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.
As Leamington, north of the Leam, was developing as a Spa Town during the early part of the nineteenth century, developers were anxious to acquire land for building. However, the Reverend Edward Willes, a major landowner of eastern Leamington, was not anxious to sell. When he died in 1820 his son, also Edward, moved the family home to his estate in Berkshire, rented out his Newbold Comyn house and started the process of selling off parcels of land.
One of these, the meadows on the north bank of the Leam beyond what became Jephson Gardens, was the area which was to become Newbold Terrace. Willes was determined to create three terraces of interconnected houses between what is now Willes Road and the Lower Parade.
Hence in 1833 Willes was paid £469 for the corner plot (now Willes Road/Newbold Terrace) and £313 for the adjacent plot in Newbold Terrace. The purchaser was a local builder, Samuel Letts. Building work was delayed for some time as a decision had to be made about constructing a road and providing drainage to the properties. Also prospective purchasers of plots argued that “no dwelling house, stables or shops” were to be erected in front of houses and that the owners would have private access to the spinney or gardens opposite (now Jephson Gardens). Meanwhile a Mr Prosser, a timber merchant, agreed to take a third plot next to the other two eastern plots purchased Eventually Willes did agree to the necessary covenants and Willes’s agent and architect, John George Jackson, arranged for the spinney to be fenced in and building work could begin.
The external design was controlled by Willes and Jackson as it was intended to set a pattern for the whole of the series of terraces they hoped would run up to Union Parade.
However, in 1837 the Warwick and Leamington Bank collapsed causing most of the local builders to go bankrupt. Fortunately Letts avoided such a fate and was able to continue building the three houses. Willes had to abandon his other terraces and sell off individual plots for villas – four of which remain today (Nos 14 to 17).
Evidently, Samuel Letts had enough funds to be able to complete the houses in Newbold Terrace. However, he was unable to sell them, and was obliged to furnish them internally in the hopes of renting them out. Each building was designed to house one family and requisite servants, and Letts must have had high hopes that Leamington would become fashionable enough to attract the wealthy and/or well-bred when, in the following year, Queen Victoria granted the town its ‘Royal’ status.
Since Letts built all three houses, their layout and finish are very similar. Winson (No 25) and Edgeville (No 24) were essentially identical. On the corner, the other house known as Ardencaple had an entrance that was at the side facing Willes Road, with an entrance hall between the front and back rooms, enabling the front ground-floor room to be the full width of the house. All three houses were three windows wide, with staircases at the rear.
On the ground floor (raised, as Willes insisted, some five feet above pavement level) was the entrance hall and a south-facing room that was probably a breakfast room, stairs and a doorway to the single-storey wing at the rear which housed a butler’s pantry, with a WC. Beneath the main staircase were the stairs down to the basement, where the cooking took place.
A dining room was also located at the back, close to the butler’s pantry with its china, glassware, cutlery and lamps and not too far away from the basement stairs and the kitchen.
All three houses had water closets before 1852 (two each in Edgeville and Winson and one in Ardencaple), but they may not have been original and merely replaced more traditional earth closets.
It is doubtful whether the original houses had designated bathrooms. As water had to be heated on the basement range, carried upstairs and taken back down afterwards, baths were a labour-intensive affair. Although Ardencaple in 1863 had a number of water closets, it still had no bathroom. However, by 1914 the ground floor WC was also used as a bathroom in both Edgeville and Winson.
On the first floor, the drawing room ran the full width of each house, lit by all three front windows, with a balcony and verandah. It was customary in Regency houses for the principal bedroom to be on the first floor behind the drawing room, together with a dressing room if there was space. In other houses this room was used as a less formal drawing room, as seems to have been the case in Winson House.
Ardencaple was similar in layout, but, with the additional space above the entrance hall, could have a dressing room or extra bedroom on each floor. The house also had an extension providing an additional large room on two floors and a basement added at some time between 1886 and 1914, providing initially a scullery and wash-house, and extra sanitary facilities above. Before 1914 the additional space on the ground floor enabled the domestic services to be brought onto the ground floor. By 1914 Edgeville had a conservatory, on the roof of the ground floor extension built at an unknown date, but this was replaced by a first-floor extension over the original ground floor wing. Work on Newbold House (No 23) to the west did not start until 1858, some 26 years after the other three. Fortunately, its deed of sale ensured that it conformed externally to the existing houses. Internally it is arranged in a similar way to Ardencaple, the additional width of two bays giving it two further rooms between the staircase and the party wall. Unlike the other houses, it seems likely that its WCs (and possibly bathrooms) were located in the long narrow rooms squashed between the principal rooms and the butler’s pantry wing on the west side of the house. Also, unlike the other houses in the terrace, Newbold is the only one large enough to have had a servants’ stair that gave access to every floor. It occupies the wing whose ground-floor rooms are the butler’s pantry area and seems to have linked with the other floors at half-landing level.
