Stalbridge Park Dig
Because of coronavirus restrictions, there has been no digging in the Park in 2020.
We hope to start again in 2021.
Stalbridge House
Stalbridge House no longer exists, but in 2018 the Stalbridge History Society joined up with Chris Tripp, lead archaeologist with the Dorset Diggers Community Archaeology Group, to investigate where it was thought to have stood. The House was supposedly the fifth largest in Dorset and was even visited by Charles I and George III. But by around 1827 it was no more. Through the long, hot summer of 2018 a team of volunteers from the History Society and the Dorset Diggers surveyed the site and started digging for evidence. Their work was soon rewarded. Lower courses of numerous walls were found, together with pieces of worked masonry, tiles, glass and ironwork. Various fascinating small, manufactured items were also discovered.
(Vol 1 Issue 1 Stalbridge History Matters)
(Vol 1 Issue 1 Stalbridge History Matters)
Dig updates
December 2019
This year’s Dig in the Park finished in the middle of October and we had a well-attended end of season gathering with the Dorset Diggers at the Hub on 19th October. In the last weeks of digging, attention concentrated on the cobbled surface that we uncovered close to the Park drive. Evidence suggests that it is part of the House’s internal courtyard, briefly mentioned in an early 18th century survey.
See the full report in the News Letter Vol 1 Issue 4
This year’s Dig in the Park finished in the middle of October and we had a well-attended end of season gathering with the Dorset Diggers at the Hub on 19th October. In the last weeks of digging, attention concentrated on the cobbled surface that we uncovered close to the Park drive. Evidence suggests that it is part of the House’s internal courtyard, briefly mentioned in an early 18th century survey.
See the full report in the News Letter Vol 1 Issue 4
September 2019
On August 21st around twenty members of Yeovil Archaeological and Local History Society visited Stalbridge to find out more about the Park dig. The visit was extremely well organised and co-ordinated by Robert Ralph with help from other Stalbridge History Society members.
See the full report in the News Letter Vol 1 Issue 3
On August 21st around twenty members of Yeovil Archaeological and Local History Society visited Stalbridge to find out more about the Park dig. The visit was extremely well organised and co-ordinated by Robert Ralph with help from other Stalbridge History Society members.
See the full report in the News Letter Vol 1 Issue 3
June 2019
The summer dig is now in full swing. There are two new trenches. We were hoping to reveal more of the house walls in the big trench but found instead another interesting network of drains (the house had very advanced water supply and plumbing systems). See the full report in the News Letter Vol 1 Issue 2
The summer dig is now in full swing. There are two new trenches. We were hoping to reveal more of the house walls in the big trench but found instead another interesting network of drains (the house had very advanced water supply and plumbing systems). See the full report in the News Letter Vol 1 Issue 2
Stalbridge House, about 1813
STALBRIDGE HOUSE, 1618 – 1825 – a short history
We have no evidence of a date for the building of Stalbridge House. Whatever plans or correspondence there were, have been lost, or are awaiting discovery. But we do know who built it: Mervyn Touchet, Lord Audley, second Earl of Castlehaven.
Mervyn inherited the Stalbridge estate in 1618, and immediately set about making plans to enclose a 50-acre Park near the church and build a house for himself. Part of the proposed site was common land, over which local tenants held ancient rights. They objected to the loss of these rights and brought a case in Chancery against Mervyn. Not surprisingly, the locals lost their case, and Mervyn built his house.
Unfortunately for him, he didn’t enjoy it for long. He seems to have been a very unsavoury character, allowing scandalous acts of debauchery among his family and household servants, so much so that in 1631, his eldest son James, disgusted at “scenes of bestiality”, appealed to the King for protection. The result was a State trial. Mervyn was found guilty of “unnatural practices”, sentenced to death and beheaded on Tower Hill.
James inherited the Estate and with it the Park and the new Manor House. 5 years later, in 1636, he sold the whole lot for the then huge sum of £5,005 to a family acquaintance: Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork and Lord Treasurer of Ireland.
From lowly beginnings, Boyle became the greatest landowner in Ireland and the wealthiest Englishman of his age. His base was at Lismore Castle in the very south of Ireland where he spent huge sums in building, rebuilding and improving property for his large family.
Boyle envisaged works of a similar scale at Stalbridge House, described as being in “great decay” when he bought it, despite having been built less than 20 years previously.
Fortunately, his proposed works were set out in some detail. Repairs and building included new rooms, more chimneys and ornamented staircases, a new terrace with carved stone balustrades, a plumbing system about 300 years ahead of its time, a bowling green, a drive lined with young elms and a new stock of fruit trees in the garden. The work continued until at least 1641.
Some of it was possibly undone during the Civil War when royalist armies visited on three occasions. Also, during the early 1640s the family’s fortunes suffered badly both in England and Ireland, possibly affecting the amount of repairs and maintenance to the House. Then in 1643 the Earl died. By his specific wish the Estate passed to his youngest son, Robert.
