Records of the Eartham estate

Records of West Sussex Record Office additional manuscripts, catalogue 8a

Until the eighteenth century there appears to have been no landed estate of any size centred upon Eartham parish, and the lord of the manor was non-resident. The manor of Eartham had for many years belonged to the owner of the Slindon estate. The modern Eartham estate dates from 1742, when Thomas Hayley of Chichester purchased for £200 a ruined and decayed messuage and eighteen acres of land called Cross House, and a stable, lately a messuage, called Dawtreys (Add Mss no. 4764), upon which he built a villa. Thomas Hayley died in 1748. His son William, the poet, who succeeded to this property upon the death of his elder brother, Thomas, in 1750, bought a messuage called Bowdens and thirty acres of land for £525 in 1768 (Add Mss no. 4843), another messuage and lands for £500 in 1785 (Add Mss no. 4791), and small pieces of land in 1775 (Add Mss no. 5020), 1777 (Add Mss no. 4769), 1786 (Add Mss no. 4772), and 1787 (Add Mss no. 4771), all in Eartham, and enlarged the villa into a substantial residence. He also contributed £900 of the £1,200 which his cousin John Godfrey paid in 1798 for a messuage and lands in Eartham (Add Mss nos. 4834, 4856)

For a contemporary illustration, see The Topographer, vol. 4 (1791)

This has been reproduced by Morchard Bishop, Blake's Hayley, and F.W. Steer, Some Notes on Eartham (privately printed). The description of the house which accompanies the illustration in The Topographer was reprinted in Gentlemen's Magazine, vol. 94, pt. 1, pp. 30-32, under the title of 'Description of Eartham, when the Residence of Hayley'

William Huskisson first appears in these records in 1799, when certain lands in New Fishbourne, and properties in Eartham, were mortgaged to him by William Hayley as collateral security for the payment of a bond debt of £3,600 (Add Mss no. 4856). Soon afterwards Hayley moved permanently to Felpham, and Huskisson became tenant of the house at Eartham (Add Mss no. 4775). When Huskisson later purchased the property, it was said to be 'used and occupied' by him (Add Mss no. 4775). There is however no confirmation from the land tax assessments of Huskisson's having been occupier before becoming owner. Morchard Bishop Blake's Hayley, p.200, says that Hayley had been anxious to let the Eartham house since about 1796. In 1803 Hayley disposed of his main property at Eartham; the house and 26 customary acres of land to Huskisson for £3,600 (Add Mss no. 4775), The statement in D.N.B. that Huskisson inherited the Eartham estate on the death of Dr. Gem, his maternal great-uncle, is clearly wrong. The remainder to two local landowning brothers, Joseph and James Bayley for a total of £2,400 (Add Mss nos. 4858, 4960). Huskisson must have acquired the bulk of the properties formerly called Cross House and Dawtreys since he received the title deeds which he covenanted to produce to Joseph and James Bayley; they must have acquired the bulk of the property formerly called Bowdens since they received the title deeds, which they covenanted to produce to Huskisson. It appears from the land tax assessments that this had happened by at least July 1802, although the conveyances are dated March 1803. Huskisson at once started to add to his property; in 1804, for example, he contracted with Joseph and James Bayley for the purchase of twenty acres of land which they had acquired from Hayley, although legal complications considerably delayed the ultimate conveyance (Add Mss no. 4779), and in 1805 he purchased a copyhold cottage (Add Mss no. 4777). Hayley seems to have disposed of the remainder of his property at Eartham when he sold a messuage and lands to Joseph and James Bayley for £525 in 1811 (Add Mss nos. 4852, 4785), for his name does not appear in the land tax assessments thereafter. No property at Eartham was included in the settlement made by Hayley in 1809 upon his second marriage (Add Mss no. 1276). Huskisson, incidentally, was appointed trustee of the personal estate settled by Hayley at the same time. Huskisson became the largest landowner in the parish in 1817, when he bought out the major part of the properties of Joseph and James Bayley for £3,959 (Add Mss nos. 4789, 4854, 4875, 4877). The figure of £3,959 includes an outstanding mortgage for £1,000 (Add Mss no. 4875). Huskisson had, as we have seen, previously bought small properties from the Bayleys (Add Mss nos. 4779, 4783). He thereafter continued to add to the estate until his death in 1830, his widow, who lived at Eartham until she died in 1856, doing likewise. At the time of the Eartham tithe award, 1839, Mrs. Huskisson was owner of 838 acres in the parish, and lessee of a further 227 acres: she is also shown as owner of 123 acres in the tithe award of the adjacent parish of Aldingbourne

The cataloguing, and indeed the interpretation, of many of the later deeds of title has been complicated by the Eartham Inclosure Award, 1817, which not only allotted the various common fields, downs, woodland and waste, but permitted landowners to place other property at the disposal of the commissioners, with the result that no less than 1283 acres out of a total of 1504 in the parish were allotted

Open to consultation, unless otherwise stated

Deposited by Messrs. Dreyfus & Co. Ltd., Ling House, Dominion Street, London, E.C.2, July 1957. Messrs. Dreyfus & Co. Ltd owned Eartham House at the time of the deposition of these documents.

The great majority of the documents in this collection were found loose and in disorder. They have now been placed in bundles according to properties, but unfortunately only six abstracts of title have been found (Add Mss nos. 4908, 4976, 4992, 5014, 5026, 5147, the last of which does not however relate to any of the documents), and we cannot be certain that the present arrangements always agree with the original order. Furthermore we have been unable to elucidate the numbers endorsed on many of the documents. Bundles of deeds have for the purposes of this catalogue been arranged, so far as possible, in the order in which the properties were acquired by William Huskisson.