Cedar House and the Leigh Estate

Cedar House is now the only survivor of an estate which once ran between Horton Road and London Road. It can be traced back to the mid 1500s while the origins of Leigh House are in the 18th century and Satis House was 'newly built' in 1806. Both Leigh and Satis were demolished in the 20th century. The history of this area is very complicated and has been abbreviated here.

Horton Road and Datchet Common
To understand this whole area it is necessary to look at the old situation of Datchet Common which was out to the east of the village but began as a funnel shape from the very centre of Datchet, running along both sides of our present Horton Road. Its original position (from at least 1500) has been ascertained from information in the Parish Enclosure Award of 1834, when common land and open fields were redistributed to private owners and enclosed by new fences. The original plots of common land as mapped and described in the Award have been reconstructed in the map below:

This map suggests that the early line of the Linchfield Brook was a continuation of its natural line along the common (as on the right of the map), because all the original property boundaries front the old edge of the common rather than the modern road. Development along the fringe of a common is typical of medieval 'squatting', the establishment of ownership piecemeal in a sort of no-mans-land which later became official under the authority of the manor. It is very likely that the Horton Road houses originated in this way, and also that this was the main road through Datchet to Colnbrook and on to London, rather than our London Road (the Turnpike Road) where there were no early houses.

Around 1730 the owners of these properties along the northern edge of the common (as in the map) were recorded as having dug huge ditches on the common and failed to fill them in when required to do so, one being '100 yards long, seven feet wide and five feet deep'. A ditch on this scale must have become part of the landscape, and this researcher's suggestion is that the Linchfield Brook was being deliberately shifted away from the houses on its margin to run in a line further south, which is still present as the watercourse across the recreation ground. This would then have provided a strip of dryer land, though still designated as part of the common, in front of each property. At Enclosure (1834) each of these properties were given private ownership of these strips down to Horton Road, which is why they still have such long frontages to the road.

Land ownership along this strip is more complicated than anywhere else in the village, probably due to the haphazard way it was originally settled in small lots. Documentation is also difficult because some plots became freehold very early while others remained as 'copyhold' from the Manor of Datchet until the 19thC, (all completely intermixed) so that many different sorts of legal deeds and titles survive - or do not. However, almost all the original dwellings were swept away during the 19thC and 20thC and the area is now largely built up with 20thC infill developments.

1) Leigh House is now only represented by the small estate of houses in Leigh Park but it was once a grand house with grounds extending from the houses adjacent to Astracot in Horton Road to the present Link Road, and from the single-storey cottages opposite Datchet House in London Road to the present Lawn Close. There had been an earlier house (Canister House) on roughly the same site, but when Leigh was built its grounds were extended by the inclusion of a big house and farmyard on its west, seen in the 1834 map but demolished by 1839. There are no known photos or descriptions of Leigh House.

2) Cedar House (to south of Leigh) has its origins in the 1500s although much altered and probably rebuilt since then. For many years it was a young ladies' boarding school (first recorded as such in 1810) and there was a block of classrooms extending back behind the house until the early 20th century.

3) Satis House (on east of Cedar) demolished in the 1970s, was built in the early 1800s as a farm house and was not the one occupied by the Herschels as has often been said; they actually lived in part of the Lawns complex. The name is modern, referring to Miss Haversham's house in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, but it does not resemble either of the real buildings on which Dickens based his descriptions.

A problem arises in identifying houses along this strip as the name 'Datchet Lawn' was confusingly applied at various times to Leigh House, Cedar House and the adjacent Lawn estate, and 'Cedar' to both Cedar and Satis houses; the modern usage is followed here. However, no names are recorded for any of these houses until the mid 19th century so all are effectively modern.

1) Leigh House owners & occupants:

The final owners of this house were the Lady Susan Cholmondeley and her daughters Susan, Marcia, Mabel and Eva, with 12 servants, male and female, in 1891. In that same year Marcia married Percy John de Paravicini, son of Baron James Prior de Paravicini who had been settled at Riverside in Datchet for many years. It may have been that relationship which brought the Cholmondeleys to the village. Lady Susan was buried in Datchet churchyard in 1893 while Eva died in 1954 and Mabel died in Windsor in 1944 aged 80 . It was she who is said to have required that the plot where her numerous cats had been buried should kept free of the houses about to be built, and while this cannot be substantiated the cemetery might possibly be represented by the island of shrubs in the centre of Leigh Park.

Preceding the Cholmondeleys was Rev. Henry Francis Udney Hall, who was the vicar of Datchet at the time the church was rebuilt and paid for a good deal of that work himself. He was clearly a man of unusual wealth as he bought the Leigh from Earl Grey's heirs, but little is known about him. He and his family are buried in the churchyard.

