| Administrative History | Origins and growth by purchase
The Leveson family were established in Willenhall and the borough of Wolverhampton from the late thirteenth century. Profits from farming and wool dealing enabled purchase of further land in Willenhall, Wolverhampton and vicinity. Subsequent diversification into the weaving of cloth funded land purchases throughout the later medieval period. In the sixteenth century various properties were purchased piecemeal in both Staffordshire (Perton, Wolverhampton, Penn and Rowley Somery) and Shropshire (Leegomery, Sheriffhales and Newport). Following the dissolution of the monasteries, the sites and estates of Trentham Priory and Stone Priory in Staffordshire, and Lilleshall Abbey in Shropshire, along with lesser estates in other counties, were purchased by James Leveson between 1537 and 1543. Trentham and Lilleshall were both developed into family homes.
Expansion through inheritance and marriage
On the death of Sir Richard Leveson of Trentham in 1605, the estates passed to Sir Richard Leveson of Halling, Kent, a descendant of James Leveson's brother Nicholas. In 1615 the Kent estate was enlarged by the purchase of three manors. Black Notley was acquired by marriage. On Sir Richard's death in 1661 his Trentham and Lilleshall estates were inherited by his great-nephew, Sir William Gower (d. 1691), who changed his surname to Leveson-Gower. The Leveson estates in the West Midlands and the southeast were thus united with the estates of the gentry Gower family, established at Stittenham, Yorkshire, since the 12th century.
Sir William's eldest son John (d. 1709) was created Baron Gower in 1703; his eldest son, also John, 2nd Baron (d. 1754), was created Viscount Trentham and Earl Gower in 1746. In 1711 the 1st Earl inherited a portion of the Devon and Cornwall estates of his cousin, William Henry Granville, 3rd Earl of Bath, as representative of his dead mother, who was aunt to the 3rd Earl. At the same time he inherited a reversionary interest in the estates of Elizabeth (nee Cavendish), Duchess of Albemarle. His son Granville Leveson-Gower (d.1803) was created Marquess of Stafford in 1786. During the course of the eighteenth century the Leveson-Gowers also purchased property in both Lichfield and Newcastle in an attempt to obtain political control over their respective electorates.
In 1788 the 1st Marquess's eldest surviving son, George Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower, married Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland in her own right, proprietress of the estates of the earldom of Sutherland and barony of Assynt in Scotland from her father's death in 1766. The Sutherland estates, with their administrative centre at Dunrobin Castle, were added to extensively between 1787 and 1829 - Skelbo, Gordonbush, Armadale, Strathy and Tongue, etc. At the death of his father in 1803 Earl Gower also inherited a very substantial life-income from the Bridgewater canal and estates from his maternal uncle, Scroop Egerton, Duke of Bridgewater. Gower succeeded his father as 2nd Marquess, and was created 1st Duke of Sutherland in 1833, uniting the Leveson-Gower estates with those of Sutherland and the Bridgewater life interest.
In 1833 the Sutherlands purchased the lease on York House, St. James's, which was incomplete at the death of the Duke of York. Stafford House, as they renamed it, was to become the greatest private house in London.
The combined estates totalled over 1,000,000 acres, and the couple were the greatest landowners in Britain after the Crown. The 2nd Marquess was raised to the Dukedom of Sutherland in 1833, dying later that year. The Duke and Duchess-Countess were succeeded by their eldest son, George Granville as 2nd Duke and 20th Earl of Sutherland, in 1833 and 1839 respectively. The Bridgewater property, including a massive art collection, passed to their second son, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, later 1st Earl of Ellesmere.
A major purchase by the 2nd Duke, in 1849, was Cliveden on the River Thames in Buckinghamshire, in close proximity to Windsor Castle. The house was rebuilt after a fire in the same year. Cliveden served as a base for the Sutherlands whilst the Duchess was in attendance on Queen Victoria as Mistress of the Robes. It was sold on her death in 1868.
The titles passed from father to son successively through George Granville William, 3rd Duke (1861); Cromartie, 4th Duke (1893) and George, 5th Duke (1913). On the death of the childless 5th Duke in 1963 the dukedom passed to a distant male heir, John, 5th Earl of Ellesmere (d.2000). The earldom and the remaining estates passed to his niece Elizabeth.
Disposals of property
In 1585 and in 1614 there were sales of property in Walsall and Wolverhampton, probably to meet the debts of Sir Walter Leveson. The Kent and Essex estates were disposed of between 1627 and 1650.
The failure of the family's political aspirations in Lichfield led to the sale of their property there in the 1820s.
Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, acquired in 1849 was sold in 1868.
