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

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Before exploring the details, it is worth recalling the general historic background of these times, which I conveniently remember from my ‘O’ and ‘A’ level studies as, for some reason I covered the same period twice! With the Civil Wars over by 1660 we saw the Restoration with Charles II, a Stuart back on the throne. He was succeeded by James II (also James V of Scotland) in 1685. He seems to have made a pig’s ear of the job and was sent to France in exile following the’ Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. He was replaced by his elder daughter Mary who, with her husband William of Orange ruled until 1702 when Mary’s younger sister, Anne became Queen.

For the better part of the Eighteenth Century, Great Britain was at war with France and Spain. The War of the Spanish Succession had started in 1701 and went on until we got out of it with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, securing Gibraltar until today. Queen Anne was the last of the Stuart monarchs to reign, and when she died a year later in 1714, the Hanoverian era was launched when the german Elector of Hanover became George I. James II and his Jacobite movement for the restoration of the Stuarts continued to snipe from the sidelines without success

From 1756 to 1763 we fought the French in the Seven Years War, and under Lord North we fought the ‘yankees’ in the American War of Independence between 1775 and 1783 when we lost the North American Colonies. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out and we were at war with them again by 1793. Thus, began what became the Napoleonic Wars, with a famous victory by Admiral Lord Nelson at Trafalgar in November 1805, and victory by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815. During this time a significant part was played by Pitt the Younger who became Prime Minister at 24 years of age in 1783 and continued in the role until 1801, and then again from 1804 to 1806 when he died at the age of 46, worn out.

It was certainly quieter at the other end of the bay at Mumbles where the main sources of employment were agriculture (with a tenth of the crop having to go to the Tithe Barn for Gloucester Abbey), the sea, fishing and quarrying. Not a lot of scope for entrepreneurs you might think, but as you will see from what follows decent sums of money were made from quarrying for Limestone and shipping it away. 

In 1804 a Bill was promoted in Parliament by Sir John Morris of Clasemont Bart which became law on 29th June of that year and became known as the “Oystermouth Railway or Tramroad Company Act 1804”. The first meeting of the Company took place at the Bush Hotel Swansea a week later, on 4th July 1804, when among the principal shareholders were Sir John Morris, the Duke of Beaufort, and the Burgesses of the borough of Swansea.

The original line came from Swansea to Blackpill in the Parish of Oystermouth at which point it went along the beach to the Dunns. Later it traveled along the highway ‘to quarries at the back of the “Ship and Castle” Hotel’ i.e. to what was until recently the Conservative Club. There was also a branch from Blackpill up Clyne Valley to spot called Ynys. It was not intended to be a Passenger Railway, (that came later in 1807) but as a track for drawing noisy clanking trucks heavily laden with limestone, coal and iron ore to Swansea. This probably had an adverse impact on the shipping from Mumbles Quay, but it did open up access to the Village.

 Due to the coronavirus Lockdown I have not been able to access the records held in the West Glamorgan Archives to verify my musings but will do so when I can. I have, however had access to the facsimile Registers of Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths for the Parish of Oystermouth from 1672 as they are available in the Church, the originals having been lodged at the National Library of wales for posterity. The earliest, in Latin, were translated by the redoubtable Miss Freda Marrison in 1976. So here we go!

1650 to 1670: Colonel Phillip Jones and Family

Having established that Thistleboon  House was probably built in 1648/1649 by Coll. Jones the Parliamentary Governor of South Wales at that time as a retreat from the burdens of the office he was conducting from ‘the Great House’ in High Street Swansea, it is fair to assume that initially he used it himself. With the accommodation already described, when he and his family stayed at the House he would have been accompanied by a retinue of servants, at the very least a Butler, a Housekeeper, various maids, coachmen and ostlers. As the primary means of access was up Thistleboon Road, it wasn’t an easy place to get to without horses. Higher Lane was very much a lane at that time leading to and from Newton and Colts Hill, and access from Limeslade did not exist until 1888 when ‘the Cutting’ was opened.

This arrangement could not have lasted long for by 1653 Coll. Jones had left for London never to return to live permanently in Swansea. We can only speculate that the House was maintained by a skeleton staff until the good Colonel found himself a tenant.

1670 to 1695: John Robin and Family

The Hearth Tax Return already mentioned shows that in 1670 the House was occupied by a ‘John Robin’, so who might he have been?

