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A Brief History of the Knight Family
By Pauline Bresley, 1958
Born at Madeley in 1659 of an old Shropshire family, he had early embarked on the iron trade, working a forge in the Coalbrookdale, long before this became a famous iron field. Moving to a forge near Shawbury, he married, about 1680, Elizabeth, daughter of a local squire, Andrew Payne. A few years later, seeking fresh smelting fuel, Richard Knight moved to North Herefordshire.
In those days before the use of pit coal, smelting was done by wood charcoal, burnt in small furnaces, with bellows worked by water power; they were therefore situated on streams, near tracts of coppice wood. Bringewood, the royal chase, on the banks of the river Teme, presented an ideal situation, and smelting had been started there about 1595, by the Earl of Essex. He had employed ironmasters from Bewdlely, among them a family called Walker. From Bewdley came also some of the iron ore, carried on pack asses, which probably crossed the Teme at Ashford.
In 1630, Charles I granted Bringewood Chase to Robert, Earl of Lindsay, the Lord Great Chamberlain; he, in 1639 leased the Lodge 'in the forest of Bringwood alias Borringwood, to Nicholas Blackhead. The name of this forest, and its village of Burrington, evidently derive from the Saxon; the wood and the settlement of the tribe of Borh.
After the restoration of Charles II the lands had passed to the Earl of Craven, and were being leased to local men such as Richard Coles of Burrington, millwright, Richard Walker of Wooton, Thomas Harley of Downton, Esquire, Edmund Rusbitch of Downton, Yeoman, and Job and Francis Walker of Bringewood Forge. The latter leased 'the ironworks consisting of a Forge and a Furnace and the liberty to get limestone and iron in the Forest of Bringwood' to Richard Knight in the 1690s. Soon the Lodge and the Brakes were added, together with many neighbouring properties, including, in 1728, the Manor of Downton, where he lived for the rest of his life, though which was the manor house is not certain.
The success of Richard Knight in those early days of industry was remarkable. He was undoubtedly a great character, and widely known in the West Midlands. He loved to ride a fine horse, and in that way covered many miles of the wild country between Leintwardine and the Worcestershire Stour, collecting and carrying large sums of money in his saddle bags. He remained a man of simple tastes, but it is said that he loved to entertain his friends, and hold convivial parties round his great punch bowl. This beautiful silver bowl, made in London in 1708, is still in use by his descendants today.
Richard Knight is one of the great names among the early ironmasters. In 1740 there were only six furnaces in Shropshire, of which he owned two. He owned another in Staffordshire, and owned or had shares in nearly all the ironworks in Worcestershire.
For his four sons he provided estates; for Richard, the eldest, Croft Castle; for Thomas, Wormesley Grange, and for Edward, Wolverley Hall; Ralph, the youngest, evidently received property at Burrington. For his six daughters he made money settlements; they were married to men of neighbouring families; Barker, Spooner, Baugh, Carless and Rogers.
At his father's death the eldest son, Richard inherited in tail male, the Manor and Lordships of Downton and Leintwardine, and the Forests of Mortimer and Bringewood. He was living at Croft Castle, having married, about 1718, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Samual Powel of Stanage Park. The date of the purchase of Croft Castle is not certain, but Sir Archer Croft, whose family had owned it since the Norman Conquest, was heavily involved, financially, the prosperous Knights and he left the neighbourhood about 1727.
The Richard Knights were certainly living at Croft before 1746, when their 27 year old daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, was married to Thomas Johnes of Cardiganshire. Attached to her marriage settlement document is a slip of paper bearing her father's hand. It reads: "Money laid out in the purchase of Stanage 7,500 pounds." This note bears the date March 1755.
Thus Croft Castle and Stanage Park passed in due course to the eldest son of this marriage, Thomas Johnes, born in 1743, and baptised at St Laurence's Church. He attended a dames school in Ludlow, thence to Shrewsbury Grammar School and to Eton. At the age of 20 he embarked on the Grand Tour of Europe, in the company of his friend, Robert Liston.
For ten years after his return from the Tour, young Thomas Johnes enjoyed the social life of Herefordshire, and the intellectual companionship of his cousins at Downton. During the 1770s the Gothic style was becoming the fashion in architecture, the picturesque in scenery, and liberalism in politics. It seems likely that Lord Bateman's perfect essay in the former, at Shobden Church, spurred young Johnes into carrying out the beautiful Gothic decorations at Croft, at the same time making a comfortable Georgian home of the mediaeval castle, which in the 15th century had sheltered Owen Glendower.
