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HISTORIC | BRISTOL It cannot be ignored that the Smyth family’s wealth, as with many rich families of the 18th and 19th centuries, came from the exploitation and suffering of others. The marriage in 1757 of Sir John Hugh Smyth (1734-1802) to Elizabeth Woolnough (1742-1825) brought a vast dowry including Spring Plantation in Jamaica. In 1748 Jarritt Smyth (1692-1783) opened up a series of coal mines in Bedminster and North Somerset, for which eight pence (around £4 today) from every ton of coal mined by local men and boys went into the Smyth’s coffers. As with many great houses, Ashton Court was no exception to visits by royalty over the centuries, but it was an inauspicious start. Sir Hugh had such a reputation for cruel and unreasonable behaviour towards his servants and tenants that the opportunity to host Queen Elizabeth I on her visit to Bristol in 1574 passed him by. In the early 17th century the Smyths did, however, entertain Queen Anne of Denmark on her visit to the city and in 1663 a gift by Sir Hugh (1632-1680) to King Charles II and his queen, who were partaking of the waters in nearby Bath, led to the king riding over to the estate to thank him in person. Sometimes royal relations were closer than expected. In the 1840s the Prince of Wales, future King Edward VII, would visit Ashton Court for the shooting. There was a rumour that it wasn’t just pheasant that the Prince was bagging in Sir Greville and Lady Emily’s home, however this has never been substantiated. Most of the interior of Ashton Court was sold off in the 1947 Great Sale, so it needs imagination to envisage its glory days. Sir Greville had converted the stable block into his own private museum with his souvenirs and animals of his travels, with a bungalow built on the estate to house the overflow (now the Redwood Hotel and Country Club). It was Sir Greville’s vast collection, including rare, extinct auk eggs, that was donated in 1910 by his widow to Bristol Museum. Alas the bombings of 1941 destroyed most of it. The family’s passion for the countryside, and the size of their estate, made the Smyth’s the perfect hosts of the West of England agricultural shows. In 1936 Ashton Court was chosen to be the site of The Royal Agricultural Show which was attended by the then Duke and Duchess of York, the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Despite such conspicuous displays of wealth there is still rumour that treasure is buried upon the Ashton Court Estate. Apparently, at the beginning of the English Civil War, Thomas Smyth (1609-1642) requested his steward to bury the family silver on the estate. Both Thomas and the steward died before the location of this treasure could be disclosed and no silver has ever been found. The hunt for family wealth continued in the early 20th century when Esme Smyth (1863-1946) desecrated the family vault at Ashton Church, prising open her ancestors’ coffins in the hope of finding a valuable bejewelled gold ring. As befits any English aristocratic family, eccentrics abounded in the Smyths. Sir John Hugh’s wife Elizabeth revelled in gambling and hunting and took a perverse delight in doing the exact opposite of what her physician advised. Sir John (1659-1726) was considered a dull man and a hypochondriac – his daughters referred to Ashton Court as “the nunnery”. Another eccentric was the insolent and badly behaved Sir Hugh (1792-1824). He played practical jokes such as dropping a fake stag beetle down the bodice of his organist Miss Emmins. One of the most scandalous court cases that rocked Victorian England, and was said to have been the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ Jarndyce v Jarndyce court case in his novel Bleak House (1852-3), was that of Smyth vs Smyth (1853). On the death of Sir Hugh and his brother Sir John (1776-1849) the estate passed to Greville Upton (later Smyth), a great nephew of Hugh and John. Greville was a minor so the estate was put under stewardship. In 1852 two men arrived at Ashton Court, one a solicitor and the other a man who claimed he was the rightful heir, Sir Richard Smyth – an illegitimate son of Sir Hugh. This impertinent imposter greeted the steward, Arthur Way, with the words: “I wish you to discharge the household…and I request you will hand me the keys to the mansion. But you need not hurry sir, I will allow you two hours to take your departure.”
The two men found themselves promptly manhandled out of the house by the servants, but ‘Sir Richard’ was not deterred. He set up home not far from Ashton Court at St Vincent’s Priory in Clifton and proceeded to approach tenants of the estate, instructing them to pay him the rates and not Greville. In August 1853 the case of Smyth vs Smyth came to Gloucester Assizes. The courtroom was packed and under cross-questioning, Sir Richard’s case crumbled as he was revealed to be none other than a horse thief called Thomas Provis. Even after his unmasking, Provis still insisted he was a Smyth, declaring that he had the family trait of a pigtail to prove it. This wig was unceremoniously plucked from his head as he was taken away, and said to have taken pride of place in Sir Greville’s museum. Ashton Court was never quite the same family home after the First and Second World Wars. In 1917 Esme gave the estate over to the Red Cross with £1,200 to help convert it to a hospital for convalescent officers, one of whom was the writer C.S Lewis. Post1918 the building continued as a hospital and once the last patient was gone the Ministry of Pensions resided there until 1923. During the Second World War, Esme chose to remain on the estate despite the risk and kept a loaded revolver on her work table as a precaution. Ashton Court was first a transit camp for troops from the Midlands on their way to France. The heavily wooded estate offered perfect camouflage for military vehicles and equipment prior to the D-Day invasions of 1944. As Ashton Court was on the flight path to Filton aerodrome, barrage balloons were put up and a gun was positioned in the grounds. As the bombs fell on Bristol, Esme enjoyed hosting the American GIs who were stationed at the Court and arranged weekly dances in the Long Gallery to which she would be wheeled along so she could watch. The final days of the Court as the Smyth family home were sad ones. The building was already falling into wrack and ruin, and Esme became a Miss Havisham type of figure. She saw out her final days in an ever-shrinking series of rooms with just a skeleton staff and her pampered pooches for company. Her daughter and heir Sylvia (19011959) had by this point been disowned over disagreements over the running of the estate. After Esme’s death in 1946, the huge death duties and spiralling maintenance costs forced Sylvia’s son and Ashton Court’s heir Greville Adrian to sell it. Luckily for Bristol it wasn’t demolished as so many country houses were at that time, but purchased by Bristol City Council in 1959. Today Ashton Court is a Grade I listed property of national importance, within a Grade II listed historic park and gardens. However, with English Heritage recognising it as being in “slow decay” and its closure as an events venue, its future hangs in the balance... ■ In 1392 the Lyons were granted a royal license to enclose their land and create the deer park that still exists today (image from Bristol City Council)
THEBRISTOLMAG.CO.UK
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APRIL 2018
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THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE 47