
and Thistleboon by Stuart Batcup

Part Seven

Thistleboon House and its estate
A Timeline from 1820 to 1840

William IV reigned between 1830 and 1837 when he was succeeded by his niece Victoria who reigned until 1901. This was the era of the expansion of the British Empire with war like skirmishes taking place in such disparate colonies as Canada, India and South Africa, as well as the controversial Crimea War when the UK joined the Ottoman Empire, France and Sardinia to successfully take on Russia. With the support of her beloved husband Albert, Queen Victoria steered the nation to its most prosperous period ever under the leadership of such significant Prime Ministers as Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli, and William Gladstone. The Industrial Revolution with the development of steam power and its reliance on coal was a major driver of this successful period which led to great fortunes being made by the few, and hard lives and poverty for the many.

 Swansea thrived during this period. Between about 1780 and 1830 it havered between becoming a fashionable seaside resort, cashing in on the wealthier classes taking ‘staycations’ and thus avoiding travelling to and through France during the period of its bloody revolution, or developing as a place of commerce and industry. David Boorman’s lovely book ‘The Brighton of Wales’ describes how this conflict was demonstrated and by 1830 resolved in favour of the latter. The Assembly Rooms and fine Georgian houses at  Cambrian Place and Gloucester Place survive as evidence of this period. The adjoining  Burrows and leisure gardens succumbed to creation of the South Dock opened in 1859 as an adjunct to the Float or Reach that had been opened in 1851 which was renamed the North Dock.

The Port had expanded to service the burgeoning copper smelting industries in the lower Swansea Valley, which was a truly ‘satanic place’ with its many furnaces and tall chimneys spewing out smoke and poisonous fumes from close to the Town Centre. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Swansea was truly the world’s ‘Copperopolis’, attracting incomers from all over.

Indeed. without all this and the work provided, I wouldn’t be here now:

 My Great Great Grandfather William Badcock (or Badcopps) was born in Beaford, Devon in 1835/7 and moved to find work in Swansea in about 1857. He met and married a Sketty girl Sarah Stevens and they set up home at what is now Cae Banc Sketty. He worked locally as a Collier at first, and then as a Coal Trimmer at the South Dock, where he died by drowning on 25th November 1872. He left a widow and eight children.

His second son William Badcup was born in Sketty on 31st December 1860 and he went on to marry Jane Davies in about 1884 with whom he set up home at Robert Street Manselton. He worked as Nickel and Silver Refiner in the Hafod and died in 1917, with the family surname fixed as ‘Batcup’, Between them they had five boys and five girls. All of the boys went to fight in France during the First World War…and miraculously they all came back

In Mumbles there was a similar tension between the place becoming a resort or a place of industry and commerce. Carol Powell’s fascinating little books ‘Regency Mumbles’, ‘Inklemakers: Life in nineteenth century Oystermouth’ and ‘Days before yesterday: Childhood in Victorian Oystermouth’ all set the scene better than I can.

At about 1800 the economy of Oystermouth was still dominated by agriculture, fishing and limestone quarrying.  Exploitation of the coal reserves in Clyne Valley at the very edge of the South Wales Coalfield, of the limestone all around Oystermouth, and of a vein of marble in the limestone workings at Southend between 1808 and 1825 with the beach and the Tramway to haul it away all led to increased prosperity. In 1840 a vein of iron was found in the same workings, and when mining of it began in 1845 there were ominous signs that Mumbles might go the same way as Swansea. The iron workings formed a long narrow cutting from a point just beyond the Bristol Channel Yacht Club to Limeslade Bay. The walled-up exit at Limeslade can still be seen behind Fortes Store Hut.

Fortunately, the vein was soon worked out, but the population of the Village was rising from 715 in 1801 to 1,938 in 1851 with all the pressures created for Highways, Housing, Relief of the Poor, Water and Sanitary provision, Education and Religion. As we move on we will see how these last two impacted on the hamlet surrounding Thistleboon House, but before that we have an interesting twenty years to consider.

