It is believed that Elvestone was built during the 1790s (1) and the earliest owner of the house is, as yet, unclear.  The first known inhabitant was Mr George Compton Reade and he is mentioned in Maria Gibbons’ account of Budleigh in the 19th Century (2) in which she suggests that he might have been living in Budleigh at the time of the Jubilee of George 3rd in October 1809.

George Compton Reade     

George Compton Reade was born in 1788 at Harewood, Hereford and he married his cousin Maria Jane Hoskyns in March 1809.  It is possible therefore that he moved to Budleigh after he married and was in the town at the time of the Jubilee.  Between the years of 1812 and 1825 George and Maria had three sons and three daughters.  Documentary evidence shows that Mr George Reed (sic) and his wife were living in Elvestone Cottage  in 1830 (3).  She died in the autumn of 1837 (4).  

In 1841 he was living alone with one servant, and the tithe apportionment of 1842 has George Read (sic) as owner and occupier of the house.  At some time in the 1840s he is known to have ordered a set of gates for the property from Garton & King in Exeter and there is a sketch of these on their website.  He was still in the house at the time of the 1851 and the 1861 censuses living with two servants, and he is also in the 1857 Directory.  

George Compton Reade was the son of Sir John Reade, 6th Baronet of Barton (1762–1789), and his elder brother Sir John Chandos Reade became the 7th Baronet.  Due to the lack of subsequent children in John Chandos’ line, George Compton Reade’s grandson, Chandos Stanhope Reade, eventually inherited the title but not the lands.  George Compton Reade died on Christmas Eve 1866.  In the Directory for 1866 the occupier was listed as Captain George C. Reade. George Compton Reade’s son, George, was in the Madras Army but he died in 1863 at the age of 51 (5); so who was this Captain George C. Reade?  Perhaps it was a mistake and should read Mr George C. Reade (this was the year he died). 

There was no entry for the house in the 1870 Morris’ Directory and the house was apparently unoccupied at the time of the 1871 census.  By the time of the 1873 Kelly’s Directory the occupant is given as Mrs Ravenscroft.  She was the wife of Edward Ravenscroft a member of the Indian Civil Service.  

Edward William Ravenscroft

Edward William Ravenscroft C.S.I. was born in March 1831 at Trinchinopoly, Madras and his parents were Lieutenant E.W. Ravenscroft of the 4th Cavalry Regiment and Miranda Stephens Ravenscroft (nee Jackson)(6,7).  He was initially educated in Ottery St. Mary and was at Haileybury College 1848-50 and had a career in India from 1851-84.  He became Chief Secretary to the Government, Revenue, Financial, General and Separate Departments (8, 9), and a Member of Council.  He was a Senior Collector and Magistrate, and a member of the Baroda Commission for investigating charges against Gaekwar in 1879.

He married Laura Stanfell, daughter of T.B. Stanfell of Exeter (4, 10).  They had four children, Laura born in India in 1863 (11), Sybil and Mary born in Budleigh Salterton in 1865 and 1869 (4), and Edward born in Bombay in 1872 (11).  It would appear therefore that Edward’s wife either came home to have two of her children or stayed for several years.  

In 1851, the year Edward entered the Bengal Civil Service, we find him with his widowed mother Miranda lodging at 11 Beach Walk.  She seems to have remained in the town and features in the Town Directories living at 2 Prospect Place (East Terrace) in 1857 & 1862, and she was at Rose Hill on West Hill from 1873 to at least 1890.  She died in 1892 at the age of 79. 

Edward was home from India in 1870 living at 7 Marine Parade (Morris’ Directory) but had returned to India by the 1871 census when Laura and the three elder children were living on “The Promenade”.  She returned to Bombay where she had her last child in 1873.  In 1881 Edward, Laura and all their children were living at Elvestone and in 1891 the parents and the three daughters were still at the same house.  In 1886 Edward became Chairman of the BS Croquet Club (12).  At some time, probably in the mid to late 1890s the family moved to Torquay and he was at Villa Como in the 1901 and 1911 censuses with Sybil and Mary still at home. 

Herman Schirmacher 

Professor Schirmacher was the next known occupant of Elvestone, listed in the 1897 Directory.  He was a musician who had been born in Danzig circa 1818. He went to the Royal Conservatory at Leipzig and was a pupil of Mendelssohn and David Richter amongst others.  For some reason he moved to Liverpool to teach and married Emily Radcliffe in 1848 and had two daughters, Margaret in 1856 and Dora in 1857.  They were living in Grove Street in 1861 and 1871 but Emily died at the age of 62 in 1877, so in 1881 Herman appears as a widower living with his daughter Dora in Grove Street.  