The late nineteenth century saw the start of a long process of disposal of property. The largest single disposal was in 1893 with Longton and Newcastle in north Staffordshire, and the bulk of the south Staffordshire estate (Wolverhampton, Willenhall, Wednesfield, Rowley Regis, etc), followed by Ketley in Shropshire and Meir in north Staffordshire in 1895. Wellington in Shropshire was sold in 1908. The Yorkshire estates of Stittenham and Stockton on the Forest were sold in 1912. Blurton, Normacot, Tittensor, Barlaston and Hill Chorlton in north Staffordshire) and Great Wyrley in south Staffordshire were sold in 1913-1914, followed by Penn and Wolverhampton in 1917.
By the first decade of the twentieth century the maintenance of Trentham Hall as a family home had become unsustainable, and the greater part of it was demolished in 1910-1912. The lease on Stafford House was also sold on the succession of the 5th Duke in 1913. Lilleshall remained the only significant family home in England.
The Trentham estate was disposed of in the decade following World War II.
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| Description | The part of the collection dating from the Middle Ages is made up of the medieval deeds, and of some manor court papers. Many of the medieval deeds are merely conveyances of property; these are of local interest, where they are useful for information on topography, local place names, and agricultural conditions. They include many deeds concerning the North Staffordshire estates of Trentham Priory. Scattered amongst the conveyances, however, are a variety of other documents, including for instance, a contract for rebuilding the tower of St. Peter's, Wolverhampton, over a period of four years (1475), and a charter of 1263 granting certain rights to the burgesses of Wolverhampton and thereby indicating that Wolverhampton may have been organized as a borough at that date in a way hitherto not suspected. Many deeds have seals attached, some of them exceptionally fine, for example, one of the Verdon family and another for the "borough of Alton".
The Leveson family originated in Willenhall and many of the medieval deeds of Wolverhampton and its vicinity probably trace the increasing wealth and influence of the family as sheep farmers and clothiers.
The Staffordshire manor court record papers are sparse (relative to the general size of the collection) and mainly concern Penn and Wolverhampton, though there is a group of 15th century court rolls concerning Trentham.
Amongst other medieval documents that may be briefly mentioned are some account rolls (1489-1522) of the important Dudley barony, covering several manors in South Staffordshire and giving information on industrial undertakings like bloom-smithies; and some accounts and rentals of monasteries whose lands were acquired by the Leveson family after the Dissolution. There are a few other medieval estate accounts, chiefly for Great Wyrley manor.
For the 16th century the most valuable part of the collection is Sir John Leveson's official papers. These are an important source for defence arrangements in the south east of England, state regulation of economic matters, and political intrigues (especially those connected with the Earl of Essex) under Elizabeth I. Other 16th century papers concern the somewhat oppressive system of Crown wardship, whereby, in effect, the heirs of most substantial landowners, if under age, became wards of the Crown.
There are some 16th century manorial records for Staffordshire, chiefly manors of Penn, Stowheath, Wolverhampton Deanery and Great Wyrley.
There are some estate accounts for the 16th century, but these do not form a connected series, and it is not until the 17th century that estate material becomes at all full. Indeed, for early 17th century these are still only occasional, but from 1668 onwards there are fairly full accounts for the estates in Staffordshire and elsewhere, forming the beginning of an immense series of groups that continues with only small gaps through the 18th century and into the 19th. There is also a long series of rentals for the estates in Staffordshire and Shropshire, beginning in 1599 and running through the 18th and 19th centuries. These records provide much information about an estate which was gradually built up during the 17th and 18th centuries to become one of the largest in the West Midlands.
For the 17th century there is also a good deal of personal correspondence. Much of this consists of letters addressed to Sir Richard Leveson, K.B., who was a prominent Royalist during the Civil War. Many letters concern Sir Richard's activities during the war, and his subsequent difficulties with Cromwell's government. One interesting group is about thirty letters written in 1653 to Sir Richard by his steward, who was then in London, mainly on estate business, but with constant references to political matters, the meeting of Parliament, the Dutch War, etc., that make them a useful source of information for the atmosphere in London at that time. A selection of these letters has been published in Staffordshire and the Great Rebellion.
Of the many other 17th century documents that might be mentioned, perhaps the one most worth describing is the account book for the building of the first large mansion at Trentham. The accounts begin in 1633, and cover nearly the whole period during which the hall was being built. It is possible to trace the building operations and their cost in great detail, including such points as the purchase of iron fittings in South Staffordshire, the procurement of stone from several quarries around Trentham, and the fetching of special items like ballcocks from London.
