Goodwyn House, 12 High Street

Introduction

This extremely good-looking house should properly be called 'Goodwin House' as it was owned by the rich and powerful Goodwin family of gentleman farmers who, from the 1780s to the 1840s, owned or tenanted five farmsteads in the village together with most of the valuable agricultural land. When John Goodwin the younger died intestate in 1844 the rival claims of his extensive family eventually led to all his possessions being sold by order of Chancery. This sale released a huge amount of land on to the market in 1875, just as demand for housing was rising, and contributed in large part to the development of the village as it is now.

Goodwyn House itself is much older than it looks The symmetrical redbrick front of about 1800 conceals an earlier building which can be traced back through documents to the sixteenth century, though its history is much less clear than that of many other houses in Datchet and the present house does not seem to retain any early timber structure. The present name was apparently not used before about 1930 and its spelling is clearly a deliberate 'ye olde' version of the family's name.

The Goodwin Family

John Goodwin the elder first appears in Datchet in the 1770s and died in 1815. It is not known where he was born nor who his parents were, and he appears to have had no children by his wife Ann Piper whom he married at Langley Marish in 1779. His close relations and heirs were his two nephews, John junior and Ralph, and two nieces, Sophia and Anne. All four of these intermarried closely with the Willis and Ive families of Langley and produced children who were given their mothers' family names and further married back into those families. Strangely for the time, three of Ralph's six daughters remained unmarried.

On Ralph's death in 1823 his share of his uncle's property was protected by his will, but in 1844 John junior, who had received much more (including Goodwyn House) failed to do so and the Ive and Willis families contested for their shares over the next thirty years.

John Goodwin senior's property

Much of John Goodwin's property had belonged to Daniel and Adrian Marsh, the family who had previously been the dominant farmers in and around the village, both as owners and tenants. In 1794 their heir, John Fleetwood Marsh, sold up and left for America as a religious nonconformist zealot and it seems that John Goodwin bought houses and land from him. By 1800 John Goodwin had also bought the homestead and land belonging to Eton College (which he had previously leased) and was the tenant farmer at Ditton Park farm and John Richard's Rectory Farm, though he would probably have employed bailiffs to manage these estates.

Goodwyn House had almost certainly been owned by the Marsh family as a farm homestead (much reduced by the railway line c1850) since a barn there was let by John Fleetwood to the Baptist group in 1785 as their first Chapel in Datchet. It is presumed that John Goodwin did not acquire the house and homestead until about 1794.

But in 1778 John Goodwin had bought the house and surrounding land in the High Street now known as The Hall House (or as Margaret Partington's Hat Hire Shop) and the workshops behind it in Queen's Road. Thames Cottage was also part of either the Goodwin House or Hall House premises. In a county militia list of 1798 both a John and Ralph Goodwin are described as butchers, so it is possible that the two nephews ran this business under their uncle John's ownership from the Hall House, which was still a butcher's into the 20th century. The red-brick house and shopfront blocks which extend this very old property to the road frontage were most likely built by John Goodwin, although there is no direct evidence for this.

John Goodwin as a builder

John Goodwin the elder added a new block to Goodwyn House, very much as at 20 High Street, greatly enlarging and improving the place but not demolishing the much older house behind. But this was not his only venture into fashionable house building at the height of his wealth and power. In his first will of 1806 (he did not die until 1815) he described as 'newly built' his house, now demolished, known later as Satis House on Horton Road. This was much bigger and grander for its time than Goodwyn House.

John Goodwin's other houses
Hall House & Thames Cottage, mid 20thC	Cottages & workshops, Queens Road	Satis House, Horton Road, mid 20thC

Inheritance of John Goodwin's property

By John senior's will in 1815 his nephew Ralph received Satis House and the Hall House / Thames Cottage / Queen's Road premises. These were passed on to his daughters Mary, Amelia and Caroline by Ralph in 1823. Ralph left his farming and coal-merchants' business to be carried on by his wife Ann, in trust for his son until he became of age. In the 1841 census the widow Ann was living at Satis House with two of her daughters while Thomas, as a coal merchant, was at a part of the Lawns estate which is now Orchard Court.

John junior had received the bulk of the land owned by his uncle together with Goodwyn House and an ancient farmstead and cottages on the opposite side of the High Street (site of Eldertree Cottage) plus the Eton homestead (partly now Hall Court). All this was sold in 1875 but continued to be occupied by the family or tenants until the Chancery case was resolved.

