Tweed House History

Tweed House, 12 The Mount, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 4HN.

Based on 'A History' by the professional house historians Sara Van Loock and Peter Bushell.

The Mount, formerly the Little Mount and the Great Mount, was the ancient entrance to the town from the west. At that date the old Portsmouth Road came past St. Nicholas Church, along Bury Fields and up the Little Mount into the line of the present road. The old Farnham road came along the ridge of the Hog's Back and down the Great Mount 'by a very steep descent'. Indeed the descent was so steep that 'long poles had to be put through the rear wheels of the coaches coming down this hill' in order to prevent them 'running wild out of control'.

It is worth mentioning that the nearer section of the Hog's Back is referred to in old records as Guildown; and that in the Pipe Rolls of 1189 the old Farnham Road features as the Strata de Geldedone, where it is referred to as the southern boundary of the purlieu of Windsor Forest.

No. 12 (originally no.4) is a Grade II listed building of architectural and/or historic interest, built around 1730 and restored in 1986. No.4 The Mount first appears in records in 1742 when it is linked with the name of 'P. Burrill Esquire'. Whether this gentleman ever lived here, or merely owned the property, which he then sub-let, is not known.

Although at this remove it is not possible to be certain, circumstantial evidence identifies 'P. Burrill Esquire', with Peter Burrell [1692-1756] a some time Member of Parliament for Haslemere and Sub-Governor of the South Sea Company. Born the 6" August 1692, the first son of Peter Burrell of Kelseys, Beckenham, Kent, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School from 1704 to 1707. He married on 14th March 1723, Amy, the daughter of Hugh Raymond of Langley, by whom he had six children - four sons and two daughters.

Burrell was a leading merchant in the Portugal trade. In politics he voted with the government, except on the Excise Bill, which he opposed. In 1730 he introduced a bill, which became law, allowing South Carolina to send rice direct to southern Europe. In 1737 he was one of the chief speakers against Sir John Barnard's scheme for reducing the interest on the national debt. and in 1741 he supported a bill to regulate insurance, which was opposed by Barnard.

On the outbreak of the war with Spain, Burrell secured a contract for remitting money to the forces in Jamaica. He held this contract in partnership with Sir John Bristow, with whom he shared similar contracts for Gibraltar and Minorca.

After Walpole's fall, the Jamaica contract was severely criticised by the secret committee set up by the House of Commons to inquire into his administration.

Burrell became a rich man through his money-moving activities and his name features on a Treasury list of 1744 as one of the underwriters of a loan taking £90,000 [equivalent in modem money to about £9.5m]. He spoke for the government in a debate on supply, 22nd February 1744. He died 16 April 1756, aged 63.

By that date No. 12 The Mount was held by a widow-lady named Denton. It next passed to 'James Makitrick M.D.', a shadowy character whose peripatetic life-style and secretive nature makes any fact regarding him difficult to substantiate.

Better known as James Makitrick Adair [1728-1802] - he adopted the 'Adair', his mother's maiden-name, about 1783 - he was a native of Inverness, and took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh in 1766. He practised before and after that date at Antigua, and one of his works, with the title of "Unanswerable Arguments Against the Abolition of the Slave Trade", was in vindication of the manners of its residents. The book, incidentally, is catalogued as "Unanswerable Arguments against the Abolition of the Slave Trade. With a Defence of the Proprietors of the British Sugar Colonies, etc. Published for the Benefit of the Starving Tin-Miners in Cornwall. (London: Privately published) 8vo, [ca 1790]."

His medical writings enjoyed a considerable vogue and reputation on the Continent and his degree thesis on the yellow fever of the West Indies was reprinted in Baldinger's collection of medical treatises (Göttingen, 1776). His "Natural History of Body and Mind" was also translated abroad.

After returning from Antigua, James Makittrick Adair is known to have followed his profession at Andover, at Guildford and at Bath. For the benefit of those resorting to the latter place he wrote a volume of medical cautions for invalids. Wherever he went he seems to have provoked animosity. At one time he was in Winchester gaol for sending a challenge to a duel, at another he was engaged in controversy with Dr. Freeman and Philip Thicknesse. Thicknesse published an angry letter to him in 1787, and Adair replied with an abusive dedication to a volume of essays on fashionable diseases. When Thicknesse wrote his Memoirs and Anecdotes, his opponent replied with a list of Facts and Anecdotes which he pretended that Thicknesse had omitted, but Thicknesse asserted that it was stolen from a physician at Spa. He died at Harrogate, 24" April 1802, aged 74.

By 1795, No. 12 The Mount was in the occupation of a Miss Wesley, who is not thought to have been related to the Methodist preachers of that name. From 1806 until 1819 it disappears from records. It resurfaces in the latter year in the Land Tax returns where it is shown in the occupation of a widow-lady named Bund.

