page_title: Edward Monckton
section_title: Staffordshire estates
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Monckton / Staffordshire estates
caption_attribution_description: English: Somerford Hall, Brewood, Staffordshire, a Georgian country house, seat of the Monckton family 1779-1858.
context_page_description: Edward Monckton was a British colonial administrator and nabob, a Whig politician, a member of parliament for 32 years, and an important Staffordshire landowner.
context_section_description: It is not clear whether Monckton had been negotiating for Somerford before the Pigot's fall, but it seems likely that the Pigot connection played some part in directing him to this part of Staffordshire, an area in which he had no previous interests. The children of the Viscount's first wife retained the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire connections, while Edward's brother John had bought Fineshade Abbey in Northamptonshire. Somerford established a focus for this junior branch of the Monckton family. Edward's mother, Jane, the dowager Viscountess Galway, was buried in Brewood church in 1788, and so were Edward himself and Sophia in due course, and in 1840 Edward's younger sister Mary Boyle, Countess of Cork and Orrery. Monckton took a leading part in county life from the outset, becoming a Justice of the Peace and an officer in the Staffordshire Yeomanry.
  The Somerford estate had been bought in 1734 for £5,400 by Robert Barbor, of the Inner Temple, and he had erected a substantial Georgian house. Barbor had also bought the manor of Coven in 1744 and joined it with Somerford. Coven was rapidly transformed by the building of the turnpike road in the 1760s and the construction of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal around 1770. Despite these economic advantages, Robert Barbor's descendants seem to have got into financial difficulties and were several times in danger of losing the house before Monckton bought it. The purchase of the Hall brought him both the manor of Somerford and that of Coven, together making up the south-eastern corner of Brewood parish.
  Brewood parish was at that time an intensely conservative area, dominated by the Giffard family of Chillington Hall, a short distance south-west of Somerford. The Giffards were wealthy and had large holdings in land, but as Roman Catholics were excluded from public office by the Penal Laws, so their direct power never matched their influence. Most of their tenantry were Catholic too, while the other landowners and farmers were mainly Tory High Churchmen, worshipping at the parish Church of St. Mary and St. Chad, where they dominated the vestry. Monckton was an improving landlord with innovative schemes.
  Monckton soon set about improving the house, having a large porch built and stucco applied to the walls. He planted large numbers of trees to replace the timber taken by the previous cash-strapped owners and then built or refurbished large numbers of farm buildings. A waterworks was installed on the nearby River Penk to bring water to the house, where it was stored in a rooftop reservoir, and the surplus from the system was run out into the gardens and grounds to water flowers and strawberry beds.
  Monckton's improving zeal soon brought him into conflict with his neighbours, as the road from Brewood to Wolverhampton passed close to Somerford Hall and through its grounds, which Monckton was reforesting and improving. At a hotly contested vestry meeting in 1781 he tried to have it routed further south, to cross the Penk at Somerford Mill. The existing bridge at that point was of good quality but suitable only for foot traffic, and its maintenance was Monckton's responsibility. It emerged that, even if he paid for a new route, the cost of maintaining a new carriage bridge might in future fall on the parish, which the other members of the vestry refused to countenance. Later Monckton came up with a compromise scheme. He agreed to divert the road to the north of his property instead and paid for the construction of a new, straighter section to Four Ashes, on the main turnpike road between Wolverhampton and Stafford.
  Monckton soon began to extend his property interests in the area, buying several more estates in Brewood parish. First seems to have been Aspley, a small estate near Coven, on the bank of the canal, which he acquired shortly after Somerford itself. In 1780 he leased the Deanery Manor of Brewood from the Dean of Lichfield Cathedral, giving him land and houses around the centre of the town: this land was to remain leased by the Monckton family until 1903, after whic
caption: Somerford Hall, Monckton's home for over 50 years.
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