Local Historian, Georgina Green, and at the time Friends of Valentines Mansion Newsletter Editor, penned the following articles tracking down the mansion owner Robert Wilks for the Friends’ January and June Newsletters in 2009.
THE ELUSIVE ROBERT WILKES
With Valentines opening very soon there has been a flurry of activity in preparing information panels and computer inter-actives so my research into the past occupiers of the house has been put to good use. However, one owner has so far escaped me. The Victoria County History of Essex Vol.V, p.212 says that after the death of Donald Cameron in 1797 the estate was split up “The main portion, comprising Valentines house and 174 acres of land, was sold to Robert Wilkes, from whom it was purchased in 1808 by Charles Welstead.” Who was Wilkes? All the usual sources of information (Essex Record Office, Family History websites, the index to the Times, Access to Archives website) have drawn a blank and there are only two wills for a Robert Wilkes between 1800 – 1860 on the National Archives website. Robert Wilkes, Needle Manufacturer of Studley, Warwickshire (1832) seems unlikely, which leaves Robert Wilkes,“ of Hoddesdon” (1857). Charles Welstead had married Sophia Porter at Wormley, which is in the same area, and I wondered if maybe there was a family connection between the Porters and Wilkes. If this was our man, and he was 25 when he purchased Valentines, he must have been 85 when he died. I downloaded the will and found it was originally made in 1847 but had codicils, so maybe he was quite old. I hoped to establish his age from the census, with help from the staff at the Local Studies Library, but they couldn’t find him in the 1841 or 1851 census. His will helped me to trace his children, and so they did find his wife, Maria, who had been born in about 1791 and was staying with her daughter when the 1841 census was taken. She must have been a lot younger than her husband, which might fit if an earlier wife had died. I decided to visit the County Archives at Hertford and see if they had anything which might help me. But before that, the sensible thing was the go to the Essex Record Office and check D/DU539/1 which was the source of the information in the Victoria County History. This document was drawn up to establish the legal title of Charles Thomas Holcombe who purchased the estate from the executors of Charles Welstead. There are over 80 handwritten pages and each is larger than A3. The document traces the ownership of Valentines, Wyfield, Middlefield Farm and other properties which had been bought and sold by different owners since the early 1700s. The details are very complex as, with no building societies to provide a mortgage, each owner was likely to list several relatives or associates who had also put up some of the money whenever property changed hands. Although I have looked through it several times I had not copied the details of anything later than 1790.I discovered that Donald Cameron died greatly in debt (1797 was a time of turmoil, with the threat of invasion by Napoleon) and that Robert Wilks bought Valentines with various fields totalling 168a. 3r. 9p. by auction at Garraways (Coffee House), for £9,500. There are no records of Wilks having lived at Valentines so maybe he bought the building as an investment. When he sold it in 1808, Charles Welstead paid £13,100 (though I cannot be sure this was for exactly the same acreage) so it appears his investment paid off. But have you noticed the spelling of his name? Every time the man who purchased the estate from Cameron was mention in the legal document, his surname was spelt as Wilks. Further investigation revealed a Robert Wilks was living at Wanstead at this time. He died in 1818. Has the “Hoddesden Gent” been a wild goose chase? Could he be our man? To be continued…
THE ELUSIVE ROBERT WILKES, PART 2.
When Donald Cameron died in 1797 the Valentines estate was split up. The main portion,
comprising Valentine House and 174 acres of land, was sold to Robert Wilks, who also
purchased a further 80 acres which had been part of Wyfields but was added to the Valentines holding by Sir Charles Raymond.
In the last newsletter I explained how the incorrect spelling of his name as Wilkes had made it difficult to trace this man, but the document D/DU 539/1 at the Essex Record Office showed me the correct spelling. In fairness, the spelling was almost interchangeable Wilks / Wilkes around 1800.
I found three men named Robert Wilks who might have purchased Valentines, and there is no additional information to indicate who the man was. However, I feel fairly confident that our man lived at Wanstead, died on 20 March 1818 in his 65 th year and was buried at Bunhill Fields in the City of London. “His loss was deeply felt by his family, and a numerous circle of friends.” He had no surviving children and his will mentions his brother Matthias Wilks of Easton Neston Park, Northants, and his good friends the wealthy Cazenove brothers of Walthamstow.
John Doyley Plan of the Parish of Wanstead
1824, at Ilford Local Studies Library
Using the key to this and an earlier map by John
Doyley at the Essex Record Office, we can show that
Wilks lived at a house which fronted onto what is now
the High Street (just south of Grosvenor Road) with his
garden (nearly an acre) backing onto the grounds of
The Grove.
The Sun Fire Office records show a number
of entries for John Pistor, Robert Wilks and Charles Rice Percival of No.31 Walbrook,
Merchants, taking out short term insurance on goods in store at their own warehouses at
Walbrook and Old Swan Lane. Another example is on pepper received from the Earl St Vincent in the East India Company Warehouses at Blackwall, worth £3,000. This partnership did not continue beyond 1816 so I think this might have been the Robert Wilks of Wanstead.
© Georgina Green 2008- 2009
Friends Of Valentines Mansion 