1820 to 1830: Major General George Warde

The following entries appear in the Diary of Lewis Weston Dillwyn of Sketty Hall, former owner of the Cambrian Pottery in Swansea, magistrate, landowner, a founder member of the Royal Institution of South Wales and a significant figure in Swansea life:

“6th September 1819

Proceeded in the tramcar to the Mumbles…

I examined the Thistleboon estate which is for sale next Thursday

19th September 1819

Sale by auction of the Thistleboon estate and it sold for £2,410”

The plan marked ‘Thistleboon House and Lands 1843’ is an extract from the 1844 Tithe Map and shows by green shading (more or less) what General George Warde paid £2,410 for. That’s about £148,000 in modern money, which was a substantial investment by someone who did not intend to live there. He was living in his much grander ‘new house in the Gothic style’ called Woodlands Castle at Clyne. Since moving there in 1799 he rebuilt the Castle in two main phases: the first in 1800 and the second during 1817-1820 making it look as shown in the attached image. He was probably stretched financially at the time of the purchase.

The Grenadier Guards continued to list him as one of their officers until the regiment was disbanded in 1808, long after he had effectually retired. The attached portrait shows him in his Military uniform. He was promoted major in 1790, colonel in 1798 and major general on 1 January 1805! To quote Ralph again; ‘It was a common story of gradual promotion in return for modest activity at little risk’.

It was his wife’s wealth that attracted him to the mining undertakings of the Townshend family in the coal veins near the Burry Estuary on the eastern bank of the River Loughor which he bought in 1799 at about the same time as he purchased the Woodlands Estate. As well as having the decent house built on it by Richard Phillips in 1791 the mineral and timber resources of its 27 acres stretching around Brockholes, Le Mayalls and Penlan Wood were an attraction. Remember that coal mining was taking place in the Valley, and near the Car Park behind the present Clyne Castle there are still the ruins of a Chimney/Tower used to draw the fumes from the Arsenic works below.

It has been said that ‘George Warde had plenty of industrial enterprise, but no known experience’, and it was that lack of experience that led to his downfall as he over-extended himself. His purchase of the Thistleboon Estate was followed by High Pool Meadow and more woodland near Newton, but his greatest acquisition came in May 1825 when he bought from the Earl of Jersey the Grange, Brinnau and Bran’s Pit more than 53 acres in all giving him continuity of ownership from the Castle to West Cross. In all he created an estate that was 330 acres in extent.

But at what cost? The Jersey purchase forced him within four months into a sizeable mortgage of £6,625, which was still unpaid when he died five years later, as well as a further mortgage of £2,000 taken out just before his death as a result of the losses he had sustained with his Llanelli mining enterprises. As with the Shewens at Thistleboon, the estate had to be sold after his death. As Ralph Griffiths puts it:

“George Warde had been an enterprising and farsighted man, one of a breed in south Wales at the turn of the nineteenth century. The rapid industrialisation of the region offered opportunity, wealth, and property to such younger sons as he. But Warde had over-extended himself with the variety and size of his industrial and building ventures.” 

So, what was actually going on at Thistleboon during this time?

This was a turning point in our history, as a decision was taken by the Beaufort Estate to subdivide the house to accommodate a separate farmhouse so that in 1841:

The living accommodation for the farm that was to become known as ‘Thistleboon  Farm’ was created on the ground and first floors to the left of the main door, with its separate existing entrance under the porch on the side of the building. The existing Stables and Coach yard were all included in the letting to the first tenant farmer Evan Williams. I will need to devote a separate chapter to the history of the Farm.

The rest of the house was leased in the summer to the Rev Thomas Bowen for his ‘Thistleboon Academy’, It was to remain a private school in various guises for over fifty years until 1894.

From this point on in the narrative, I will deal with the various characters and uses of the house that continued until its demolition in 1976.

The freehold ownership throughout remained with the Beaufort Estate which through the rest of the nineteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth century had a significant presence in the Village. The Eighth and Ninth Dukes and their respective Duchesses did figure in local life, particularly in the life of All Saints Church. While the respective Dukes were patrons of the Bristol Channel Yacht Club from which they sailed, their wives bestowed their presence at the many fund raising bazaars and fetes that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century held to raise fund to pay  for the erection of St Peter’s Church at Newton and the new Church School in Dunns Lane before World War I. The site for the new Vicarage at Higher Lane was also a gift of the Beaufort Estate at that time.

The Estate Office was in the ground floor of ‘The Elms’ the house that figured in our 1734   murder. In the nineteen fifties Glyn and Val Gabe lived in the first floor flat. He was one of the Estate’s local surveyors. My memories of the Elms are of being taken to the Office there by my mother to pay the rent to the very tall Miss Laing who lived in Thistleboon Gardens, and spoiled me with sweets!

Time to rest again.

Stuart Batcup

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