Insuring Georgian Wimbledon
The Wimbledon Championships finish week so I thought I’d have a look at properties we insured in Wimbledon, — or Wimbleton, as the Hand in Hand clerks referred to it.
The first reference to Wimbledon I noticed as I digitized the registers came from April 1723 when Benjamin Foxley took out cover for his house and stables for £1000. The property was described as being in the lower part of town and was transferred to George Breholt in 1738. George Breholt was a Captain in the navy, and I hoped I might be able to find a family link to the pirate John Breholt because of the unusual, shared surname. John Breholt was accused of piracy several times and was behind an attempt to pardon the pirates of Madagascar and bring their treasure to England in the early 1700s. He had a brother called George, who sailed with him on at least one voyage, but I’ve been unable work out whether it is the same man who insured the property at Wimbledon.
Our next Wimbledon policy was also taken out in April 1723, only a few days after Benjamin Foxley insured his house. Policy 46425 was taken out by the excellently named Murthwait Ivatt on the Rose and Crown Ale house which was described as being on the north side of the road near the may pole common. The pub still exists today, owned by Youngs Brewery, and proudly states that it is Wimbledon’s oldest pub still on its original site.
Mr Ivatt lived at the time in Eagle House Wimbledon, which also still exists today, and had been purchased by Richard Ivatt in 1700. I’ve not been able to find any entries for Eagle House but the Ivatt family continued to insure the pub, which was being run by Mr Carter, until 1771. In the following decade, according to Historic Wimbledon: Caesar’s Camp to Centre Court, the inn was the starting point for the Wimbledon Machine, a public stage coach which travelled three times a week to London taking two hours to reach Charing Cross.
Another Wimbledon property insured by Hand in Hand which still exists today is Chester House which was insured in January 1760 by John Lawson. Described in the register as on the south west corner of Wimbledon Common, the house is said to have originally been built by the future James II for one of his mistresses. When Hand in Hand insured it, the property was valued at £1350 and was occupied by Mary Belitha. By 1788, the insurance was renewed by William Tooke and the house was occupied by a Mr Blake. Later, in the 1790s, it became the home of John Horne Tooke, the MP and parliamentary reformer, who apparently grew fruit (including grapes), in the garden there and grazed two cows. John Horne Tooke renewed insurance on the property with Hand in Hand in 1802.
Another property insured by John Lawson in Wimbledon is known today as Gothic Lodge. It was described in the policy register as the first house west from Shepherd’s Hatch. It was unoccupied in 1760 but by 1767 it was the home of John Eyles who was also insured with our oldest life company, Amicable Society. The property was still insured by the Lawson family in 1802 when the register says it was occupied by Lady Barnard. This was Lady Anne Barnard, a socialite and artist known for writing about her travels in South Africa in the 1790s. She was also the author of the ballad Ault Robin Gray which was first published anonymously in 1783. The house was later rented by the writer, Captain Frederick Marryat, author of the children’s classic Children of the New Forest. Later, Gothic Lodge became the home of electrical engineer William Preece and was the first house in London to have electricity and a home telephone.
John Lawson also insured other property on Wimbledon Common in January 1760, including the two properties which now make up Southside House on Woodhayes Road. Lawson lived in one of these himself in 1760 and the other was occupied by Reverend John Cooksey who was vicar of St Mary’s Wimbledon and founder the free school on the common which was housed in the octagonal building on Camp Road. The Lawson family continued to insure the properties with Hand in Hand up to 1815 by which time one of them was the home of Robert Wright ‘a gentleman from Suffolk of independent means’ whose name lives on in Wrights Alley.
Another property insured with Hand in Hand on the southside of Wimbledon Common in the 1770s was the home of the judge and politician Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe (or Smith according to the Hand in Hand clerk). Cases tried by Smythe, who was described as the ugliest man of his day, include that of Mary Blandy in 1752 who was convicted and hanged after she poisoned her father who had objected to her unsuitable relationship with a married man.
Sidney and his wife Sarah were visited there by the artist and letter writer Mary Granville Delany who was known for her paintings of flowers and her lively letters. In one letter she apologised for her untidy writing saying she was in a hurry to take her chaise to Wimbledon to see the Smythes. The property was first insured with Hand in Hand in March 1746 by Jacob Garrard Downing who was the grandson of Sir George Downing who had built Downing Street in the 1680s. He was also the cousin and heir of Sir George Downing who founded Downing College Cambridge through a donation in his will (in fact Garrard Downing and his wife, tried hard to block the endowment and significantly reduced the amount of money that eventually went to the college).
A year after Joseph Garrard Downing insured his property with Hand in Hand, another important Wimbledon property was insured with the company. Although it no longer exists, we know from descriptions in the policy register that Wimbledon House on the North side of the road at Wimbledon was 3 storeys high, included 16 wainstcotted rooms, 8 marble fireplaces, a staircase made of Portland stone, and was ‘finished in a grand manner’. The property was insured in April 1747 under policies 70268 to 70271 for a total of £4,050 by Bisse Richards, who had inherited the house, and his fortune, from his uncle Stephen Bisse, a very rich merchant and politician. In 1756, insurance on the house was renewed by Alderman Henry Bankes who was still living in the property in 1763. Coincidentally, 100 years later the house was owned by Henry W Peek who was one of the founding directors of Aviva’s ancestor company, Commercial Union, the company which eventually absorbed Hand in Hand.
Other occupants of Wimbledon House included Benjamin Bond Hopkins, who had inherited his fortune from the wealthy merchant John ‘Vulture’ Hopkins, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a former finance minister in the French government, who filled it with a wonderful collection of art. In 1815, the property was bought by Joseph Marryat who was an MP, banker, and Chairman of Lloyds. His wife Charlotte, who used the greenhouses of the Wimbledon House to cultivate rare plants, was one of the first female fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society and his son was the author Captain Frederick Marryat who leased nearby Gothic Lodge. Joseph Marryat was also a slave owner and a member of the ‘Committee of April 25, 1823’ which was formed to ‘influence the government and resist moves towards emancipation’.
The final Wimbledon resident insured with Hand in Hand was on the other side of the fight for the abolition of slavery. William Wilberforce, who headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade, renewed insurance on his house, known as Laurel Grove, with Hand in Hand in 1780 for £1400. He had inherited the house from his uncle, William Wilberforce jnr. who had in turn inherited it from his father, William Wilberforce. The property was first insured with Hand in Hand in August 1725 by William Jackson, for whom it had been built, and it was renewed by William Wilberforce (the abolitionist) up to 1787. Wilberforce had met and become friends with future Prime Minister, William Pitt, at university and his diaries are full of entries about entertaining Pitt at Wimbledon. According to the Life of William Wilberforce written by Wilberforce’s son, Samuel, Pitt enjoyed the country air of Wimbledon and would ride down late at night to stay even when Wilberforce was not at home. At one point Pitt lived in the Wimbledon house for four months and several sources refer to the existence of a note written by Pitt to Wilberforce at Wimbledon saying ‘Eliot, Arden and I will be with you before curfew, and expect an early meal of peas and strawberries’.
After one of Wilberforce’s gatherings at Wimbledon the gentlemen wanted to escort a Miss Woodley back across the common but could not find any horses to ride. Instead, Wilberforce and Pitt mounted two asses and according the ‘Gazetteer’, when Pitt’s refused to move ‘a passer-by exclaimed ‘What will nobody kick the Minister’s A — — -!’ The British museum includes a satirical print of Pitt and Wilberforce riding asses on Wimbledon Common which refers to the incident and it was also the subject of a ballad published in 1784.