Dora became a concert pianist.  As a music student she had played with the Liverpool Philharmonic in 1874.  On completing her studies at Leipzig Conservatorium between 1872 and 1877 she gave a concert at the Gewandhaus in 1877 and subsequently played in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and many provincial towns in England and Germany.  Perhaps she even played in Budleigh when her father was here? (13,14). 

Before coming to Budleigh, Herman went off to America to teach, initially apparently in Georgia.  He also re-married to Matilda (born in France and about twenty years his junior) and they had two children, Ernest in 1872, and Florence in 1873 (15).  At some stage he moved to Missouri to become a Professor of Music teaching piano, violin and composition at Hardin Ladies College and Mozart Conservatory of Music in Mexico, Missouri (16).  He was back in England by 1891 living with Dora in Croydon and was a widower again. He is known to have been at Elvestone in 1897. 

His other daughter Margaret by his first wife got married in the local St. Thomas Registration District in 1890 so one suspects he was still living in the town in that year.  She married an Australian artist called Joseph Martyr and by 1911 the couple were living in Chittlehampton and it is likely that that is where Herman died in 1901 as his death was registered in Barnstaple. 

Miss Ikin 

The Directories list the occupant of Elvestone from 1902 to 1914 as Miss Ikin but the 1911 census enumerated no one at the house, so it may have been unoccupied at that time.  In the 1901 census we find two unmarried Ikin sisters, Margaret aged 42 and Emily aged 37, living on their “own means” near the sea on “The Parade” in Budleigh.  They were two of six children born to Arthur Ikin and Margaret Ikin (nee Stock). 

In his young days their father Arthur and his father Jonathan were active in the affairs of the state of Texas. They purchased a tract of land in Texas in 1836, when Texas land prices were very low (about seven shillings an acre).  The Ikins incorporated the Texas Trading, Mining, and Emigrating Company and were given a deadline by the Texas Congress to introduce emigrants to Texas.  

Problems arose, including the Ikins' failure to confirm that they actually owned the land they supposedly purchased from Judge John Woodward and sold to their colonists.  Ikin's highly disgruntled English colonists were stranded at Galveston in the winter of 1839-1840 and never settled permanently in Texas.  Their dismal reports and the threat of Mexico's intended invasion of Texas caused those colonists still in Great Britain and waiting to come to Texas to renege.  

In addition to his activities as Texas colonizer, Arthur Ikin served as a diplomat between Texas and London, which seems to have meshed quite well with his colonial and entrepreneurial interests. In January of 1841, he delivered to the Republic of Texas government two treaties negotiated between Texas and Great Britain and one treaty between Texas and the Netherlands.  Appointed consul of the Republic of Texas for London on February 4, 1841, Ikin was entrusted with the return of the treaties to England, but after his arrival home in May 1841, England refused to accept the ratification of the commercial treaty without a slave trade treaty.  

In England he published Texas: Its History, Topography, Agriculture, Commerce, and General Statistics (1841), which he designed for the use of British merchants and as a guide for emigrants, and which contained an early map of the State drawn by himself.  Ikin was relieved as consul in 1842 (17). 

He was later a commercial agent chiefly for the Irish Linen Manufacturers.  He died in Worcester at the age of 62 (4) in 1877.  For some reason we next find his daughters  Margaret, Emily and their brother Arthur living with their two aunts, Maria Ann and Harriet Ikin, on West Hill in Budleigh Salterton in 1881; their mother appears to have vanished.  Maria died in 1886 and in 1891 they were then living with Harriet and two servants, at 7 Marine Parade.  Aunt Harriet died in 1895 and in 1901 the two woman are on The Parade, and then from 1902 at Elvestone.  Both Aunt Maria and Aunt Harriet had lived with their brother Arthur and his family from at least 1861 until his death. 

Who occupied the house during the First World War and just after is not clear. The next occupant to list in the Town Directories was Edward Osgood in 1923. Dr Jennings points out that Osgood is a name that has cropped up in this area for a long time, for example, a burial in East Budleigh in 1801 and Ann Osgood is mentioned in the tithe map, but information on Edward is non-existent at present.  He doesn’t appear in the 1919 Directory and the house is not mentioned. 

The Wilson Families 

Henry Elcock Wilson was born circa 1870 and he died in 1949 at the age of 79.  In 1924 Henry had purchased Elvestone as a home for his retirement.  There is a detailed account of some of his activities at the house compiled by Dr Anita Jennings from papers deposited at Fairlynch Museum (1), including a memoir written by his daughter-in-law Ann Wilson which is included at the back of that folder.  

Ann Wilson tells us that Henry had been a cotton broker in Texas and that he had married a lady there whose family had owned an estate in South Carolina that had been lost as a result of the Civil War.  They had four children, Hal (presumably Henry, born circa 1909), Kitty (Katherine, c.1911), Jack (John, 1914) and Bruce.  When they returned to England their old nurse came as housekeeper.  