Henry Lord Howick, later the 3rd Earl Grey was the son of Charles Earl Grey (who, as Prime Minister from 1830, was responsible for the bill abolishing slavery and for seeing the Reform Act, the Factory Act and the Poor Law through Parliament). Henry was also an active Whig politician and for a time in the 1840s was Colonial Secretary. He retired to the family seat at Howick in Northumberland in middle age though retaining ownership of Leigh House and leasing it to Sir Henry Mildmay, who was a member of the London social set at the time but does not appear to be related to Earl Grey.

2) Cedar House owners & occupants:

Cedar House was bought by Ralph Goodwin, one of the powerful Goodwin family of farmers, as advertised in the Windsor Express, May 1st 1814:

A substantial brick built dwelling house, occupied as a Ladies' Boarding School at Datchet, containing 10 airy sleeping rooms, 2 parlours, large double hall, kitchen, wash house, laundry and other offices, with 2 substantial brick-built detached schoolrooms, large garden, let on lease to Misses Young & Hunt, of which 12 years are unexpired.

The Misses Young and Hunt were followed as tenants by Jane Sharman in the 1830s; Cedar House only ceased to be a school in the 1870s. The Mary Goodwin listed as owner in 1857 and 1866 was one of Ralph's unmarried daughters.

The Cedar House Shoe and wall painting

This shoe was found in the attic of Cedar House during roof repairs in the late 1980s when the house was owned by Egbert Blank. It was assessed by the V&A Museum's Textile Department and in 1998 was presented to the Royal Borough Collection. The V&A provided the following information:

The shoe remains date from 1825-30 and belonged to a young lady, custom-made with identifying initials AB. It is in the 'straight' tradition, i.e. each shoe straight and square-toed with no right or left styling, which was not introduced until c1850. Much of the shoe has rotted away but the heel was made of quite strong leather and the main part of the shoe possibly of soft kid but also with fabric.

There was a long tradition of superstitious hiding of shoes in rafters and fireplaces to ward off evil spirits, especially in Elizabethan times. It was believed that the removal of a hidden shoe from where it was found could result in ghosts or haunting ...

At the back of the house there is a small area painted in black, grey and white to suggest an architectural perspective on a wall beside a door. The listed building description dates it to the late 18th century, perhaps to the time when the house was occupied as a school, first recorded in 1810.

Nothing more is known about this intriguing little piece of amateur wall painting.

A few years before Ralph acquired Cedar House, his uncle John Goodwin seems to have bought a group of cottages (or tenements) adjacent to Cedar House which he demolished in order to build Satis House as a farmstead, describing it in his will of 1806:

... to my wife Ann for life, all the messuage, tenement and garden lately new built laid out in Datchet, lately in the occupation of William Sturges and now unoccupied and under repair, and after her decease to my nephew Ralph Goodwin and his heirs.

However, John's wife actually died before he did and a codicil of 1815 states that the house was then in his own occupation but already owned by his nephew Ralph.

After Ralph's death in 1823 it belonged to his widow, also named Ann (nee Taylor) and then to her heirs and trustees, Taylor & Simpson. Much interest was focused on this house when it was threatened with demolition in the 1970s, but it was not as old as was then claimed and clearly cannot have been where William and Caroline Herschel lived in 1783, as local legend asserted.

Before Earl Grey the owner of Leigh House was Vice-Admiral Sir John Gore who bought Canister House from the Early family, probably in 1816 when it was advertised in the Windsor Express. He also bought land on its west and north which had belonged to Carter's Farm, together with two other houses belonging to the Early family which were then demolished, thus beginning the opening up of the estate towards the west which was continued by Earl Grey.

In 1835 Vice-Admiral Gore's son, Lieutenant John Gore, died while trying to rescue a man overboard in the East Indies; the ship was one of his father's fleet and ten men were lost altogether in the incident. Admiral Gore himself died a year later, his death hastened by shock and grief, and the family left Datchet. There is a memorial to the family in Datchet parish church.

By 1781 (when Land tax records begin) the Early family owned this whole area except the tenements on the Satis House site. They were a quarrelsome family of horse dealers and maltsters, Edmund being the licensed victualler at the Five Bells (Royal Stag) in the 1750s. Edmund Early's will of 1775 bequeathed four houses along this strip to his sons William, Thomas and Joshua.

1767 Canister House was described in a sale deed as having been 'lately built' by Jonathan Smith, who was Lord of the Manor at that time, though there was probably a house there already as the land had belonged to John Davenport from about 1700.