No. 12 The Mount next passed to the widowed Mrs Crompton. The 1825 Land Tax returns list it in the occupation of Jonathan Weale, the son of Joseph Weale, the High Street draper and local magistrate. Joseph Weale was an important man in the town. He failed to get elected to the newly constituted Council in January 1836, but two vacancies remaining was elected in the Conservative interest at a meeting held at the White Hart on 4th January 1836.

Jonathan Weale, who is thought to have been active in his father's business, was also an important Guildford tradesman. At some point before 1839 he made No. 12 The Mount over to a Miss Prowting, who ran from here an Academy for Young Ladies.

Before the end of 1840 this school was taken over by Joseph Weale's daughters, Anne 35 and Sarah 30. The Misses Weale were still residing and teaching from here at the taking of the first national census in April 1841. They came from a family long established in this part of the world, being the descendants of Thomas Weale of Wonersh, yeoman, by Frances, his wife, who in 1732 granted a lease and release bond to William Balchin of Shalford, 'maultman' of one acre and a cottage near Sowersbury for a consideration of £82.

At the taking of the 1841 census, the Misses Weale had ten female pupils residing at No. 12 The Mount, as well as two female assistant-teachers and two resident domestics to look to their welfare.

By the time the census enumerator returned to the property in 1851 Sarah Weale had married and retired from teaching. Her 44-year-old sister, Anne, was now directing the running of the establishment alone. She was assisted by Anne Elizabeth Holman 22, the 'French Governess', born at Parame in France, and by the 'Music Governess', Frances Roberts, a native of Camberwell in London, who at 18 was only two years older than some of her charges. Both lived in.

The twelve pupils, ranging in age from eleven to sixteen, were clearly of the middle and upper class and included Miss Weale's niece, Marianne Weale (16), Sarah Leland, from Drogheda in Ireland, and the wonderfully named Persis Sattrell (15).

In 1856 Miss Neale's School for Young Ladies closed its doors for the last time and No, 12 The Mount passed back into single family occupation with James Hodges Sanders [1798-1889]. A native of Banstead, he was still living here, aged 63, in 1861 sharing the house with his wife, Mary 49, who hailed from Epsom, and with their unmarried daughter. Mary Ann, who at 32 would have been considered perilously close to being 'on the shelf'. The family kept just one live-in domestic: Louisa Doppitt 33. We should spare a thought for Louisa Doppitt down the tunnel of the years. As the only general domestic kept she would have been responsible for all the chores outside the kitchen - and a good many within it - including the carrying of coals and bath-water to the top of the house and the lighting of all the fires.

Sanders gave his means of support as 'income from house property'. This was a traditional and respectable source of revenue for middle-class folk. Mr Sanders would almost certainly have put the regulation of his affairs in the hands of a solicitor. In consequence it is unlikely that he would have known the exact details of his portfolio. [In The Barchester Chronicles, for example, Mr Harding's daughter owned a public house without having any knowledge of the fact.]

We know that James Hodges Sanders left Guildford in 1866, moving to Croydon where he died, at No.122 Waddon New Road, in his ninety second year, 16 October 1889. His will, lodged in the probate Division of the High Court of Justice at Somerset House shows he left a net estate of £1874 9s 11d, equivalent at today's prices to £107,000. He made several bequests to his son, Thomas. These included two houses in Waddon New Road in addition to the family home at No.122. It is clear that he had cultivated a very considerable portfolio of investments and owned a good many dwellings [the 'house property', no doubt, of the 1861 census.]

To 'my dear friend' Fanny Edith Wetherell he left 'my copyhold property at Bookham which formerly belonged to my late wife Mary Sanders, formerly Mary Crand, and now occupied by Mr Underwood, on which I have spent £540.'

When he left Guildford for Croydon in 1866 James Hodges Sanders sold No. 12 The Mount to the barrister, George Tayler [1826-1908] who at the taking of the 1871 census gave his age as 45 and his place of birth as 'Spitalfields'. Tayler shared No. 12 with his wife Ellen (51), who was born in Guildford, and with their children Mary (16), William (14) and Laura (13) all born in Peckham, and Rose (11), who was born at Leatherhead. Tayler seems to have been a charitable sort of man because in 1871 he was also providing a roof for his two unmarried sisters-in-law, Mary and Rebecca Ellis aged 61 and 57 respectively, both of whom were born in Guildford. The 'downstairs' staff consisted of a housemaid, Elizabeth Windesbank (20), who hailed from Worplesdon, and the 19-year-old cook, Elizabeth Titcomb, from Sussex.

In early life, George Tayler had practised before the Court of Chancery, the most protracted of the three divisions of the High Court of Justice. Cases here took so long to resolve that the phrase 'to get a man's head into Chancery' became a popular Victorian saying and meant that once a person was so situated the lawyers 'might pummel him as much and as long as they choose'. Dickens alluded to the exhausting nature of Chancery proceedings in Bleak House, citing the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, based on a true dispute which lasted eighty years.

The London Post Office directories for 1886 show that by this date Tayler was an official of the Local Government Board, commuting three times a week between this house - which in his day was called 'Mount House' and the Board's office in Whitehall where he is listed as 'Inspector of Audits'. The Post Office directory for 1886 lists more than three hundred officials under its entry for the Board's Whitehall offices - from the President, A.J. Balfour, to the two hall porters, Dowling and Dunkley.

George Tayler lived on at No. 12 The Mount until his death, aged 82, on 30 December 1908. Probate of his will was granted at London, 26 February 1909, to his 51-year-old son, Will Tayler described as a 'fruit grower', and his 53-year-old unmarried daughter, Mary. It was Mary who now inherited No. 12 The Mount together with a share of her father's effects, valued in total at £8845 18s 5d. equivalent in today's money to about £461,000. A bequest of £ 100 [£5,200] was made to the Rationalist Press Association of Fleet Street, while a similar sum found its way to the South Place Ethical Society in Finsbury.

Mary Tyler, whose home this house had been for most of her life was unable to keep it on and it was sold at the end of the Edwardian era in 1910, for a sum unspecified, to Miss Frances Mason, who shared it with her friend and companion, Mrs Stone.

Miss Mason was the daughter of John Mason, Mayor of Guildford in 1884. What we know of her, and of her antecedents, we owe almost entirely to a memoir written by her father in the 1880s, when he was about sixty years of age. In this he states that both his father and his grandfather were 'natives of Guildford' and that his father was 'a carpenter, apprenticed to Mr Thorn, a surveyor and builder, who committed suicide in the dingle behind St. Catherine's Hill'.

Miss Mason's grandfather and two great-uncles, William and Robert, were all 'musical, had good voices and for many years formed part of the choir of Shalford Church'. Her grandfather 'often walked to Farnham and back to take part in choir singing'. Miss Mason's father, John, added that this 'talent has not continued in his family', neither he nor his daughter, Frances, being at all musical.

Miss Mason's grandmother, who was also called Frances came of good stock; her maiden name was Budd, her mother being descended from the Fletcher, family, who were of some repute in the last century, and judging from letters and scraps of poetry which have come down to us from our maternal grandmother, 1 should think she must have had an education and occupied a position a little above the common people of that day.

Some of Miss Mason's great-aunts held. positions of trust and responsibility, the last being in Lord Petre's establishment, Thornton Hall, Essex.

Frances Mason's grandmother: was constantly speaking of the mansions of Cowdray and Westwood, and of incidents which occurred in the Biddulph Family, showing the connections with these establishments.

She was, it would seem, a Roman Catholic, although: save only on the occasion of the baptism of her children, [she] never attended any place of worship; these and her wedding took place at the parish church of St. Nicholas. Morning, noon and night she was at work. All the work of a busy tradesman's household she did without the help of a servant almost up to the time of her death. Baking, brewing and washing were done at home, a pig to feed and when killed to salt down etc.

Fanny Mason profoundly influenced the disposition of her namesake and granddaughter, the resident of No. 12 The Mount, who was religious, retiring and somewhat timid. In appearance she is said to have been tall [if in old age a little stooped] with delicate hands and fine features. She was much interested in the work of the church and in the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the Church Missionary Association. She never married and lived on at No. 12 The Mount until her death about 1920.

Her former home now passed to Arthur Cecil Stoughton, of whom nothing is known. In the mid- 1920s the house was briefly let to Sir William Meigh Goodman [1847-1928] while his home in Pitt Farm Road was being renovated and refurbished. Like George Tayler before him, Sir William was a barrister. Called to the Bar of the Middle Temple in 1870, he went the South-Eastern Circuit. In 1883, aged thirty-six, he was appointed Attorney-General of British Honduras. Five years later he was appointed Chief-Justice of that colony, a post which he retained until being appointed Attorney-General of Hong Kong in 1889. From 1902 until his retirement in 1905 he was Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, Hong-Kong.

About 1929 the Guildford Social and Labour Club moved into No. 12 The Mount from their former premises at No.65 North Street. The Club continued here for more than fifty years, until the premises were renovated and restored in 1986.

It then became the Guildford office of the solicitors and Privy Council Agents, Merriman White.

At the end of 2004, the building was purchased for Consult Hyperion and, following renovation and redecoration, became their office in August 2005.