A letter dated 1777 written by a cousin, Jane Johnes, to her mother in Cardiganshire, gives a lively picture of social life at Croft. Among one day's callers were Lord and Miss Clive (eldest son of Clive of India, later Earl of Powis), Sir Robert and Miss Gurney, Miss Ducan, Mr and Mrs Thomas Harley and their five daughters from Berrington Court and Lord and Lady Oxford, from Eywood. Jane Johnes had visited their houses, and had recently attended the Leominster Assembly of which she says, "Very brilliant, no less than four lords there, all the Harleys and a great number of honourables."
In 1783 Thomas Johnes married his cousin, Jane. The story of their life together at Hafod, and of their only daughter, the gifted Marianne, whose death in 1811 was the crowning blow of a series of devastating disappointments, has been beautifully told by Elizabeth Inglis Jones, in her novel, 'Peacocks in Paradise'.
Had the Downton estates not been entailed the fortunes of other descendants of the Knight family would have been very different. Unable to be left to Elizabeth Johnes, these properties passed, at her father's death about 1760 to his second brother, Thomas Knight, Rector of Bewdley, who had settled at Wormesley Grange, near Hereford, with his wife, the former Ursula Nash, and his two sons, Richard Payne and Thomas Andrew, and two daughters, Ursula and Barbara. The brothers were to become famous, but the two little girls both died in their teens. Their portrait, by Hono, hangs now in a circular frame, in their brother's castle.
At their father's death in 1764, this family moved to the old house at Mary Knolll, from whence the younger boy, born in 1758, attended a dame school in Ludlow before proceeding to a boarding school at Chiswock, thence to Baliol College, Oxford. The elder brother, inheritor of the estates, Richard Payne Knight, born 1750, although too delicate to go to school, became a brilliant Greek scholar, and a famous antiquary, whose magnificent collection of bronzes and coins was bequeathed to the British Museum. He was also a writer and poet, and an authority on landscape gardening.
At the age of 21 he had sufficient confidence in his taste and knowledge to embark on the building of an immense stone castle, in mediaeval style, on the hill above his grandfather's Bringewood Forge, in his manor of Downton. To convey to this site some of the vast amount of materials required, he first built, in 1772, a stone bridge over the Teme, to connect with the road through Deepwood, the ancient road from the Severn to Leintwardine, which had formerly crossed the Teme by the packhorse bridge at Downton Gorge.
Some evidence of the famous high-handed manner of Richard Payne is shown by the fact that, no sooner had his huge undertaking commence, than he left for one of his many tours of Italy and Greece. In September 1772 he sent a note from Calais, to his uncle, ordering 20,000 Scotch fir trees, 8,000 other trees and 200 rose trees; 'to be planted behind the house, where the young trees were planted in the spring.'
This uncle, Samuel Nash, had been left to deal with the many problems presented by the surveyor, Mr Prichard and the chief stone mason, Edward Grundy, together with the other foremen. Some of these matters were reported by Uncle Nash to his nephew in notes addressed 'A Monsieur Knight chez Monsieur le Marquis de Bell. Rome.' Such items as 'One man can hew little more than 5 feet of stone per day'. '159,000 bricks are made'. 'Mr Prichard has this day sent his bill, viz. Attending three times at Downton to fix on a site for the new building'.
The replies to the painstaking uncle were often couched in the most brusque terms.
Some of the rates paid for work are of interest; stone workers were paid 2/6 a day; a high wage for that period when woodmen were paid 1/6. William Monnington's team of three horse pulled stone to 'The New House' at the rate of 4/- a day. Each journey made by Grundy to Bouldon Quarry on horseback, was charged at 5/-; by 1774 he was going to Bouldon for specific items, such as window sills, 'stone for the portico', 'stone for the staircase'. Journey to Coalbrookdale 'in search of stone slate' cost 6/- and to Oswostry 'for blue slate' 30/-
The main building of Downton Castle was finished in 1778, though the domed dining room, the Great Room, was added in 1782. For some years afterwards work continued on the decorating and furnishing of the classical interior, and in layhing out the grounds in the naturalistic style, beloved of Richard Payne and his friend Uvedale Price of Foxley. These two strove to discredit, by such means as the latter's "Essays on the Picxturesque' and the former's poem 'The Landscape', the rococo designs of Capability Brown, who for many years had been smoothing out the scenery surrounding the symmetrical houses of the mid-18th century. Downton Castle itself was really the fore-runner of modern domestic architecture, its irregular form following the natural conditions of its setting; it was in fact the first planned breakaway from neo-classicism.