The name ‘Robin’, ‘Robbins’ ‘Robbyn’ and ‘Robyn’ are all recorded in the early shipping records from the Swansea area when it looks as if Mumbles mariners, in their own Mumbles and Swansea vessels played a large role. Gerald starts with ‘The Welsh Port Books (1550 to1603)’ noting that as well as the Robin, the Gammons and the Maddocks all figure. Pages 858 to 860 of Gerald’s Book gives an insight of the significance of the Robin contribution during this period. Beyond noting the lovely names of some of their vessels: ‘Le Jesus de Mumbles’; ‘The Mary of Mumbles’; ‘The Gifte of Mumbles’ and ‘The Pleasure of Mumbles’ to name but a few it seems that the cargoes were mainly of coal to and general cargo from the West country., once going as far as Biscay for “bay salt”.

As the Swansea mercantile marine expanded some of the family moved to Swansea town to live, but a John Robin stayed loyal to Oystermouth.. In the 1650 Survey a John Robin is recorded as having ‘a messuage and lands and a quarter of a weir at Newton’ as well as ‘ a cottage and lands there’ while a William Robin is recorded as having two ‘houses and lands at Ffistleboon’. I suspect that there was a ‘John Robin’ senior and junior, the elder being recorded as ‘shipping’ in 1630, while the younger was our friend mentioned in the Hearth Tax Return for 1670. He also figures in the Parish Register for this time which records:

• The Baptism of Ann daughter of John Robin on 20th December 1696

• The death of Ann Robin junior who was buried on 21st October 1700

• The death of Ann Robin senior who was buried on 17th November 1700

• The death of William Robin junior who was buried on 23rd December 1700

• The Baptism of a William son of John Robin on 20th November 1701

Clearly John Robin was a prosperous mariner running a number of boats out of Mumbles, who could afford to maintain a lifestyle that enabled him to live in such a splendid House.  However, by 1696 he had gone, but had not left the Village.

Wendy reminds me that at one stage a ‘John Robin’ lived at Norton House (not the present Norton House as that was not built until in 1790), and although there is no record of his death in the Parish Registers there was a Tablet on the Wall in the Porch saying:

‘Here lyeth the body of John Robin and Mary his wife who died the 13 th Ianry 1736 / Here lieth the body of Wm Robin ho dep this life May ye 14 th 1771’ 

1696 to 1713: Thomas Clement and Family

There is an Enrolment dated 5 April 1696 in the Court of the Manor of Oystermouth before Jn Watkins, Deputy to Dd Evans Esq. Steward, and held “in the mansion house of Thomas Clement at Ffistleboon within the said Manor” (Collins Deed 14 . S’sea and Glam. Calendar Vol.111, Pt 11, p.74).

A name that frequently occurs in the records is that of the Clements family. They quarried Limestone on a large scale. The Quarry in which sits the present Quarry Car Park was known as ‘Clements Quarry’ and the row of cottages in front were known as ‘Clements Row’. Once again, this family would have stood high in the local ‘pecking order’ and able to afford to live with their retinue at Thistleboon House.

The Parish Records show that  

• Charles, son of Thomas Clement was baptized on 2 December 1696 and  

• Mary, daughter of Thomas Clement was baptized on 22 April 1700.

Unfortunately, there is a gap in the Parish Registers between 1702 and 1714, so I have been unable to check what became of this family.

I have also not been able to satisfy myself about the basis upon which either John Robin or Thomas Clement occupied Thistleboon House, as the 1650 Survey made it clear that there were no Copyholds in the Lordship. Coll. Jones held it as a Customary Holder of the Manor paying a rent of one penny per annum to the Lord. Coll. Jones had died in 1678 leaving separate pieces of land at Oystermouth to each of his sons John and Oliver.

As late as 1700 the Jones family was still paying thirty shillings in annual rents for property in Swansea to the Duke of Beaufort, which suggests that the site of Thistleboon House was still held on a Customary basis. This would not have prevented Coll. Jones from letting the house to either John Robin or Thomas Clement, but it does seem that there was a change with the house becoming Copyhold during the early years of the eighteenth century.

Without boring my readers to death, Copyhold was a means of owning land which has fascinated me as a lawyer. I could go on for ages, but as it was abolished on 1st January 1926 by the Law of Property Act 1925, I will go no further than to say that it left a strong mark on the tenure. The method of conveyance prevented the lord from losing touch with his tenants, and so preserved the feudal incidents. In other words, copyhold brought the Lordship under closer control of the Marcher Lord.

1714 to 1777: William Maddocks and Family

During this period Thistleboon House is recorded as belonging to the Maddocks family. Indeed, Gabriel Powell’s Survey of Gower in 1764 reveals that the Copyholder of ‘House and lands at Thistleboon’, including ‘Lands bought of Charles White’ was Mary Maddocks, and that it was occupied by the said Mary Maddocks and ‘John Kift junr’

The Maddocks family were another family of mercantile mariners whose lives were intertwined with those of the Robin family and are mentioned frequently in the 1650 Survey. In particular, a ‘William Madocke’ is recorded as a Customary Holder of ‘a messuage and lands and half a weir at Dunnes’ and a ‘John Madocke ‘for a house and garden at Dunnes’ and lands at Norton.

