John Henry Whitmore-Jones

Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612 (or 1618 according to English Heritage) for one Walter Jones, a successful wool merchant and sometime MP for Worcester. The house was built on land purchased in 1604 from one of the Gunpowder Plotters, Robert Catesby. The fortunes of the house went into decline after the English Civil War as Walter’s grandson, Arthur, had been a Royalist and was subjected to large financial penalties by the victorious Parliamentarians. Nevertheless the property remained in the family passing down through the line of succession when it passed sideways to a cousin, John Henry Whitmore-Jones, in 1828. Whitmore-Jones was able to make repairs and improvements to the house notably the repair of the main staircase.
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In 1917 the last of the Jones (or Whitmore-Jones) in possession of the house died. In 1955 his widow bequeathed the property to art historian Alan Clutton-Brock who was a descendant of the wife of John Henry Whitmore-Jones mentioned earlier. Alan and his wife Barbara lived at Chastleton thereafter. In 1976 Alan died and Barbara (neé Foy) continued to live there until 1991 when it became untenable for her to stay.

Chastleton House, Geograph.org

England Births and Christenings:

• Name John Henry Whitmore
• Gender Male
• Christening Date 24 Jun 1796
• Christening Place QUATT MALVERN,SHROPSHIRE,ENGLAND
• Father's Name William Whitmore
• Mother's Name Mary

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Walter, the sixth child of Henry Jones, was born in 1674, and was only about fourteen when his father died. His grandmother, Mrs. Arthur Jones, was living in Chastleton House, and it seems probable that she managed his estate till he came of age, and perhaps arranged his marriage in 1697, when he was twenty-three. The bride was Anne Whitmore, daughter of Richard Whitmore, of Lower Slaughter Manor. (This estate, a few miles from Chastleton, is still the property of the Whitmores.)
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Unfortunately the Chastleton finances were in a bad state, (possibly owing to the Civil War) and in 1699 Walter Jones raised £735 by a mortgage on the estate. In 1703 his brother-in-law, Sir William Whitmore, took over the mortgage. In 1704 Walter Jones died at the age of thirty, leaving to his widow an encumbered estate, and four children under the age of six, John, Henry, Anne, and Sarah.
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In August, 1720, her final accounts were audited, and John Jones then of age, succeeded to the property. ... As soon as her son came of age Anne Jones went to live at Shrewsbury, possibly with her brother Richard, and near her relations at Apley. ... The deed was witnessed by her son, Henry, then reading law at Clements Inn. Her two daughters probably lived with her till the youngest, Sarah, married Richard Jervis, of Slaughter. Later the elder sister, Anne, who never married, lived with her sister and brother-in-law at Broadwell, near Chastleton, Mrs. Walter Jones died in 1739, and was buried at Chastleton.
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Of John Jones who succeeded to Chastleton in 1720 we know very little. He seems to have been devoted to his land and his garden, and to country life in general.
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John Jones died in August, 1738, aged thirty-nine. His name is next that of his mother on the marble slab in the Church. He left each of his sisters £210, and an Annuity of £25. The estate was left to Trustees to raise money to pay the legacies and debts. It was then to go to Henry, and was carefully settled on his sons, and, failing them, on the sons of Anne and Sarah. If there should be no children, or no grand-children of Henry, or of the sisters, the remainder was to "my Kinsman William Whitmore of Lower Slaughter." (This remainder explains the succession of John Henry Whitmore to the Chastleton estate in 1828.)

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Henry Jones, only a year younger than his elder brother, could not have expected to succeed to the estate. In London as a lawyer, he did work for his cousin, Sir Thomas Whitmore, of Apley, his aunt, Lady Whitmore, and other relations.

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Another cousin, Charles Whitmore, whose name occurs frequently in his accounts was a younger brother of Sir Thomas, The estate of Dudmaston, Salop, was then the property of the Wolryche family, the heir to which, a very young man, was drowned in trying to swim his horse across the flooded Severn. His mother and sister, left in embarrassed circumstances, appealed to Charles Whitmore for help and advice, and, in gratitude for his efforts, settled the reversion of the Dudmaston estate on his son, Thomas. He was the grandfather of John Henry Whitmore, a younger son, who in 1828, succeeded to the Chastleton estate, and took the additional surname of Jones.
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Arthur Jones made his will in 1814 leaving Chastleton, in accordance with the will of his uncle, to "My Kinsman, John Henry Whitmore, of Dudmaston, Salop." During the two centuries in which the Jones family had held the estate the owners had possessed only four Christian names, Walter, Henry, Arthur, and John, and it may have been in view of the succession that William Whitmore had christened his younger son by two of these. J. H. Whitmore was at Christ Church, Oxford, and then entered the Army, but retired on his marriage in 1821 to Dorothy, daughter of Colonel Clutton, of Pensax Court, Worcestershire. In 1819 a note, " Mr. Whitmore for tenants dinner," suggests that he was at Chastleton and acting for Arthur Jones. After his marriage he lived for a time at Bigswear on the Wye.
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John Henry Whitmore assumed the additional surname and the arms of Jones on succeeding to Chastleton. He died in 1853, leaving four sons and six daughters. The sons all died unmarried, and the eldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth Whitmore-Jones held the property by consent of her sisters (all of whom were married) from the death of their youngest brother in 1874, till the year 1900, when she resigned it to her nephew, Thomas Whitmore Harris, the son of her next sister, Mrs. John Harris. That year he took the name and arms of Whitmore-Jones, and married his first cousin, Irene Dickins, daughter of Canon Dickins, Vicar of Tardebigge, and his wife, Frances Barbara, third daughter of John Henry Whitmore-Jones.
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Thomas Whitmore Harris, who succeeded to the estate in 1900, and took the name of Whitmore Jones, was a grandson by his mother of John Henry Whitmore Jones, and by his father was descended from Sir Richard Catesby, the great-grandfather of Robert Catesby.

Chastleton House (1900) by Margaret Dickins

Portrait details:

• National Trust Collections
• Art UK