Richard Payne Knight was a man endowed by Nature and circumstance with gifts far exceeding most. In addition to many valuable paintings, he collected a fabulous library at Downton, in which it was said that he often read for ten hours at a stretch. In his social life he was an extreme sophisticate, suffering the foolish not at all, but surrounding himself always with the elegant, the intellectual and the artistic; but he had a sense of humour, and wrote amusing verses satirising social occasions, as well as eulogising some of the beautiful women of his acquaintance; among whom were Lady Oxford, beloved of Lord Byron, and Lady Hamilton, who with her husband and Lord Nelson he had entertained at Downton.
His house at No 3 Soho Square, was the meeting place of a circle of brilliant people, and the home of his collection of bronzes, which had drawn from Horace Walpole his nickname of 'Night of the Brazen Milk Pot.'
Together with Sir Uvedale and the lovely Lady Caroline Price, Payne Knight loved to tour the countryside 'doctoring' as they called it, their friends' parks; adding ruins and rocks, forming gorges for streams, and turning all into a wild but ordered naturalness. At Downton they built a farmhouse to resemble a Gothic church.
They were of course great admirers of Hafod, where Richard's cousins Thomas and Jane Johnes had built an ethereal Gothic house on the hills above the Devils Bridge, in Carmarthenshire, and where they were endeavouring to establish an idyll of prosperous existence for the local people. The impractical schemes of that fabulous couple were forever failing, and frequently they faced financial ruin through their extravagance; yet because of their generosity and their loving hearts they were always a happy family.
During their successful years, Hafod was a centre of exceptional social and intellectual brilliance, visited and loved by many famous people, not least among them, Richard Payne Knight. One who did not admire the eccentricities of Hafod, however, was old Mrs. Johnes, the former Elizabeth Knight, who with her daughter Anne, and son Samuel, had moved to London.
At the end of the century, after the disastrous fire at Hafod, Thomas was forced to sell his mother's and grandmother's former homes. In 1800 Stanage was sold to Edward Rogers of Wigmore, and in 1799 Croft Castle was sold to Somerset Davies, purchaser of Sir Job Charlton's Ludlow House, No 27 Broad Street, and lawyer to many local landed families, including old Richard Knight. With his wife, Isabella Lacy's dowry Lawyer Davies had bought, in 1750, lands at Wigmore and Aston; those he left to his son, who had become M.P. for Ludlow. In about 1830 the latter sold the Aston property to the Downton Castle aestate. He lived for many years at Croft, which remained in his family even longer; but in 1923 it was bought back by the Croft family, and occupied by them for 35 years, before being given to the National Trust in 1957.
In 1824 Richard Payne Knight died at Soho Square. According to his cousin, Samuel Rogers, his last years in London were restless and sad. As a philosopher and an artist he had been in advance of his time; he sought always the idea behind the artistic expression; one at least of his literary publications had to be withdrawn, as it shocked a public not yet prepared to consider elemental thought. Lawrence's painting, now at Downton, surely portrays this unquiet mind, forever seeking an elusive ideal; yet paving the way, together with other thinkers of that revolutionary fin-de-siecle, for the discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries.
When he was 50, Richard Payne had begun to tire of his Castle, and having decided against matrimony, had appointed his brother, Thomas Andrew as his heir. In 1809 Thomas Andrew, with his wife, the former Frances Felton of Woodhall, their only son Thomas Andrew, then aged 13, and their three daughters, moved from Elton Hall across the Teme to Downton Castle. Richard Payne retained possession of the library and pictures, but removed himself to a cottage outside the grounds, which was called alternatively Gravel or Stonebrook Cottage. There he stayed, with a large quantity of books, when he visited Herefordshire; more and more did he make over property to his brother and nephew, making it clear that the whole estate was to belong to them and their heirs.