As well as these Maddocks there were also Maddockses in Swansea. In his book Gerald says:

 “The Maddox/Maddocks/Madok family were seamen, joiners and shipbuilders across two centuries. They had very strong links with Oystermouth. In 1756, Thomas Maddocks, shipwright, became a Swansea burgess, as his father had been, and rose to become one of the leaders of the Corporation”

There is a great deal to learn about this character in Gerald’s Book, and he is recorded as holding land at Thistleboon until 1797. As I write this I haven’t entirely unravelled the Maddocks ‘Who’s Who’, and neither has Gerald!

He says of this time:

“Five brothers. Mumbles still abounded in Maddockses. The Quarter Sessions record give us Joshua Maddocks mariner in May 1732, William Maddocks in 1733, John, William and Thomas Maddocks in 1734. The last three were the sons of Sarah Maddocks of Oystermouth who died in 1730. She had five sons, the two younger ones being Edward and David. And in 1732 among the twelve newly sworn burgesses were ‘The Five Brothers Maddocks’, seemingly paying £1 5s in all. Thomas and David were mariners”

The three largest houses in the Village: Dunns Mansion, the Elms alongside and Thistleboon House. 

The family was clearly prosperous as they were able to live in the three largest houses in the Village: Dunns Mansion, the Elms alongside and Thistleboon House. Whoever was living in Thistleboon House, there doesn’t seem to have been any scandal there:

“On 2nd July 1734 the insane and perhaps atheistic John Maddocks of Oystermouth murdered his parents, killing his mother with an axe blow with the words ‘As I have done to him so I will do to thee’ . He was sent to Cardiff Gaol, dying there, it seems in 1740. The unhappy family are said to have lived at The Elms a house neighbouring the Dunns where there is now a seafront car park. 

Perhaps this was the part of Mumbles where the Maddockses were concentrated, though in 1764 William Maddocks junior and John Maddocks, both peruke (wig) makers surrendered a barn at Coltshill, just East of Underhill”

I wrote all the above words before looking at the Frontispiece to the Parish Register for 1719 to1777, which instantly provided the answer to my quest. It says in bold writing:

  Our William Maddocks was clearly one of the five brothers who, as Church Warden had the clout to ensure that these entries were recorded for posterity notwithstanding that the Register from 1703 to 1718 had either not been kept up or was lost. As William came from a prosperous family it is reasonable to presume that when he married Margaret in 1714, they took up residence of Thistleboon House, and were living there when their daughters came along.

The Parish Register goes on to record the following information about this little family as follows:

• Richard Jones married Elizabeth Maddocks on January 24th 1734 (Elizabeth would have been 19)

•  Margaret ‘ye wife of William Maddocks’ died May 4th 1743

• The death of Elizabeth Daughter of Richard Jones on February 28 1744 was recorded by ‘William Maddocks and William Robin Church Wardens’

• A David Maddocks of Thistleboon died on 20th June1756 (? One of ours?)

•  William Maddocks died on February 7th 1764

“This is a distinctive name. Here are some who bore it. In 1804, for example, a Henry Thomas Shewen was married from Thistleboon House on the hill above Mumbles: he died in 1840. He was related to, perhaps the son of, that Daniel Shewen who, in 1757 married into the Mansell family of Stradey, Llanelli, probably to acquire some of their riches, especially in coal reserves. His brother Joseph adopted the same stratagem, there were two Shewen generations named Daniel, the younger being one of those accused of forcibly entering the sloop Traveller at Swansea in 1769. Perhaps he was the Daniel Shewen who resigned as tidewaiter and searcher at Briton Ferry in 1780”

Perhaps he was, but more than likely not: the 1769 Daniel was probably the father and the 1780 Daniel the son! This is what I have discovered:

• ·In the mid sixteen hundreds, John Mansel the son of Sir Francis Mansel First baronet of Muddlescombe, Kidwelly, married Mary Vaughan of Derwydd. The Vaughans of Derwydd and Golden Grove had acquired land in the Stradey area of Llanelli. John and Mary probably constructed the old house of Stradey which had taken its place at the centre of the new estate acquired with money from the Vaughan family

•  The estate devolved upon their son Sir Edward Mansel who became the first baronet of Trimsaran. In turn his grandson, Sir Edward Vaughan Mansel (1730-1788) inherited the estate which had been weakened by the cost of litigation. Indeed, he was incarcerated in the Fleet Debtors prison in London, and only secured his release with the help of his solicitor, Thomas Lewis of Llandeilo

• This Sir Edward Vaughan Mansel married Mary Shewen of Swansea and their daughter Mary Ann Mansel was born in 1767. She was their only child, and indeed was to be the last of the Mansel line to hold the Stradey Estate.

