THE LANDLORDS

Lady Elizabeth Seymour was born in 1655 the daughter of Henry Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, and granddaughter of William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset.

When her brother William Seymour, 3rd Duke of Somerset died in 1672 as a youth and without issue, the dukedom went to her uncle John. At his death in 1675, Elizabeth inherited Savernake and massive wider estates, including Easton, and thus became one of the wealthiest heiresses in Wiltshire.

At the age of twenty-one, Elizabeth married Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury and moved to Tottenham Park.

The estate was the second largest in the county, employing its own team of men to build and maintain farm buildings and cottages. Most of Easton’s residents were tenants and did not aspire to be squires – their lives continued in much the same way for over the next 250 years. Twice a year, at Lady Day and Michaelmas, the landlord’s agent came to the village to collect rents and discuss repairs or requests for materials tenants may require from the estate.

During the 19th century the village was blessed with a series of landlords, some more diligent than others.

Charles Brudenell Bruce, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury, spent lavishly on extending Tottenham House, complete with an exquisite ballroom with walls inlaid with marble, to impress his wife Henrietta and managed to permanently impoverish the family in the process.

Henrietta scarcely lived long enough to grace the reception rooms of Tottenham House and left her husband a widower in 1831. Not long afterwards Charles married Maria Tollemache, a strikingly beautiful girl whose vivacity made her ideally qualified to act as hostess at the magnificent house parties he was now in a position to give.

The second Marquess, George Frederick took a great pride in his position as owner and hereditary Warden of the Forest. He integrated Tottenham Park with Savernake, so enclosing as one large forest park virtually all the woodland between Tottenham and the town of Marlborough.

His wife, Mary Caroline was a lady much given to good works who encouraged her husband to build schools and notably the Savernake Cottage Hospital for use of poor people on the estate unable to afford proper care in their own homes.

Mary Caroline was keen to improve the health of tenants by setting aside land for allotments and planting fruit and nut trees along Easton village street. She was not to know that in later autumns villagers would collect the apples, make strong cider from them and spend the long winter evenings uproariously drunk, singing rowdy songs with choruses like: ‘Oh, when apples be ripe and nuts be brown, ‘tis petticoats up and trousers down.’

The third Marquess, Ernest, inherited the estate in 1878 with much depleted finances and two expensive dowagers to support. He was sixty-seven years old and not in good health. Rents were low and badly managed farms allowed to deteriorate. Ernest was in no position to cope with the agricultural depression raging through the countryside. His finances were not helped by his grandson George William Thomas, who became known as ‘Poor’ Willie,

In his youth Willie had attended Eton but left under a cloud and became an habitual gambler. His grandfather Ernest was forced to sell the family’s Yorkshire properties to raise more than £175,000 to satisfy Willie’s creditors.

On his grandfather’s death in 1883 and at the age of nineteen, Willie inherited Savernake estate and became the fourth Marquess. He continued to enjoy expensive wine, fast women and slow horses and in a few years his gambling debts had multiplied to a remarkable degree.  Efforts to sell the estate to Lord Iveagh of the Guinness family failed when family trustees appealed his decision. Willie then attempted to have forest trees felled to sell for timber, but this plan too was thwarted. When Willie died at the age of 30, the debts had risen to £345,000 – over £28 million in 2020 values.

The 5th and 6th Marquesses made efforts to rectify the estate’s fortunes but to no avail. In 1929, properties comprising 58 mixed farms, 60 small holdings and 450 cottages on 24,547 acres of land were put up for sale at auction. The sale caused massive upheaval in the village but at last gave many tenants the opportunity to become landowners.

Charles Brudenell Bruce

Ernest Brudenell Bruce

George William Fredrick Brudenell Bruce

Cariacature of ‘Poor Willie’

Tottenham House