Thomas Andrew Knight was a very different man to his elder brother. Although, like him a brilliant scholar, with a prodigious memory he was extremely shy and retiring, and his chief interest lay in natural science. While living at Elton he carried out many experiments in his farm and hothouse, which were to have far reaching results in British horticulture. He was the first man in England to practise cross pollination of fruits and shrubs, and through his scientific discoveries such fruits as apples, pears and cherries were changed from semi-wild anonymous types to named varieties of the highest standard. He was particularly interested in growing fruit from seed, and thus eliminating the weaknesses which grafting encouraged. Among the many varieties he raised were the Grange apple and the Elton cherry.
Sir Joseph Banks, that great scientist and traveller and Fellow of the Royal Society, became a frequent visitor to Donwton, and made great use of his host's discoveries. Through him other scientists were introduced, and Downton became a centre of interest to geologists, meteorologists and other natural historians, and its name perpetuated in their work. Their host's papers on various aspects of fruit tree culture were first read by him to the Royal Society in London, during the 1790s and were among the influences which lead to the formation of the royal Horticultural Society, of which Thomas Knight was the second President.
In addition to his scientific and cultural activities Thomas Knight played a considerable part in the civic and social life of Herefordshir and south Shropshire. Among the many people he entertained at the Castle were Lucien Buonaparte and his family who while exiled from France were living at Dinham House, near Ludlow Castle.
Thomas Andrew was bailiff of Ludlow with Richard Salwey in 1803, and a J.P. though not a Member of Parliament, as his brother had been. He was also a Commissioner of Roads, and in that capacity earnestly opposed the scheme to alter the road at Ludford, put forward by Edmund Lechmere Charlton in 1825. For several years correspondence passed between these two on this subject. Thomas Andrew wished to await the invited opinion of the engineer, Thomas Telford, on the condition of Ludlow's ancient bridge, but Charlton was anxious to proceed with, what was called for many years afterwards, the 'New Cutting'.
The object of this was to divert the existing coach road, which ran from the bridge in an easterly direction passing the front of Ludford House, so that it should run southwards from the bridge, up a steep hill at the back of the house. Knight's objection to this was that the steep descent to the bridge would be dangerous for the horses. He was overruled however; the cutting commenced about 1830, and Charlton paid compensation to the landlord of the Old Boll Inn at Ludford, for his loss of trade.
The three daughters of Thomas and Frances Knight were married during the second decade of the 19th century; the third; Charlotte, in 1824 to their neighbour,Sir William Edward Rouse Boughton of Downton Hall. This estate, some six miles to the east of the other Downton, had come to his father, Charles Boughton of Rouse Lench, when in 1782 he married Catherine, heiress to William Pearce Hall, who died in 1783. The latter, born in 1724, was the second son of Wredenhall Pearce of Ludlow, and his wife, the former Mary Shephard, heiress of her father, William Shephard of Middleton, whose wife Mary was the heiress of the 17 Halls of Downton Hall.
William Pearce added his grandmother's name on inheriting the estate, and between 1750 and 60 built a double bow fronted house onto the older one; embellishing it with fine plaster work, which, in the ballroom particularly, was designed to display the portraits and interests of himself and his forebears.
In 1791 Charles Boughton was created 1st Baronet of Rouse Lench, which property he had inherited from his mother, assuming the surname of Rouse. In 1794 he inherited the older baronetcy from his brother Sir Edward Boughton of Lawford Hall. His wife's portrait was painted by Romney in 1785, and hangs at Downton Hall. Their son William's marriage to Charlotte Knight thus united several Shropshire families; but it so chanced that the birth of their two sons in 1825 and 1826 increased the ties between the two Downtons, as each son inherited one of the properties, and carried the association happily into the 20th century.
But the cause of this turn of events was a melancholy one indeed. In the autumn of 1827 Thomas Andrew Knight's only son Thomas Andrew, was accidentally shot through the eye at one of his own shooting parties. He was carried to a cottage and spent his last breath exonerating the unfortunate perpetrator of the accident. From the account of his friend, the Rev. T. Salwey, he appears to have been a particularly gifted and charming young man.
This terrible blow to his family was two edged. In addition to his natural sorrow Thomas Andrew had to face the fact that his estates were jeopardised. His brother's will had been carelessly worded, and the Master of the Rolls, Lord Eldon, chose to interpret it as containing an 'in tail male' clause. This meant that instead of being able to bequeath the Downton estates to his daughters and their heirs, they would pass at his death to the family of his uncle, Edward Knight of Wolverley.