Longer-term rental was also common, but there were probably episodes when the houses were empty. Letts had consolidated his mortgages into a single loan of £2,400 in 1838, and when he died in 1856, the mortgage on Ardencaple had been assigned to Miss Mary Newcomb, who was regarded as the owner. The house was offered for sale in 1863 as having “Dining, drawing and breakfast rooms, of lofty and noble proportions, seven best chambers, three dressing rooms, and three servants dormitories, housemaids’ closets, water closets, kitchen, servants hall, housekeeper’s room, butler’s pantry, wine and beer cellars, scullery, hard and soft water, coal vaults, and other offices. In addition, it has a walled-in garden with greenhouse and small plot of pleasure ground, neatly planted, with room for the erection of coach house and stabling.”
Notwithstanding these plentiful features, it failed to attract a buyer, and it remained in Miss Newcomb’s possession until her death in 1893.
Letts had better luck with Edgeville House (No 24), which was let in 1839 to attorney Samuel Edge, who presumably gave the house its name. He lived there in some style with his wife and son and no less than five servants.
At No 25, Winson House also had long-term tenants, including the Hon. Charlotte La Touche and her family from 1835 until 1841. She was followed by Amelia Alston, who lived there until her death in 1870. She is almost certainly responsible for naming the house, having previously lived in Winson Green, an area of Birmingham now better known for its prison. She shared the house with her niece, a maid, housemaid, cook and butler, who came from as far afield as Kent, Leicester and Montgomeryshire.
The land on which Newbold House was built was bought by William Edward Jones, an attorney, in 1858. He had been renting Edgeville the previous year, and would have been able to supervise the building as it took place. He also kept a large household, consisting of a butler, three housemaids, two nurses, a lady’s maid and a kitchen maid, and a groom who lived above the stable building.
Photo Leamington History Group Archives
However, the most notable resident of the terrace was Sidney Flavel (senior), who probably came to live at Edgeville in 1861. He was son of William Flavel, who had set up a highly successful iron foundry; he also had an address at Harbury, and from 1884 onwards was occupying both numbers 24 and 25.
It was Sidney Flavel who altered the front entrance to No 24 with a porch and balcony supported by four fluted pillars said to have been acquired from the post office in Bath Street after it had closed down in 1870.
The Flavel family almost occupied the entire terrace, for his daughter Elizabeth moved back to Leamington in 1884 with her husband Frederick Sparrow.
After the death of Sidney Flavel, Elizabeth was given a life interest in Winson House, and she soon afterwards bought Ardencaple too, using £600 of her own money, and promptly mortgaged it to her brother for £1,000 – possibly to pay for the improvements which she proposed. Relations must have remained cordial, for access was created between the first-floor drawing rooms of the two houses, providing a very large space for entertaining.
By 1914, however, Elizabeth seemed only to be using two ground-floor rooms in Winson House. After Elizabeth Sparrow’s death, her son put Ardencaple on the market while her brother seems to have sold Edgeville and Winson houses at the same time. The first two were bought by Thomas Sharp and converted to flats, though with little structural change.
Large houses of this type, designed when families were also large and required servants living in, were now considered hopelessly old fashioned.
In 1912, a valuation officer described Newbold House as “one of the old properties, far too large for present day needs, being void for many years, a considerable sum is required to put in proper order. Dry rot is present in woodwork of basement.”
The cost of modernising whole houses, or even apartments, was becoming prohibitive, as gas lighting gave way to electricity and central heating took over from gas or electric fires.
By the middle of the 20th century, the terrace was increasingly decrepit. Even during the 1960s and 70s, when Leamington experienced a boom fuelled by a vibrant automotive industry and the recently built University of Warwick, many of the town’s Regency houses were in disrepair. Smaller modern homes were considered more desirable, so Leamington spread into the green belt north of Milverton instead.
There was also a growing need for social housing, and around 1973 the terrace was acquired by local builders Court and Son for conversion to a larger number of flats for the Leamington Housing Association. Its 42 flats then passed to Orbit Housing Association who managed the block until vacating it between 2005 and 2008.
Whilst soaring costs of maintenance presented housing associations with difficulties, by the start of the 21st century, fashions had changed again and the elegance and flexibility of Regency houses have made them attractive as luxury accommodation. Hence the terrace was purchased by TAG Exclusive Properties in 2010 and refurbished as luxury apartments. A great deal of effort was put into the refurbishment and the terrace now stands as a fine example of the original terrace as envisaged by Edward Willes. The houses are Listed Grade II.
Michael Pearson, 2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS are presented at the end of this page — https://leamingtonhistory.co.uk/articles-from-royal-leamington-spa-a-history-in-100-buildings/