John junior's wife Mary Ann Willis Goodwin lived at Goodwyn House until her death in 1858, when her will shows that she had property of her own elsewhere from her father, which she then bequeathed to her son Ralph Willis Goodwin. While this Ralph was living at Goodwyn House he was described as a farmer of 400 acres, employing 12 men, but this was as the manager of the Lascelles' Southlea Farm, not his father's or great uncle's land. John junior and Mary Ann's other son, John Willis Goodwin, became the farm manager for the Rectory estates of John Richards and in 1841 was living at The Dutch House farmstead next to Astracot in Horton Road.

House contents sale, 1816

All John Goodwin's household effects were, by his will, to be shared between the four nephews and nieces, but in fact the contents of Goodwyn House were put up for sale, advertised in the Windsor Express in 1816:

Nineteenth century occupants of Goodwyn House

In the twentieth century the house was owned for about fifty years by Ernest Mumford and then by his widow, as listed in Kelly's Street Directories from 1907 to 1956 (though not published every year). No house name is given until 1931 when Goodwyn House is first listed by that name.

Earlier history of Goodwyn House, back to 1548 (and a Shakespeare connection?)

The forerunner of Goodwin House and its huge estates of land in the fields of Datchet can be identified in the Manor Surveys of 1548, 1604 and 1622 and followed through purchases until 1675, but then the trail goes cold and it is not yet known how or when the house came into the Marsh family's possession before being bought by John Goodwin from John Fleetwood Marsh.

Manorial Surveys

1548: Richard Gallys owns a freehold messuage and garden with 53 acres of land, including one garden called Staphion (could be the origin of Saffron Close, now part of the recreation ground) and a parcell of land next to 'Pelline Bridge' (over the watercourse, at the top of the High Street) and a parcel next to the Church Ground, value 33s 7d

    (These details are important, even though little understood now, because they help to trace the property by similar descriptions.)

1622: Martin Pritchett owns a freehold messuage and garden and land, including one garden called Staphion garden and one parcell abutting Pellinge Bridge and a parcel lying next to Churchground, value 33s 7d, once in tenancy Richard Gallys

Sales 1671 and 1675:

In 1671 the Manor Court roll records that Anna Pritchard (ie Pritchett) has sold a freehold messuage and 50 acres and an eyot to
William Loader of Wallingford.

In 1675 Dr Thomas Browne sold all his Manor of Southley and all freehold & copyhold lands and eyots in Datchet (which he had purchased of Richard Berringer and William Loader) to his friend Dr Isaac Voissins.

Isaac Voissins' property was eventually inherited by the Lascelles family, Earls of  Harewood, who owned Southlea to the end of the 19th century. The Lascelles gradually sold all the houses they did not require, especially those in the village centre, keeping only the huge estates of land, and it is assumed, though at present cannot be proved, that the Marsh family leased or bought the Goodwin house at some time in the 1700s.

The Gallys Connection is very interesting: Richard Gallys was Mayor of Windsor in 1561, 1566 and 1570 and, it is thought, was the model for Shakespeare's host in The Merry Wives of Windsor written in about 1597.

Listed Building information from local authority

Windsor & Maidenhead, 40667, Goodwyn House, 12 High Street, Grade II, 5130, SU 9876 6/4

Early C19 two storey, red brick hipped old tile roof. Brick dentil course at eaves. Three double hung sashes in reveals without glazing bars at first floor. One similar window on either side of central door with rectangular fanlight, doorcase of Tuscan columns, frieze & pediment. Later brick extension to left hand with parapet

Sources and references

Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury:
    Land tax 1781-1832
    County rate Surveys 1857 & 1866

Online & local libraries
    Censuses 1841-1901
    Goodwin family wills (The National Archive)
    Windsor Express from 1812, Slough Library

Parish Records
    Parish registers, Datchet, Eton, Langley Marish

Manor Court Rolls 1565-late 19thC
    Northamptonshire Record Office & Beaulieu Archives

Manorial Surveys
    1548: Public Record Office, Kew, ref: LR2 / 188
    1604: Northamptonshire Record Office ref: Buccleuch papers 2.6 / X333
    1622: Cambridge, awaiting reference

 Browne/Voissins sale
    PRO patent roll Pat26ChII, C66/31,67

Researcher: janetkennish@tesco.net