ROUSE BOUGHTON OF DOWNTON HALL FAMILY AND ESTATE COLLECTION

Among estate collections, Downton Hall is unusual in the wealth of material of a personal nature that is contained within it. Cash books, letters and diaries allow rich and varied insights into the lives of six generations of a family of landowners, themselves in the baronetage, and with aristocratic connections. Of especial interest are the letters home from the schoolboy sons of the second baronet during the late 1830s and the early 1840s, bringing reports from Shrewsbury, Eton, Harrow, and a private academy in East Sheen; as well as the field diaries of the last baronet, who served in Europe as a cavalry officer throughout World War 1.

The collection also demonstrates the changes in taste and preoccupations of a family of elevated social position, from the orientalism and 'ancient' music of Charles William Rouse Boughton, formerly of Bengal, through his son's grand tour around the far Mediterranean and the hunting fishing and shooting and dubious jokes of later generations to the mirthless grind of keeping the estate business afloat after the second world war.

The Rouse Boughton family owned land in the parishes of Stanton Lacy, Bitterley, Hopton Cangeford and Stoke St Milborough as well as property in Ludlow, and the title deeds include some references to the estates of previous generations, in Worcestershire and Herefordshire. One interesting bundle charts the ownership of the Clee Hill during 200 years, although it never was outright Rouse Boughton property. Raw material for genalogies abounds throughout the title deeds: among the family names are those of Fox, Lutley, Barneby, Lee, Conyers, Lucy, Davies, Jennings and Gravenor in addition to the central families of Rouse, Boughton and Knight. Many families of local lawyers appear; the families that assembled the fundamental Downton Hall estate were among them, i.e. the families of Hall, Pearce and Shepherd.

From the second half of the 19th century onwards, the records document the development of the Hall, the home farm, and the individual tenanted farms on the estate in some detail. The family's own concerns were focused on the breeding of cattle and hounds, but there are also references to the Hall itself and its park and greenhouses.

The founder of the family of Rouse Boughton was Charles William, son of Shuckburgh Boughton of Poston Court in Vowchurch, Herefordshire, in 1747. His father was the younger son of a baronet, and his mother was Mary Greville, descended from two families in the peerage; her background also provided a connection with the family of Rouse in the baronetage. In 1764 Charles William joined the East India Company in Bengal as a writer - a kind of civil servant. After five years he was appointed district supervisor, and in the same year he took possession of the estates of the Rouse family of Rouse Lench in Worcestershire under the usual proviso that he should assume that family's name as his surname. Charles William Boughton Rouse returned to England in 1778, a man of comfortable means in consequence of the accumulated income from his estates in addition to the sums of money that he had been sending back home, the profits of office and of private trading in India.

In 1779 he set out on a delayed grand tour through Switzerland and Italy; in 1780 he was called back to stand for election to Parliament as representative for Evesham. Having been looking out for a match ever since his days in India (where he became entangled with the teenaged Charlotte Clavering), in 1781 he met Catherine Hall, only child and heir of William Pearce Hall of Downton Hall. In March the following year Charles William asked for her hand in marriage, and they were married on the 3rd of June that year.