Robert Boyle is by far the most important of Stalbridge’s former inhabitants. He is one of the foremost figures in the history of scientific development, virtually founding the concept of experimental science and establishing chemistry as a science in its own right. During his time in Stalbridge, he began his chemical researches, using an approach to scientific work later universally developed and leading to far-reaching discoveries.
Robert was born in Ireland but came to England to spend his boyhood years in Stalbridge. He travelled in Europe on the Grand Tour, returning in 1644 at the age of 17, describing the House that he found as his “ruined cottage in the country”. So much for all the money his father had spent on improvements.
Robert left Stalbridge as a permanent home in 1655 although he remained Lord of the Manor until his death in 1691, “keeping up” the House at his own expense during that time for his brother to use. The Dorset Hearth Tax Returns of the mid 1660s, signed by Robert, show that Stalbridge House had 30 chimneys, evidence of a massive residence.
After his death, the Estate and House eventually passed by complicated financial dealings into the ownership of one Peter Walter in about 1699. Peter is a shadowy character, and his association with Stalbridge has left little detail. He appears to have been secretive and shrewd, and during his lifetime added greatly to the Stalbridge Estate, acquiring an immense personal fortune in the process.
He was in the habit of carrying out surveys of the Estate, and one in 1719 contains the only mention of Stalbridge House, just recognising its existence with its Garden, Orchard, Courtyard and 50-acre Park. He probably never lived in the House, but Hutchins History of Dorset suggests that the House was “much improved” by him, without giving any details.
He died in 1745 and, having no male children living, the Estate passed to his eldest grandson, also named Peter Walter. He did live in the House along with his sister, but his tenure is marked by a lack of investment and sales of parts of the property. He died in 1753 leaving the Estate to his younger brother Edward who continued his grandfather’s policy of buying land and extending the family estates.
Edward too undertook a survey, this time to mark an application to the Dorset Quarter Sessions in 1756 to increase the size of the Park. Edward was also a Justice of the Peace and in that capacity he attended his own application. It will come as no surprise to learn that the application was successful.
The area of new enclosure was almost 10 times the size of the Old Park. A high stone wall was built around it and long-established lanes and short cuts were closed off. But there were no protests, unlike those of 1618 against the Earl of Castlehaven.
Edward Walter died in 1780 and, lacking male heirs, the Estate passed, as the Will of the older Peter Walter required, to the Paget family of Plas Newydd in Anglesey. The Walter Estates, added to the Estates already held by the Pagets, meant that Lord Paget, created Earl of Uxbridge in 1784, had control of over 100,000 acres of land. The newly acquired and unfamiliar Jacobean retreat at Stalbridge was not taken up by the Earl of Uxbridge as a permanent residence, and from time to time the mansion was let. In the 1790s his agent was living there.
The House required constant repairs and in 1781 high winds caused damage to the roof as well as damage to the Park Wall. A large bill for coal in 1781 suggests that the house was being heated, although unoccupied. Following a survey in 1782 there was a major refurbishment of the interior, while outside the paving in the front porch was repaired.
Further extensive work was carried out to smarten up the old House in October 1804, when King George III and his family, who were holidaying in Dorset, dropped in for lunch.
A small digression…A sign of how things stood…in 1805 a possible buyer of the House visited incognito…part of his report:
“I went to Stalbridge…I was grievously disappointed, instead of the House being built only 40 years ago I should suppose rather 240 years ago, and the Walls are very thick they are in some places out of a perpendicular and the whole is in such a state of ruin that I should not be surprized if some part of it fell down the ensuing Winter…whoever buys the place with a view to residence must build his own Mansion in which the Old Building would be of little assistance as the Timbers appear in a state of decay…on the other hand there is a great extent of Land and very fine views from the Park and Labour everywhere in the County is cheap.”
He didn’t buy!
In 1812 the Earl of Uxbridge died, and the estate passed to his son, the second Earl of Uxbridge, who lost a leg at the Battle of Waterloo and was created first Marquess of Anglesey a month later.
By this time the House was seriously deteriorating again despite continuing repairs, but the new Lord Anglesey decided that it should not be taken down. In 1817 one of the offices attached to the back of the House fell in. The lead from it was sold and other material was used for repairs. In 1818 major repairs were again undertaken on the roof and small repairs continued to be made in 1820, 1821 and 1822.
In 1823 the decision to demolish what remained of the House was finally reached, and by the October a part of the House had been taken down. Lead and oak in the House were found to be more valuable than expected and it was decided that materials not used or reserved were to be auctioned. The first sale was in November 1823, followed by further sales in 1824 and 1825. There were 5 sales in all. By the end of 1825 the old House had gone.
And so things stayed for another 93 years…until…
The Spring of 2018 when the Dorset Diggers Community Archaeological Group, assisted by the Stalbridge History Society, carried out a geophysical survey prior to the start of archaeological excavations in Stalbridge Park in an attempt to locate remains of the old House. So far, results and finds are encouraging, and remains of the House are beginning to reappear.
Fuller details of the history of Stalbridge House appear in the two volumes of “The Stalbridge Inheritance” by Irene Jones, available in Stalbridge Library
Robert Ralph 2020
Chairman
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