Henry’s wife Katharine died in 1929 at the age of 47 and Henry was left with his four children, two of whom, Jack and Bruce, were still at school.  Son Hal was working in Liverpool.  In 1936 Kitty married a naval officer and by 1939 Hal had joined the navy and his wife was expecting a baby.  Kitty also had a son by then with another infant on the way.  Bruce was in the army on the North-West Frontier of India.  Jack was in the Sudan (see below) and he married his wife Ann in Mombasa Cathedral.  

During the war Elvestone was used as a haven for the family from the bombing in London and, as well as grandfather Henry, it housed Hal’s wife Hazel and her family, and Henry’s three sisters.  In February 1949 Henry Elcock Wilson died and Jack Wilson inherited the property. 

John Hyrne Tucker Wilson, known as Jack Wilson was born in Bristol, Rhode Island on 17 September 1914.  He has the distinction of being the only Olympic gold medallist ever born in that state, Americans included.  After school in Texas, he attended Shrewsbury School in England and then entered Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where he met his Olympic partner and life-long friend “Ran” Laurie.  Wilson was in the winning Cambridge crew against Oxford for three successive years (1934-1936) and Laurie was also in the Cambridge boat for the last two years.  

By the time of the 1936 Olympics, Wilson had already left for the Sudan to become a District Commissioner, so Laurie stroked the British eight in Berlin and then joined Wilson in the Sudan the following year. In 1938 they arranged to take their home leave together and, although lacking any meaningful training, they won the Silver Goblets at Henley and equalled the record without being pressed.  Their next appearance on the English tideway was in 1948 and neither of them had rowed at all in the previous 10 years.  

During that period, Wilson was savagely attacked with an assagai by a crazed old woman who had been persuaded by a witch doctor that this would settle some grievance.  On hearing the news, Laurie raced to the hospital fearing the worst only to find Wilson playing tennis with a nurse.  Although they had little time to train after their arrival in England in 1948, they again won the Silver Goblets and went on to take the Olympic title over the same course at Henley; an incredible achievement on so little training.  Wilson retired from the Colonial Service in 1954 (18).  

When they left the Sudan, Jack and Ann initially went to Canada but Jack couldn’t find suitable work.  On returning to England he was employed by steelmakers Stuarts & Lloyds and eventually became assistant general manager of their tube works in South Wales.  He later transferred to become assistant works manager at the Bromford tube works. 

All who served in political service in the Sudan had to pass a law exam based on the Indian Penal Code. This experience was useful later as he worked as a J.P. in the Coles Hill Court in Warwickshire during his retirement. 

After Jack inherited the house it was decided to convert it into four flats and the conversion was started in 1949 with the help of the local architect Colonel Hatchard-Smith.  Jack and Ann used to get three months leave each year from the Sudan.  Jack had at one time worked at Palmer’s the local builders to learn building techniques that might be useful in the Sudan, and he was able therefore to undertaken running repairs at the flats, particularly on the roof which needed regular attention.  While at Palmer’s he had worked on the bricklaying of the new public toilets in Brook Road and got into bad odour because when the work was almost complete he dropped the spirit level down the cavity (and I assume it is still there!). 

He died in 1997, aged 82.  Jack and Ann had two adopted sons and they inherited the property.  In 2000 the brothers put in a planning application to build two further houses on the site but this was refused.  They sold the house to R&R Carter and in 2002 it was re-sold to Jenner Homes who eventually got planning permission to demolish the house and build fifteen flats (for details see Dr Jenning’s account). 

Complied and Researched by Roger Lendon, © 2010 

(1)     “Elvestone Fore Street Hill” Anita Jennings 2002. Folder at Fairlynch Museum.

(2)     Budleigh Salterton Early Days Remembered. Otter Valley Association publication. 

(3)     Pigot’s Directory 1830

(4)     FreeBMD.com

(5)     histfam.familysearch.org/familygroup.php?familyID=F64631

(6)     East India Register

(7)     FamilySearch.com

(8)     Annual Army List and Indian Civil Service List 1879

(9)     Entry from Transcription of Old Haileyburians  

(10) Who’s Who

(11) Times of India

(12) Minutes of the Budleigh Salterton Croquet Club

(13) A Dictionary of Music & Musicians Vol 3.

(14) Musik Lexikon 1882

(15) 1880 Census for 3rd Ward, Athens, Clarke, Georgia

(16) Fort Worth Gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, July 10, 1891

(17) This paragraph from information at www.liveauctioneers.com/item/4405188

(18) This paragraph is largely taken from an account by Ian Buchanan in the Journal of Olympic History Vol.5 Number2,1997

102 BS-B-00034 Biography any