WELLINGTON HOUSE

Also Known at Various Times as Pawnsey Hall, Pawsey Hall, Pausey Hall, Childer House & Hillcroft School
by
Steve Williams

There is evidence that the house now known as Wellington House was once owned by the Pooley (sometimes Poley) family of Columbyne Hall of Stowupland.
C. 1599 Columbyne Hall passed to a prominent courtier Sir Robert Carey, later Earl of Monmouth (younger son of Lord Hunsdoh). He had sold property by 1611 to John Poley (grandson of Edmund Poley of Badley Hall). He served as a soldier in Spain 1592 and in Ireland and was knighted by the Earl of Essex at Dublin in 1599. He died in 1634 and was succeeded by his widow Lady Ursula Poley (daughter of Sir John Gilbert of Great Finborough), during the minority of their son. Lady Ursula Poley died c1643-6 (living at Pawnsey Hall, Stowmarket), and was succeeded by her son John Poley Esq. (aged 14 at his father’s death). He died childless in 1666. With him the line of the resident lords of the manor comes to an end as he left  Columbyne Hall to his cousin Henry Poley. Henry died in 1707 but never lived at Columbyne Hall. After the death of the last Poley the house was lived in for a while by Thomas Blackerby an eminent and charitable man who died in 1687.

In Harry Double’s ‘The March of Time’ the entry for 1660 says ‘Sir John Pooley of Columbyne Hall, Stowupland erected a handsome house in Finborough Road. In the past it has been referred to as
Childer House and Pawsey Hall and in the 19^th century became the town's vicarage. From 1962 to 1985 it became a private school known as Hillcroft School (now at Haughley Green) before becoming Wellington House Nursing Home.

After being allowed to look around the entire building including the attics and cellars during a period when alterations were being carried out, I concluded that parts of the building were indeed older than 1660 suggested by Harry Double. The large ceiling  beams in the main lounge area have roll moulded corners and a engraved leaf design at each junction and is consistent with other properties in the area known to have been built in the mid 1500’s. Identical to the timbers in the salon of Frobishers hairdressers in Stowupland Street. Many additions can be seen to have been built on during the following years. Some of the joints in the roof  of one of the wings which do appear to be 17^th century show signs of weakness as the purlins and the windbraces at a midway point have split and cracked due to poor quality of joints. So it would seem that the current appearance of the house could indeed have taken shape at the hands of John Pooley in the 1660’s but it was incorporating a much older building. 

A  deed was drawn up on the 23^rd and 24^th July 1812 for Philip Gurdon of Assington Hall and Sarah his wife and their only son John.

The will of John Gurdon who died on or about November 1777 mentions property in Stowmarket and Chilton Hamlet which were referred to as “Childer House or Pausey Hall and contained a coach house, best stable, wood house, and hen house, garden and long walk part or parcel thereof”. Also “ two pieces of pasture ground of 6 acres. One parcel is described as being between land owned by “Mr. How of the Manor of Abbot’s Hall and land late of Roger Turner towards the North and the common way known as Bury Way towards the south and west and land late of Roger Turner towards the east”
It states that the property was once occupied by Rev. William Wood, minister of the gospel before being descended to John Gurdon on the death of his father Nathaniel Gurdon. It was sold by the Gurdon family to William Cardale with the land being available for use by certain named parties and their descendants for five hundred years from that date. (2^nd March 1778)

24^th November 1812 the property sold at public auction and bought by Nathaniel B. Byles £2260 £1340 and £700 for the mansion house and lands and hereditaments with exception to the piece of land known as Bess Garnhams and Violet Hill. It was still known as Childer House or Pausey Hall and had outhouses, barn, stables, yards, gardens, pleasure grounds, shrubberies, lands meadows and pastures and occupied by Rev Wm. Ward except a barn and stable occupied by Jonathon Cooper contained on the site of the mansion house.

Other lands were bought by a Mary Gurdon from John Pooley and Patience his wife of Combs

Other names on the deed include
Revd. John Hallward the elder, vicar of Assington, Sfk (trustee of Philip Gurdon)
William Cardale of Grays Inn, Middlesex, (gent)
Brampton Gurdon Dillingham of Grundisburgh Sfk
Theophilus Thornaugh Gurdon of Letton Sfk
Revd Thomas Hallward of Assington, Clerk
The Rev John Hallward the younger of Chelmondiston, Sfk
The Rev William Frederick Bird of Boxford, Sfk
Revd Francis Fortesque Knottisford of Stoke by Nayland, Sfk, Clerk
Rev Henry Watts Wilkinson of Sudbury, Sfk.

From the tithe map (right) of Stowmarket dated 1839, the area of the ground covered by Childer House gardens reached from the corner of Finborough Road and Violet Hill up to the junction with Walnut Tree Walk and Byles Walk (between Connell’s Building Supplies and the Recreation Ground).
The apportionment numbers are 230, lawn: 231, garden: the house is 232 and lived in by William Ransom and owned by John Green Cross. Numbers 232a, buildings & yard: 233, Orchard: 234, paddock: 235, the Plantation:235a, Ash plantation all owned by John Green Cross.
In about 1856/7 the garden of the estate known as Childer House was developed and Childer Road was built by Ephraim Rednall and Number 14 was sold to Miss Prudence Pulford on 3^rd April 1857

^{A part of  an eighteenth century wallpainting discovered when builders were knocking through to make an extra doorway. Note the design is carried on along the timbers and would have been very colourful if slightly over-powering by today’s tastes}

Stowmarket Local History Group
2009
e mail - neil@stowman.plus.com