Thomas Andrew was overwhelmed at this threat; he knew in his heart that his brother had intended the property to remain in their branch. The younger brother had had no fortune of his own, and everything with which he intended to endow his daughters was vested in Downton.
Nevertheless John Knight of Wolverley and Exmoor chose to take up the legal fight, and for the last two years of Thomas Andrew's life it was being waged. He died in 1838 bequeathing the case to his son-in-law Sir William, to whom he had left the estates in trust for his second son. Judgment was given in their favour by the Rolls Court in 1840, and in 1844 the House of Lords upheld the decision. In due course Andrew Johnes Rouse Boughton entered into his inheritance, and in 1857 assumed the additional surname of Knight.
The elder brother Charles in 1856 inherited his father's baronetcy and the estates of Downton Hall. The brothers married two sisters, Mary and Eliza Severne; they both lived into the 20th century, raising their families and caring for their estates during these prosperous years of Queen Victoria's reign, when their great grandfather, Richard Knight's early labours must have seemed to have come to a fine fruitage.
To trace the Wolverley branch of the family we must return to Richard Knight's third son Edward, born in 1699. During the 1720s his father sent him to Worcestershire to acquire and develop the potential iron industries on the River Stour.
He was evidently an astute businessman, like his father, and carried out his mission with much success. He acquired all the water power on the Stour; converted the old cornmills to ironworks; bought up the holdings of William Rea and the Jewkes family and others, and of course contributed greatly to the development of Stourport and Stourbridge. He bought for himself the estate of Wolverley Halll, near Kidderminster. In 1757 he gave evidence to the Committee who were examining the Petition of Merchants and Ironmongers. He told them that he made about 1,00 tons of bar iron a year, for the use of the nail makers alone.
Edward Knight married, in the 1730s, Elizabeth James of Solihull, and had three sons and three daughters. He was evidently regarded as the financial authority by his family, and letters survive containing his advice on investments. He was already one of those who preferred dealing with the Banks and confessed to Thomas Johnes his dislike of private loans. In 1765 Johnes and his moter-in-law Mrs. Knight, were thinking of lending 4,000 pounds to a noble neighbour about whose security Edward was doubtful. The deaths of his two elder brothers left him with the responsibility of numerous young relatives to advise, particularly the Reverend Thomas' family at Wormseley Grange.
At his death, in 1780, Edward was succeeded at Wolverley by his eldest son Edward, who died unmarried in 1812. The second son James lived at Ludlow, and also died unmarried, in 1815. The third son John Knight, born in 1740, had married Henrietta Cunyngham, and lived at Lea Castle, near Wolverley. Their eldest son John was made heir to his uncle Edward, at Wolverley.
This John Knight had the pioneering spirit of his grandfather, though his business acumen proved ultimately less successful. In the year 1815 the Royal Forest of Exmoor had been enclosed and in 1818, 10,00 acres of it were purchased by John Knight for 50,000 pounds; by 1820 his holding had increased to 15,000 acres. He and his wife moved to the Castle Inn at Lynton, from whence he proceeded on the brave experiment of developing the wild moorland into productive farmland. The story of this achievement has been told by C.S. Orwin, in a book published in 1929, entitled 'The Reclamation of Exmoor Forest."
The only house on the estate had been enclosed with a little land in 1659, and had become the Forester's house, and an inn; it was called Simonsbath. John Knight laid out its 12 acres as a village, with a church, which became recognised as a parish in 1856. To the dismay of the South Molton Stag Hunt, Knight enclosed his 15,000 acres in a stone wall. He then built 22 miles of metalled roads for the public use, and encouraged others to do the same. He experimented to find the right types of stock for that country; Highland and Hereford cattle gave way to Shorthorns and Devons; Cheviot sheep to Merinos; Westphalian pigs were tried and given up; Dongola Arabs were imported and crossed with Cleveland coach horses and Exmoor ponies, with very successful results. The Simonsbath stud throve for many years. Behind the old house a mansion was commenced, but it was not completed and was pulled down in 1879, though the old house still stands.
