Lydbury North

The third class of person in the estate hierarchy were the ordinary labourers and servants. Unfortunately, photographs are rare in the Powis collection, and here is the only one to feature people, taken in 1910. One can only speculate that the self-satisfied looking man in the foreground is Joseph Newill, although he might be the head forester.

Wage records are particularly complete in the Powis collection and range from 1774 to 1934. This is an early account of servant's wages at Walcot in 1774. The men are at the top, followed by the women; this shows the strict hierarchy among domestic servants.

This document dating from 1836, shows how labourers' wages were tied to food prices.

In 1906 Evans, the cowman at the dairy, has 16 shillings a week and £4 harvest money and a potato ground. He pays £3 a year in rent. By comparing these records it is possible to find how wages rose in a 200 year period, how they were affected by food prices, and the different wages paid to different grades of labour.

There was genuine affection for the Powis family by their workers. The funeral procession of the Third Earl in 1891 drew huge crowds in Welshpool reminiscent of a royal funeral.
Cracks were beginning to show at the turn of the nineteenth century. Labourers began to hand in petitions for higher wages, to be met with attempts to enforce stricter working hours and to keep wages down. This copy (on the left) of the rules of the Brampton Bryan estate was requested as a comparison with the Walcot estate's rules.

The managers were very put out when new national laws were passed on workers' rights such as National Insurance and workmen's compensation

The final blow came with the First World War. The able bodied men were enlisted and many did not come back, leaving fewer workers who demanded higher wages. Wages on the Walcot estate almost doubled in the period from 1914 to 1922. John Edmonds, the manager, drew up a list of troublemakers, 'those marked to be dismissed as soon as possible'.

Looking at the names on the war memorial in the churchyard (commissioned by Mr. Edmonds) it is possible to see the impact of the war on this small village. There are 24 names, headed by the heir to the estate, Percy Robert Viscount Clive, killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, aged 23.

His death precipitated the selling off of the estate in the 1920's. The situation was made worse by the death of his brother, Horatio Mervyn, born after Percy Robert and killed in the Second World War.

The Powis estate in Shropshire had become uneconomic, and it was sold off to tenants or smaller landowners. Many of the tenants regretted the passing of the old order. One commented in a letter, 'I must add that I am a most unwilling buyer, but feel it better than run the risk of having some other landlord who could not possibly be so considerate as the Earl of Powis.'