In 1814 Cedar House was bought by Ralph Goodwin after the deaths of its owners, James and Ann Mingay. Ann was the daughter of Thomas Dell who died in 1794 leaving the house in trust to her. The Dell family were substantial farmers & local gentry in their own right as well as tenants of the Rectory and Eton College farmland in Datchet; three generations of them were buried in a great chest tomb in the churchyard. The Dells and Earlys were related by marriage, since in 1788 Mary Early referred in her will to her 'dearly beloved sister Laetitia, wife of Mr Thomas Dell'.

The house (presumably as a farmstead) was bought by Thomas's father John Dell in about 1730 from Margaret and John Bentley. In 1714 the Bentleys had inherited the house from William Berrington, whose family had owned it since at least 1622. In that year a survey of the Manor of Datchet listed Thomas and Elizabeth Berrington in possession of a house adjacent to Datchet Moore (ie to the Common) which can probably be identified with the Cedars, though it is of course possible that the house was rebuilt at some unknown date.

In the manor surveys of 1622 and 1604 (and by using other manorial documents), the ownership of the same property can be followed back as it was inherited within the Berrington, West and Howell families:

1622 Thomas & Elizabeth Berrington owners, formerly owned by George Flame and once by Walter Howell

1604 George Flame owner, in right of his wife Margaret, one of the daughters and heirs of Walter Howell, the first heir to inherit

In 1597 Thomas Berrington the younger had married Elizabeth the widow of John West; her father was Walter Howell & she was also an heir to his property

In 1565 on the death of Walter Howell his daughter Elizabeth West (then wife of John West) is declared heir of Walter Howell

1548 John Howell is owner of a property formerly belonging to Appleton (but no records exist earlier than this)

Listed Building information from local authority

Windsor & Maidenhead, 40675, Cedar House, 45 Horton Road, Grade II, 5130, SU 9977 5/17

C1? altered mid C18 & C19. Timber frame rendered & colour washed. Welsh slate hipped roof, two storeys & attics. Modern double hung sashes with glazing bars in flush wood cases with tile cills & window shutters. Central ground floor window of three lights with wood mullions & glazing bars. Door on right hand with rusticated surround & raised keystone. First & second floor raised bands. Second floor shortened on right slightly by continued east side slope of roof. One storey, one window outshut to right hand ground floor.

Interior: contains ovolo painted panelling with dado in main ground & first floor rooms, two marble mantle pieces, one C1? staircase window with wood mullion & transom. Doors are original complete with locks & there is a late C18 wall painting at the rear of the ground floor.

Dr Herschell the astronomer is reputed to have lived here circa 1780 - History of Datchet, S Osborn 1896 (This information out of date, see Lawns estate - JK)

Datchet Manor Court Rolls: 1565-1741 Northampton Record Office; 1742-20thC Beaulieu Archives, Hants
Survey of the Manor of Datchet 1622: Cambridge, awaiting reference
Survey of the Manor of Datchet 1604: Northamptonshire Record Office ref: Buccleuch papers 2.6 / X333
Survey of the Manor of Datchet 1548: Public Record Office, Kew, ref: LR2 / 188
1857 & 1866 Property Valuation Surveys: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury
Censuses 1841-1901: available online
Parish rate map & schedule 1839: tracing from original, ref Ma/60/1, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury
Land tax listings 1781-1832: ref. Q / RPL / 8 / 2-53, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury
Windsor Express from 1812 on microfilm at Slough Library
Enclosure Award & Map 1834, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury
House & land deeds, sales etc, series ref BAS/336, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury

date	Leigh House	Cedar House	Satis House
1901 census	Mabel Cholmondeley	John Pickering (as Cedar Cottage)	Alfred T Olive (as The Cedars)
1891 census	Lady Susan Cholmondeley	James M Davison	Alfred T Olive
1881 census	?	Arthur Dobson, curate Datchet	S.C. Goodheart, merchant
1871 census	B.Harrison D.L, J.P	Kate Bowen, 5 boarders	uninhabited
*1866 rate survey*	owner & occupier Rev HJU Hall	own Mary Goodwin, occup Bowen	own Taylor & Simpson, occ P.O.Kington
1861 census	Henry FU Hall vicar of Datchet	Esther Shoppee, 18 boarders	P.O. Kington, Swedish merchant
*1857 rate survey*	owner Earl Grey, occupier Henry Mildmay	own Mary Goodwin occup E Shoppee	own Taylor & Simpson, occup E Tennison
1851 census	Sir Henry Mildmay baronet	Mary Neals, governess, 10 boarders	Edward Garraway, gentleman
1841 census	Lord Howick	Jane Sharman, governess, 23 boarders	Ann Goodwin
1839 rate survey	mansion of Lord Howick	Miss Sharman	Farmhouse homestead Goodwin


Cedar House	Leigh Park Estate 1932	Satis House (now demolished & flats on its site)

Enclosure award 1834 (Leigh 198, Cedar 205)		Parish rate map 1839		OS map 1899