It was during these years of experiment that the accident occurred at Downton. John Knight had been brought up to believe that the Downton estates were male entailed, that having been the original expressed intention of old Richard Knight. His disappointment therefore, at not being considered the heir, was natural, and explains his decision to take the case to court. It was, for him, an expensive decision; and soon after losing the case he retired to Rome, where his wife had died in 1841. He lived there until his death in 1850, his eldest son having succeeded him at Simonsbath.
This son, Frederic Winn Knight, was equally enthusiastic about the development of Exmoor, and he brought energy and courage to the task, though he always lacked the capital to finance it. During the 1850s he attempted to mine iron ore on his land, but the veins were unequal to the expense.
In 1850 he married Florence Couling Gibbs. Their only son, Frederic Sebright Winn Knight, died in 1879, at the age of 28, after which his father sadly lost interest in Exmoor. He died at Bath in 1897; his 15,000 acres and his stock had been purchased by his neighbouring landowner, Earl Fortsscue. Thus ended the senior line of Edward Knight's family, but Frederic Winn's third brother, who had inherited Wolverley Hall, was twice married, and his descendant Richard Knight lives near Wolverley still.
There remains to be told the story of the fourth and youngest son of the old ironmaster. This was Ralph, born in 1704. As he and all his family are buried at Burrington, (he and his father next to each other, under cast iron tombs) it would appear that he remained to manage his father's property. He married, about 1730, Mary Duppa of Bromfield, and had two sons, Thomas and Richard, and three daughters, Elizabeth, Martha and Maria. Like their cousins this family were extremely wealthy, but none of the five children married.
After Ralph Knight's death they moved from Burrington; Mary Knight, his widow, lived for some years in their house in Ludlow, No 9 Mill Street, where she died in 1764.
During this decade her older son Thomas bought the ancient manor of Henley Hall from the Powys family, to which by 1772 he had made handsome Georgian additions and alterations. The younger son Richard had died at the age of 20 in 1763 predeceasing his mother. His portrait by Hone hangs now at Downton Castle. In her will his mother had bequeathed to him the silver punch bowl belonging to his grandfather. No doubt all Richard's property passed to his elder brother, as this punch bowl, and most of this family's silver was later left by the surviving sister Elizabeth to young Thomas Andrew Knight of Downton Castle.
Mary Knight left her house and stables in Hill Street to Thomas, who evidently let it on short leases, his tenant in 1790 being Mrs. Catherine Pearce Hall. Thomas Knight's lawyer for these transations was his young cousin Benjamin Baugh, grandson of old Richard Knight's daughter Elizabeth, who had married Edward Baugh, of Ludlow about 1720.
Their son Benjamin had married in 1750 Ann, daughter of Robert Biddulph of Ledbury. Their grandson Benjamin, in a letter dated 1770, concerning his mother's marriage settlement, addressed to 'Thomas Knight at Georges Coffee House near to Temple Bar' provides the following piece of Ludlow gossip; presumably referring to the Grammar School. "No doubt you have heard of the behaviour of Rev. Mr Bates who deserted the school without giving notice to the corporation, and is now in London…he is indebted of 800 pounds…The corporation have advertised for a master."
Thomas Knight lived at Henley Hall with his sisters until his death in 1803. He left the estate to his sister Elizabeth, to be bequeathed at her death, which took place in 1813, to their cousin the Rev. Samuel Johnes, younger brother of Thomas Johnes of Hafod. Samuel Johnes took up his residence at Henley, where he died in 1852. He married Ann Maria, daughter of Sir Cornelius Cuyler; their only daughter married Sir John Shelley.
Thomas Knight had willed that, in default of a male heir to the Johnes, Henley should pass to the Wolverley branch, failing them to Thomas Andrew's family. In 1852 John Knight of Lea came to inherit Henley for the remaining 20 years of his life. He was a great grandson of Edward Knight. He too is buried at Bitterley; he was married to Catherine Levyson and had three sons and one daughter, but in 1874 they sold Henley Hall to Edmund Wedgwood Wood.
Thus Croft, Wormesley and Henley passed from the Knight family, together with Hafod, Stanage and Simonsbath; but there remain the glories of Downton, and the Bringewood Forge where the story began. In the hall of his grandson's castle, now the home of the seventh generation by his second son, there stands a fireback cast in iron, bearing the legend R.K. 1730, a forged link with the grand old ironmaster himself.
Henley Hall, Ludlow, Shropshire,
England
Downton Castle
Croft Castle
Downton Castle
Croft Castle