ROYAL COMMISSION ON HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS; Report on; A SECTION OF THE ANCASTER...

CONTENTS

Introduction

7ANC1 Deeds relating to Kent (Burrell family) 1583-1829

7ANC2 Deeds relating to Surrey, etc (Godschall family) 1706-1803

7ANC3 Settlements, wills, mortgages, etc (Burrell and related families) 1722-1826

7ANC4 Miscellaneous Ancaster papers 1654-1899

7ANC5 Miscellaneous other papers (Warren family, etc) 1847-1900 and nd

Related Collections

INTRODUCTION

The papers described here were formerly in the custody of Messrs Warrens, the London solicitors, and were deposited in the Lincolnshire Archives Office in 1969 through the British Records Association (BRA 1602), receiving the Lincolnshire Archives reference 7ANC as part of the Ancaster collection.

The papers include a few miscellaneous Ancaster documents (7ANC4), but the bulk relate to the Burrell family (7ANC1,3). Lady Priscilla Bertie, heiress of the Lincolnshire and Welsh estates of the Dukes of Ancaster, married in 1779 Peter Burrell, created Baron Gwydir in 1796. Their son succeeded his father as second Baron Gwydir in 1820 and his mother as Baron Willoughby de Eresby in 1828.

The rise of the Burrell family of Beckenham (Kent) began with Peter Burrell (d1718), a London merchant who purchased the estate of Kelseys in Beckenham in or shortly before 1688. His son Peter Burrell (d1754) married in 1722 Amy, the daughter of Hugh Raymond of London and Great Saling, Essex, who acquired the manor of Langley in Beckenham in 1732. Following the death of Jones Raymond, grandson of Hugh, in 1768, Langley and other property in Beckenham passed to Amy Burrell, and on her death in 1789 it descended to her grandson Sir Peter Burrell, afterwards Baron Gwydir. The Foxgrove estate in Beckenham, purchased by Jones Raymond in 1765, also came to the Burrells. These properties, with others in Beckenham and the neighbouring parishes, were sold in the early 1820s, following Lord Gwydir's death, and were therefore, in legal terms, never incorporated into the Ancaster estates.

Messrs Bray and Warner would seem to have sorted through the Kent estate papers at the time of the sale, transferring the bulk of the title deeds to the purchasers of the different lots but retaining a residue consisting mainly of early deeds, family settlements and some estate and family papers. In 1940 Warrens handed over a quantity of papers to the British Records Association for despatch to appropriate repositories (BRA 301, 305). Some Ancaster and Gwydir papers were sent to the Lindsey Muniment Room (Lincolnshire Archives, Lind Dep 64, 97) and to the National Library of Wales, but a collection of Burrell deeds and papers for Kent was sent to Kent Archives Office (see below, Related Collections). The further group of deeds and settlements sent to Lincoln in 1969 is, though less varied, closely related to this earlier deposit at Maidstone.

The Godschall deeds (7ANC2) have no connection with the Ancaster papers, but represent part of the papers of another client of the firm. In this case the link between firm and client was an exceptionally close one. The Godschalls of Weston, in the parish of Albury (Surrey), were related to the Brays of Shere, and the Brays were in turn related to the Warrens.

William Bray of Shere, the solicitor and historian of Surrey, was in fact the senior partner in Messrs Bray and Warren. (For a group of Godschall papers among the Bray papers now in Guildford Muniment Room see below, Related Collections.) The Warren family wills (7ANC5/1) are a further stray from the collection of firm's and clients' papers formerly held by Messrs Warrens.

R J OLNEY

G H MANDELBROTE

June 1993

The papers as found comprised mainly loose items in no order, and contained no original bundles, but were sorted as far as possible into their constituent elements.