• This Mary Ann Mansel married a cousin Edward William Richard Shewen who was born in 1778. They cannot have been married before 1800, yet in 1806 he died leaving Mary Ann apparently inconsolable, and childless.

• All this explains the connection of our Daniel Shewen as a cousin by marriage to Mary Ann Shewen (nee Mansel). Patrick Mansel Lewis conjectures that the rather unusual surname is probably derived from the Welsh ‘ap Siwan’?

• Our Daniel Shewen married Jane Mathew on 21st June 1773 and a Marriage Settlement was made giving them financial security. Jane inherited the copyhold of the Thistleboon Estate from her father Richard Mathews.

• They were living at Thistleboon House by 1778 when the birth of their daughter Mary Anne was recorded in the Parish Register with date of christening on 13th October, the day after she was born

• The birth of their son Daniel is also recorded with date of christening on 30th June 1780, having been born on 27th June.

• The birth of their son Henry Thomas is also recorded with date of christening on 1st April 1782 which was also the day on which he was born.

• On 11th May 1785 Daniel Shewen made his Last Will and Testament. It was very complicated

• The death and burial of Daniel Shewen is recorded above as having taken place on 5th July 1792, when he was only 44 leaving Jane his widow with three children under the age of 14

The family doesn’t seem to have struggled financially, as the Will made it clear that Thistleboon House was charged to the Trustees of the Marriage Settlement, and after the death of Jane was to go to ’Thomas Morgan of Penderry in the County of Glamorgan’ for a term of 200 years, presumably as trustee of the Marriage Settlement. Daniel’s life at Thistleboon was very much that of a bewigged Georgian Gentleman, but the 1780 Briton Ferry resignation at 36 suggests that his life was not that straightforward

I say that the family doesn’t seem to have struggled financially as this account appeared in The Cambrian published on 3rd March 1804:

“A Mumbles Marriage”

“Married- Monday last, at Swansea, by the Rev Miles Bassett, Henry Thomas Shewen, Esq., of Thistleboon House, lieutenant in the Royal Navy, to Miss Henrietta Cooper Vanderhorst, third daughter of Elias Vanderhorst, Esq., American Consul at Bristol. After the ceremony, an elegant breakfast was given by Mrs Shewen, mother of the bridegroom , to the young couple, and a large company of friends; who then proceeded to Stradey in Carmarthenshire, the seat of W.R.,Mansel Esq., where a splendid entertainment was provided on the occasion, which was graced by a numerous and most respectable  assemblage. In the evening the bride and bridegroom retired to Vauxhall House (which had been previously fitted up for their reception) amongst the ringing of bells and other demonstrations of joy and respect.”

All very Jane Austen as the bride would have been beautifully dressed and the groom as one of Admiral Nelson’s officers, wearing his splendid full dress Uniform, but not really a Mumbles Marriage as they married in Swansea! Its also an interesting example of ‘an evening do’ which I thought was a modern phenomenon. The happy couple continued to reside at Thistleboon for on 27th March 1813 (well after the Battle of Trafalgar) The Cambrian recorded the birth, at Thistleboon House to the lady of H T Shewen Esq R,N. of a daughter.

This coincided with the death of her late husband Daniel’s cousin by marriage, the childless widow Mary Ann Shewen (nee Mansel) of Stradey in January 1808. At this time the Stradey estate was about 3,000 acres in extent, with coal reserves, at the centre of which was the old Stradey House where the wedding party had taken place in March 1804. Because of this closeness, Jane must have had an expectancy of inheriting a sum to boost her family’s finances. However, this was not to be as by her Will made in 1807 Mary had left the entire estate to her solicitor Thomas Lewis of Llandeilo. Probate of the Will was granted to him after a High Court Judge had declared it valid and not executed under any undue or improper involvement by Thomas Lewis. Thus, started the Lewis/Mansel Lewis line of succession of what came to be known as the Stradey Castle Estate from 1874 when the present Castle was built and the old Stradey House demolished, and which has continued to this day.

After Jane Shewen’s death in 1813 the family became involved in at least two costly lawsuits in Chancery:

The first (Hawkins v Shewen) instigated against her second son William Thomas Shewen, by his brother in law John Hawkins. This gave rise to a Notice published in the Cambrian on 16th January 1818 in the High Court of Chancery calling upon the creditors of Jane Shewen to prove their debts. This suggests that she had died insolvent

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