Michaelchurch Court Estate

Michaelchurch Escley Court, its Estate and the manors [or ‘reputed manors’] of Craswall and Ewyas Lacy were put up for public auction in the 1800s on at least three occasions for which sale particulars survive. The first, in 1815, seems to culminate in Thomas Edmund Lewis [owner of Michaelchurch Court] and perhaps the heirs of Walter Jeffreys [inheritors of the Manor of Ewyas Lacy] disposing of their interests to Thomas Daniell, a Cornishman resident at the time in Bath, who had made his fortune in copper smelting and dealing and chose to invest in a country estate. The second, in 1862 on the death of the then owner Richard Watson Barton, seems to have been unsuccessful, and the estate was put up for public auction again in 1863. This time it was sold to Elizabeth Rawson of Nidd Hall, Yorkshire, who bought it on behalf of her nephew Guy Trafford.

A more extensive history of Michaelchurch Court and its Estate can be viewed here .

The detailed sale catalogues contain descriptions of the farms and properties comprising the estate down to the level of individual fields and their use, the nature of the buildings and outbuildings, and the names of the tenants with their tenancy terms. Large scale maps of the estate, numbered with individual field references for each lot, are also included. Brief summaries for 1815 , 1862 and 1863 are available showing the names of properties and their tenants.

The Digital Images Collection on this website also includes photographs of the complete original sales catalogues, which can be viewed by clicking on the picture links below. Researchers wishing to download the detailed image files of the catalogues will need PDF reader software installed on their computer, such as that supplied free of charge by Adobe. With the latter installed, clicking on the pictures below will automatically download the relevant images as a PDF document [large files!] and open the PDF reader.