A brief mention should be made of the numerous late 16th and early 17th century lawsuits of which the records are included in the collection. Some of these involve such matters as disputes over common rights, or over cutting timber as fuel for ironworks, which are interesting to economic historians, others concern disputes over a valuable ship or carrack captured by Vice-Admiral Leveson from the Spaniards in the closing stage of the struggle which opened with the Armada; and over the affairs of Mary Fitton, the Vice-Admiral's mistress, and often supposed to be the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Other 17th century material includes many printed Acts of Parliament proclamations, political pamphlets, and broadsheets.
For the 18th and 19th centuries the estate records are so bulky and varied that it is impossible to describe their contents, fully, without taking up too much space. These are full accounts, vouchers, and rentals for the period 1700-1900, which show the financial side of the estate management in considerable detail. For the 18th century there is only a moderate quantity of estate correspondence, but from 1813 onwards there is a very voluminous series of estate agents' correspondence for both the central and local agencies, in which all aspects of estate management, and many other matters are discussed in detail. The correspondence, accounts, and rentals, are the main body of the later estate material, but they are supplemented by other smaller, but useful, groups of records. These include numerous estate agents reports and memoranda, which throw a good deal of light on how particular problems facing the estate from time to time were dealt with; numerous leases, mainly to agricultural tenants, but including leases for working coal and other minerals in both North and South Staffordshire; a rather fragmentary series of manor court papers, though these are supplemented for South Staffordshire by books deposited at Staffordshire Record Office by the stewards during the last 35 years; a large body of papers that were originally the records of the estate solicitors for North Staffordshire; estimates for estate income and expenditure, providing estate "budgets" for much of the 19th century; and records about such matters as insurance of farm buildings, game preservation, repairs to tenants' houses, water supplies, and management of home farms and of the parks surrounding the family's mansions. One other very valuable part of the estate records is the great series of estate maps and plans, numbering more than 1200, many of them accompanied by surveys. Very few of these date from before 1700 (though there is one interesting large scale map of Trentham, dated 1559), and one of the few disappointments in listing this collection was the discovery that there is no good series of 17th century estate maps for Staffordshire, though some excellent 17th century maps of the Sutherland estates in Shropshire are known to exist. For the 18th and 19th centuries however, the estate maps and plans are a fine collection. One section that may be singled out for special mention is a group of large scale maps drawn by a surveyor called Thomas Burton, about 1710. There are detailed maps, each usually covering all the Sutherland estates in one parish, and showing each field with its boundaries, name and acreage, the course of roads and streams, mill dams, etc., and in some cases a small pictorial sketch of the town or village concerned. For many parishes these are the first large scale maps available. For the late 19th and early 20th century there are also records relating to the disposal of estates including plans and sales particulars.
Taken all together these records provide a very complete picture of the management and fortunes of one of the largest Staffordshire estates. It is possible to trace in much detail the effect on the estate of such developments, as for instance, the 18th century enclosures and other agricultural improvements, or the agricultural depression at the end of the 19th century. The estate extended into some urban areas, notably Wolverhampton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Longton, and it is possible to obtain much information about the early topography of such places, their street plans, state of buildings, tenancy agreements, and the laying out of new streets as the towns grew. It is also possible to see how the rapid growth in population both in the Potteries and in the Black Country created problems in river pollution, water supply, and sewage disposal, and how such problems were often made more difficult by mining subsidence. There is also much information about social conditions. Some of the 19th century surveys, for instance, describe the circumstances of each tenant in detail, giving his occupation, number of his dependants, state of his house, whether the rent is paid regularly, and so forth. Amongst the estate memoranda are descriptions of house property in the area around Wolverhampton and Willenhall, giving details of the state of houses, and discussing the extent to which mining subsidence deterred landlords from erecting new buildings in certain areas. Some early 20th century strays from the Scottish estate records relate to game management.
All the above matters are fairly closely related to estate management, but the estate records also throw light on many other subjects. There is, for instance, much about political affairs. The 18th century accounts frequently include sections for expenditure on Parliamentary elections. The estate agents' letters often include remarks about political matters, in particular about the extent to which landlords and their agents could influence the voting of tenants and others. This is all the more valuable because information about political activity at this level of constituency management is not common, and it is particularly interesting the have the views of men who undertook the detailed work of mustering support for the political parties, and their candidates. The correspondence of the central agency in London also contains much evidence about the controversial Highland "Clearances", by which crofters and other small tenants were removed from large Highland estates during the 19th century, though the records of the factors who managed the Scottish estates of the Dukes of Sutherland have naturally been retained in Scotland. Nevertheless there is much evidence that throws new light on this much-disputed episode of Scottish history. Other topics about which the estate records provide information are canals, turnpike roads, and later, railways.
