page_title: Ellen Morewood
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Ellen Morewood / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil painting on canvas, Ellen (Helen) Goodwin, Mrs Henry Case-Morewood (1740/41-1823) by Joseph Wright of Derby, ARA, (Derby 1734 - Derby 1797), signed and dated: I. W. P. 82 [1782]. A full-length portrait of a woman, turned to the left gazing at the spectator, seated on the stump of a tree in a woodland setting, her left leg crossed over her right, her right elbow resting on her knee. A gap in the trees on the left, reveals a distant hill. She married Henry Case, bachelor rector of Ladbroke, Warwickshire in 1793, having been the wife of George Morewood of Alfreton Hall, Derbyshire (d.1792). He took the name of Morewood but predeceased her without children. She left the house and its contents to her sister's children, the Palmers, who also assumed the name of Morewood.
context_page_description: Ellen Morewood or Ellen Goodwin; Ellen Goodwyn; Mrs. George Morewood; Mrs. Henry Case-Morewood was an English colliery owner based at Alfreton Hall in Derbyshire. She unsuccessfully defended her right to mine under land adjacent to hers and she carried forward the Morewood name.
context_section_description: Ellen was baptised on New Years Day 1741. Her father, Richard Goodwin, was an attorney based at Mapleton in Derbyshire.
  When she was 27 years old she married the 49 year old George Morewood who lived at Alfreton Hall in Derbyshire on 27 February 1768. They had one child in 1769, Rowland, who died soon after birth. They were both painted by the artist George Romney again 1769. These paintings hung in the dining room of Alfreton Hall. 
  In 1782 she had another portrait painted, this time by Joseph Wright of Derby. That same year Joseph Wright also painted a portrait of the Reverend Henry Case. He would in time, be her second husband, but she did not became a widow for another ten years.
  In 1792 George died and left Alfreton Hall and other his estates to Ellen. She owned a brickworks, a colliery, farms and ironstone sources. Over the next nine years she was engaged in a legal battle with her neighbours the Outrams. Land had been sold to them but Ellen believed that she had the rights to the coal and ironstone beneath them. James and Benjamin Outram disagreed and they appealed and in 1803 the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Ellenborough agreed with them.
  Ellen later married Reverend Henry Case who took the name Morewood. They both lived at Alfreton Hall for the next 30 years. An interesting description is given of the house in 1812 at the time they were in residence:
caption: Ellen Morewood
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