Lydbury North

John Ashby looked after the estates in Robert Clive's absence. Lord Clive was obliged to leave a lot of the running of his estate to agents during his long absences in India. Some were conscientious; others were not. The document is dated just after Lord Clive's sudden death. John Ashby was obviously caught with his fingers in the till, as he was unable to account for all the money he had been collecting from the tenants.

John Probert served Lord Clive and his son, the First Earl of Powis, from 1769-1818. He supervised many new building projects at Walcot House, as well as the planting of new gardens. This account book dates from 1790 and is titled 'Payments by Mr. Probert for the Expences of the New Buildings New Roads and other extraordinary Outgoings for the Garden and Park at Walcot from the year 1788 to Lady Day 1790'.

The estate office and manager's house at Lydbury North was the epicentre of a highly efficient 19th Century business operation. The Newill family were agents for almost a hundred years, starting with Joseph Newill Senior, then Junior from 1825 to 1883, and ending with Robert Henry Newhill who ran it from 1883 to 1916. They were followed by John Edmonds from 1917 to 1927 and Erskine Edmonds from 1927 to the Second World War.

Under the stewardship of the Newhills and Edmonds, the three Clive estates were highly organised units of production. The Styche and Montford lands specialised in dairy farming, with some brick and stone works at Nesscliffe. The Walcot estate had mixed farming, game and timber plantations.

The Powis estate was largely self-sufficient. It supplied its own timber for houses and fences, bricks from the Ness brick yards, stone from the quarries at Nesscliffe and Bury Ditches. This document is a return for the mudstone quarry at Bury Ditches in 1925. It states that the mudstone is used solely for the maintenance and repair of roads.

A poster encouraging 'Cheap and Beneficial cookery for villagers' in a very Victorian way. Most of the ingredients could be grown on a cottager's plot: the onions, potatoes and peas and, of course, the pig in the piggery. The rest like the rice were cheap and could be stored for long periods.

The tireless Newills and Edmonds were also at the centre of almost all of Lydbury North's social life. At various times, they were captains of the cricket club, church wardens, presidents of the Lydbury North Club and Reading Room, treasurers of the Clothing Club and the wonderfully named Lydbury North Female Friendly Association.

It is little wonder that the Newills merited the biggest tombstones in the Lydbury North churchyard. Here is Joseph Newill's memorial. If there was such a thing as an ideal estate village, he was the driving force behind it. Of course, not everyone in the village was Church of England. There was an active Primitive Methodist chapel in the village too.