The mining records for the 18th and 19th centuries form a separate group. There are accounts, reports and some correspondence for the collieries in North Staffordshire, mainly at Meir Heath and Longton, South Staffordshire, mainly Wolverhampton and Rowley Regis, and for some workings in Shropshire. The surviving records are mostly concerned with output from collieries, and with royalties due, but there are some reports and letters about such matters as the financial prospects of the coal industry in general and of individual pits, the efficiency of the partnership or companies to which mines were leased, mine drawings, wage rates and the availability of skilled labour, the introduction of steam engines for pumping and for raising coal, trail borings, seams to be worked etc. The Record Office has hitherto suffered from a relative scarcity of mining records, despite the importance of coal mining in Staffordshire, and this accession is a valuable addition to the sources available.
It has already been mentioned that there is much political information to be found in the estate records. In addition, however, the collection includes a large deposit of papers concerned directly with Parliamentary elections. These mostly concern the constituencies of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Lichfield, but there are also some documents concerning Stafford borough and the Staffordshire county seats. The Lichfield evidence is particularly useful because it connects closely with other evidence about the same constituency to be found in the Anson and Dyott family papers, both deposited in the Record Office. There is now a very full body of evidence available for the Parliamentary politics of the Lichfield constituency, as seen from several points of view. For both Lichfield and Newcastle, the Sutherland collection provides detailed evidence about constituency management, electoral corruption, and popular political feeling. It is possible to see both how a wealthy and influential landowner could bribe or intimidate voters, and also how expensive such a process was for the landowner. It can be seen, for instance, that about 1820 the then head of the Leveson-Gower family, the Marquess of Stafford, decided to abandon his electoral influence in Lichfield, and sell his property there, owing to the great expense entailed.
The household and personal records for 19th century are also very extensive but rather scarce for earlier periods. The household records give a good picture of a great aristocratic household, with its hierarchy of domestic servants, craftsmen, gardeners, grooms, gamekeepers, etc. There are full accounts for the rebuilding of Trentham Hall in 1833 by Barry (better known as an architect of the House of Commons) and much information about the building of Stafford House (now known as Lancaster House), which was once the town mansion of the Dukes of Sutherland. Taken together with the estate papers, maps and plans, household records make it possible to follow the history of Trentham Hall in its successive rebuildings, and to trace the gradual development of the great park at Trentham, with its artificial lake and plantations, perhaps the largest piece of landscape gardening ever carried out in Staffordshire.
The purely personal correspondence for the 18th century is only moderate in quantity, but it does contain interesting allusion to political affairs. The 19th century personal correspondence is much more extensive. Much of this concerns politics. There are letters from many leading political figures, including, amongst Prime Ministers, Earl Grey, Lord Melbourne, Gladstone, Disraeli, Lord Palmerston and Lord Aberdeen. There are also a great many letters about life at Court under Queen Victoria; these include more than fifty letters from the Queen herself, written in her own hand throughout, about 70 letters from Edward VII while Prince of Wales, and many other autograph letters from other members of the royal family, foreign statesmen and royal personages, and such notable figures of the time as Garibaldi, the Italian patriot and querrilla leader. Other personal papers of interest include the diaries of Lord Ronald Leveson-Gower.
The early 20th century personal papers are also extensive, centring on the social and political correspondence of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. Political figures include most of the senior members of the British royal family, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, Asquith, Rosebery, Winston Churchill, Eden and Mackenzie King. Military correspondents include French, Fisher, Beatty, Chetwode, Joffre and Foch. Other significant personal papers include Duchess Millicent's literary manuscripts; papers relating to the Millicent Sutherland Ambulance unit (mobile field hospital), which saw service in Belgium and France; and papers of the North Staffordshire Hunt.
The foregoing account is a description, very much condensed, of the principal sections of the Sutherland manuscripts. A few lesser, but interesting, items, must be briefly mentioned. There are numerous papers about the widespread overseas interests of the Duke of Sutherland, including railway building in Turkey, Iraq and China, property development in Western Canada, secret negotiations about railway projects in the Middle East and about building a river canal, parallel to the Suez canal, and accounts of tours in India, Russia, and the United States. There are letters, minute books etc., about many charitable undertakings of the Victorian period, and much printed and manuscript material about a political agitation carried on about 1900-1914 about the dangers of the country relying on imported food supplies. There are also original letters from Earl Grey to Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to Britain in the early 19th century.
The collection also includes a very varied and miscellaneous collection of printed Parliamentary Acts and Bills, mostly concerned with Staffordshire affairs, and starting in the 16th century; many political pamphlets, broadsheets, posters, election handbills, etc.; many books and pamphlets on agricultural matters, mostly of the late 18th and 19th centuries; many trade catalogues, mostly for agricultural machinery, fencing, and building materials; many leaflets about charitable and religious institutions, and many catalogues for property sales, some complete with plans and photographs. |