This page is one of several pages which are based on articles in our book entitled Royal Leamington Spa, A History in 100 Buildings which was published in 2018 and is no longer in print.
No 6 Beauchamp Avenue – originally No.2 Beauchamp Walk – was erected as part of a long-drawn-out speculative development undertaken by Edward Willes, an influential local landowner. A plan of 1822 shows the new town laid out for building up to Warwick Street. By 1834 the avenues between Warwick Street and the present Lillington Avenue – namely: Clarendon Avenue, Beauchamp Avenue and Binswood Avenue – had been laid out. Some houses had then been built or were in the course of erection.
The architect of the street-plan was Peter Frederick (aka “Mayfair”) Robinson [1776-1858]. The house dates to 1849/50 – although built in the style of 1840. A building lease of 1850 described this plot and plots adjacent as:
“that parcel of land belonging to Edward Willes Esquire called the ground next Lakebridge Meadow and theretofore called the Far Grounds of Lake bridge, containing on the north side adjoining a street called Beauchamp Terrace”
The builder of No.6 was a local man named Ebenezer Goold. The initial owner was the Rev. Robert Downes, Rector of Fetcham in Surrey, and the tenant, the Rev. James Clark, curate of Cadney in Lincolnshire, where Samuel Turner was the Vicar. Turner replaced Clark as the sub-lessee of No.6 about 1857, although he appears to have held no church appointments in Leamington. The directories show that No 6 was next leased to ‘Thomas Pryce Esquire’, who was still residing there at the census in April 1871. Pryce was then 50 years of age. He retained two live-in servants and a groom- domestic who lived above the coach house at the rear. The census in April 1881 found No 6 rented to Francis Retallack, a former captain in the Royal Navy. He was born in Cornwall and listed his occupation as ‘Magistrate for Cornwall’. He left Royal Leamington Spa in 1884.
The house appears then to have stood empty for two years or so. The Rev. Downes, the absentee freeholder, died and bequeathed the house to his widow, Philadelphia. She retained a life interest in the property but seems never to have lived there. Under her will, Philadelphia Downes appointed three old friends as trustees of her estate. She died in May 1885 when the house is shown as being ‘unoccupied, but lately in the occupation of Captain Retallach’. When Mrs Downes’ trustees put No 6 up for auction it failed to reach the reserve price but five months later it was bought by the auctioneer, William John Williamson, for a modest £450. In the absence of any Downes’ heirs, the proceeds went directly to the trustees.
In 1887 the house was let by Williamson to Amelia Stephens 38, a widow. In April 1891 Mrs Stephens was living there with her four children, her 21-year-old orphaned niece, and three servants: a parlourmaid, a housemaid and a cook. During the tenancy of Amelia Stephens, thee house underwent another change of ownership. Williamson “gave, bequeathed and devised” the property to his old friend, the grocer, William Linnell, and Matilda Hayward. The house passed to Linnell, as sole surviving beneficiary and six months after Williamson’s death he sold the property for £520 to Richard Henry Shuckburgh Esquire “of the Manor House, Bilton, Rugby”. The Stephens family left No 6 in 1895. By 1898 it had been let to another widow, Elizabeth McKellar, who remained there until 1901. It then stood empty but in 1904 passed into commercial occupation – as, around this date, did several other properties in the terrace.
R H Shuckburgh sold No 6 in 1903 for £500, to Thomas Hyam, senior partner in the firm of Thomas Hyam & Sons, plumbers, of Park Street, Leamington, who then ran his business from here, with a telephone number of Leamington 689. Thomas Hyam left No 6 in 1927 when the property became the office of Ernest Frederick Haddow, ‘H.M. Coroner for the Central District of the County of Warwickshire’, and his clerk, James Bentwith. The property remained as Coroner’s Office until 1943.
From 1945 onwards, No 6 was the home successively of Francis T. Marshall. Captain John Peuleve. and Walter H. Boors who remained at No 6 until the property was divided up into flats in 1964.
In 1987 the house was acquired by Professor Sir George Bain, of the University of Warwick, who reinstated the building as a family home. When George and Gwyneth Bain moved on in 1997, David Tidmarsh and Linda Coleman moved into the house with their four children. David became President and CEO of his Company in USA but continued to own the house and visit regularly for a while. In 2005, Susie Mehta and family moved in, lovingly restoring the house further. They have welcomed numerous visitors with connections to No 6, as Susie takes the view that “We are only ‘borrowing’ our house whilst we raise our family”,
by Paul Bushell and courtesy of Susie Mehta, on behalf of owners in 2018
Postscript.
I lived in the property from about 1981-1986. We had moved there from number 8.Number 6 had indeed been converted to flats by my grandfather, Walter Hugh Boore, an inventor, author, owner of a factory in Birmingham, and indeed cousin to Ivor Novello.My father Wynston Davies bought the property from him, and whilst we still lived a number 8, dad converted no 6 back to a beautiful family home. We moved in and lived some four or five years in that house, before selling both properties and moving to upper Holly Walk, a property of eminent historic value, and Grade 11* listed.Richard Davies.
15.02.2025