User:Nilfanion/Warleigh

Below is my thoughts on broad structure of the article at Warleigh House:

Basic structure

Warleigh is an historic estate ... in Devon... (Infobox, ideally with image and map)

History

This would run from first mention of property: "Warleigh was first mentioned in the reign of King Stephen when it was owned by Sampson Foliot"

through to current use:

"The house is currently a private residence, having briefly been a hotel."

This section should exclude any and all information not pertinent to the estate itself. For instance the content of a tombstone, or the issue of one of the owners, is irrelevant to the estate. Change of ownership is important, and the causes of this are noteworthy. eg "The estate was sold by Bampfylde in 1741 and purchased by Radcliffe".

House

Description of the house itself (picture of house)

Estate

Description of the broader physical estate (picture(s) of broader estate)

Comments

Missing stuff

Aside from lack of information about the house and physical estate - what happened with regards to the Radcliffes? Did they sell it? If so, when, why? If not, why are they no longer there?

Descent?

This should be removed from the article, and the content placed into articles about the people. For instance the Bampfylde line should be discussed independently of Warleigh. If Warleigh is significant to an individual Bampfylde, then that information should be mentioned in their article. If, as appears to be the case, the 3rd Baronet had nothing to do with Warleigh, except to inherit the estate and then pass it on to his heir, there is zero need to mention him in Warleigh's article. The entire paragraph about him has nothing to do with Warleigh (and doesn't even mention it).

Likewise the details of the modern ownership is irrelevant. Its in private hands, being bought and sold as any other property by non-notable individuals and not being inherited - that is not descent.

Detailed genealogy is not appropriate to an article about the estate. Consider if the estate had reverted to the Crown in 1750, before being sold in 1790. If the owners in this period were handled identically to the other owners, there would be a brief summary of the Royal genealogy and of the succession of George III. Both of which are completely irrelevant to Warleigh, just as Warleigh is irrelevant to the Crown.

Correct description of these events in Warleigh's article would be a "the estate reverted to the Crown in 1760, before being given to X in 1790 for" - no more or less :)

Comment from (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 15:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC))

This article is intended to be about the descent of this historic estate, not about the physical features of the estate nor about the architecture of the house. I think your concern therefore is about the title of the article. This is the standard way of dealing with manorial histories used e.g. by Victoria County History, which concentrates entirely on descent from owner to owner, under the heading "Manor of XYX". The house is merely a symptom or manifestation of the family and is in effect its monument. Without the family the estate would be unknown, un-named virgin forest. The estate is notable because it was the seat of important families, not the other way around. This article expands on the VCH model, giving more details of each link in the chain. This type of article is about descents, and each link is equally important. If a link in the chain is notable in himself (i.e. MP, Sheriff, etc), his biog can go in his own article, and only a summary need appear in the descent. For example, your point about reversion to the crown. If not notable per se, then it is important to relate his part in the descent: who he married, and who his children were, this feeds into the next tier, and possibly later tiers where the main line fails and the cousins inherit. A total non-entity in biographical terms could be a star player in the descent of an estate: he could gamble it away, burn it down, leave it to a servant, etc. Or he could merely be the father of a star player, vital to record. Monuments in the parish church come in here too. They are notable in themselves, often mentioned in Pevsner, etc, or are primary sources specificlly allowed by WP. Often the lord of the manor was also patron of the church, which effectively made the church his own property and play-thing, that's why there are grand monuments there and manorial pews, because no one could stop him (or his son) putting them there to glorify his family and estate. That's not the case with today's discreet monuments remembering the organist or church-warden, paid for by subscription from parishioners. These are not the mere grave-stones of parishioners. His ancestors probably built the church as well as the manor house. These are notable families in that their pedigrees are generally recorded in the heraldic visitations for each county, a select grouping who wielded political and administrative power until the 19th c. Their claim to polital power derived from their estate in land, the basis of feudal society, even long after the after the abolition of feudal tenure in the Tenures Abolition Act 1660. Without the estate they fell into obscurity. That is why 17th century historians of Devon (my main area of contribution) and other counties concentrated almost exclusively on families when discussing manors: Pole, Sir William (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, Sir John-William de la Pole (ed.), London, 1791, is almost exclusively devoted to descent of estates, marriages, anecdotes, monuments, etc, as is Risdon, Tristram (d.1640), Survey of Devon, 1811 edition, London, 1811, with 1810 Additions. In addition Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitation of the County of Devon: Comprising the Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, lists each family in relation to its seat or estate, as does Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937. These 4 works are my principal sources, and I follow the VCH model, bang up-to-date.

To summarise, your view of the article "Warleigh was first mentioned in the reign of King Stephen when it was owned by Sampson Foliot", assumes that "Warleigh" was always somewhere important and the owners were mere appendages. This is with respect a common and superficial way of thinking about this topic, but a little deeper reflection will reveal that it's the other way around: Warleigh became famous because of its owners, who literally put it on the map.

Of course where a famous or notable estate has fallen into some obscurity due to the fall or departure of the prominent family, the reader is still interested in "what became of it": books have been written on this theme which sell like hotcakes, see Lauder, Rosemary, Vanished Houses of North Devon, Tiverton, 2005. The "descent", whether by inheritance or purchase, needs to be brought up to date.

If you would like to see an article on the physical features of the estate, or on the architecture of any of the various mansion houses which have occupied the site, those remain articles waiting to be written. But that's not what my contribution is about.

As for your question: "what happened with regards to the Radcliffes? Did they sell it? If so, when, why? If not, why are they no longer there?", sadly (non-WP:OR) history does not record all the answers. I am hoping someone with access to relevant sources will at some time fill in this section which has eluded my powers of sourcing.(Lobsterthermidor (talk) 15:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC))