Its owners and some historical connections - Lackham Countryside ...

The Manor of Alderton 3rd edition
Eton about 1793 364 . A “Mr Verchild” was a passenger on the Duke of
Cumberland packet when she sank at Antigua in 1805 365 , but whether this was
LB Verchild is unclear. The Verchilds were a very well established family on the
island, as early as 1705 “Philip Verchild had a house valued at £250” 366
A valuation of the Alderton estate was carried out in 1812, either for the court
of Chancery or with a view to the sale of the property. The tenant farmers and
the names and sizes of the Alderton farms can be gleaned from this appraisal
367 and the farms covered an area of over 1800 acres between them.
There is a slight mystery relating to the later stages of George CC’s life :
George apparently died in 1819 “On Friday last, aged 43, suddenly George
Conway Montagu esq of Lackham House in this county 368 , which agrees with
Vernon and also with an article about George Conway Montagu published in the
Wiltshire Times by Kite 369 . Doubts is cast on this, however; Kite’s articles
provoked a letter, in 1931, from a granddaughter of George Conway, then living
in Armadale, Australia. In a letter to the Editor she says that he “was born on
June 24 th 1776 and died on May 30 th 1847, aged 71, his death having been
caused by a painful internal malady through the last three months of which my
mother was his devoted nurse” 370 . The discrepancy between this and the dates
above is difficult to explain but it does fit with the date given by both
Brocklebank and the National Dictionary of Biography. For Jane Courtenay
Montagu to have been George’s daughter he would have had to survived beyond
1819. The writer states that six years after the death of his first wife in
364 Strangely only one Verchild appears in Alumni Cantagriensis and its Oxford
counterpart Alumni Oxiensis, and this is Jasper Verchild “adm. Pens. Emmanuel May 16
1724. Of St Kitts, West Indies” [Alumni Cantagriensis Part 1 From the earliest times
to 1751 vol 4 p298.] Where LB Verchild was trained remains unknown.
365 Naval Chronicle Vol 12 1805 p471
366 Dunn, RS (1972) Sugar and Slaves: the Rise of the Planter Class in the English West
Indies 1624-1713 UNC Press
367 see Appendix 2, Table 5
368 Devizes and Wilts Gazette September 2nd 1819
369 Wiltshire Times February 7 th and 14 th , 1929
370 Wiltshire Times 1931, Lacock Inscriptions ibid
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