The modern house was built in 1700 for Peter West, who came of an old Tiverton mercantile stock connected with the Blundells. In 1594 John West had married Edy, daughter of James Blundell, and niece of Peter Blundell and his sister Elinor, wife of John Chilcott, of Fairby, and mother of Robert Chilcott, the founder of Chilcott’s School, which stands at the lower end of St Peter Street, and, with its mullioned and transomed windows, its handsome archway, and solid, iron-studded, black oak door, forms an interesting specimen of Jacobean architecture. Peter West’s daughter Dorothy took for her bridegroom Sir Thomas Carew, of Haccombe, and thus manor and castle passed into the possession of the distinguished family which still owns them.
We have enjoyed many opportunities of estimating the wealth and importance of the “woollen” merchants of Tiverton; but, if anything yet lack, the reader may station himself before the great House of St George, nearly opposite Chilcott’s School, and consider it at his leisure. This seemly residence, with its garden close, was built apparently by George Skinner, merchant, whose initials were formerly to be seen on the northern termination of the hood-mould. On the southern termination is the date 1612—the date of the second great fire. As the house is thoroughly Jacobean in style, it is natural to conclude that it is in all essentials the identical structure erected in that memorable year, but the confused account in Harding’s History of Tiverton contains documentary evidence showing that it was “demolished and consumed by reason of the late unhappy wars” (i.e., the Civil War), and suggests that the “messuage” was rebuilt at various periods, from 1541 onwards. I shall not attempt to unravel the mystery, but content myself with observing that, beyond any question, the building has been altered, and that within living memory. Once, and for long, it rejoiced in another storey, but modern wisdom having determined that the edifice was “top-heavy,” the upper portion was removed.
About the year 1740 the manufacture of serges, druggets, drapeens, and the like began to decline, and, later, the effects of the American Revolution were severely felt in the town. In 1790, however, there were still a thousand looms and two hundred woolcombers in the neighbourhood. Then came the great war with France, which almost paralysed the local firms; and on its cessation the Tiverton manufacturers vainly endeavoured to restore old connections with the Continent. It was plain that the ancient trade
in wool, on which so many depended, was in its last throes. The end was sudden and dramatic. One morning, when the workpeople were at breakfast, the inhabitants of Westexe were startled by the loud report of a gun, and the news soon spread that Mr Armitage, the manager of a large mill, which had been built in 1790, and in which, as in a last refuge, the remains of the staple industry were concentrated, had shot himself in the counting-house.
The ruin of the place now seemed certain. Happily, however, the following year (1815), Messrs Heathcoat, Boden, and Oliver purchased the mill, and by extensive additions, converted it into an immense lace factory. In 1809 they had obtained a fourteen years’ patent for a greatly improved bobbin-net machine, of which Mr Heathcoat was the inventor, and erected a factory at Loughborough. The firm removed to Tiverton in consequence of the injury done to the machines by the Luddites, and thither a number of their men accompanied them. Some of the Leicestershire “hands,” about the year 1820, had a dispute with Mr Heathcoat, who had become sole proprietor of the factory, and, this having ended in their discharge or voluntary retirement from his service, they determined to set up an opposition concern. It is believed that the artisans had machines of their own brought down along with those of Mr Heathcoat and installed in the mill under some arrangement with him. Anyhow, they resolved to start lace-making on their own account.
Money, of course, had to be provided, and this to a limited amount—very limited for such a venture—was found them by a physician of the town named Houston, whilst premises were secured behind, or near what is now the Golden Lion Inn, Westexe. Here the quixotic scheme was launched, and here it came to an inglorious end, after a futile imitation of the frog in the fable. The credulous doctor, who lived in a house, now a saddler’s shop, next the “White Ball,” and whose backyard abutted on the infant factory, lost what he had lent, and no doubt learnt a lesson.
Hardly more felicitous was Mr George Cosway’s attempt to resuscitate the woollen industry. Mr Cosway “took up arms against a sea of troubles”; his capital was none too large, and in the face of powerful competition in other parts of the country, his factory in Broadlane was never a conspicuous success. On his death it was closed, and that finally. Mr Cosway belonged to the same family as the famous miniaturist, one of whose larger paintings, designed for an altar-piece, hangs on the north wall of St Peter’s Church. The subject is “St Peter delivered by an Angel,” and the picture was Richard Cosway’s gift to the town of which he was a native. The larger painting on the other side of the vestry door, the subject of which is “The Adoration of the Magi,” is a very fine work by Gaspar de Crayer, and an almost exact reproduction of a picture by Rubens in the Antwerp gallery.
It would be improper, I suppose, to refer to Tiverton without mentioning Lord Palmerston, whose Parliamentary connection with the borough extended from 1835 to 1865—just thirty years. As an Irishman, the popular statesman must have been perfectly at home in the town, which is always lively at election times, and during his early acquaintance with it, had an unenviable reputation as a rival to Donnybrook Fair. Most of the inhabitants had their chosen inn, the tradesmen being accommodated in the parlour, the artisans in the bar, and the labourers in the kitchen; and the consumption of beer and spirits almost exceeds belief. One would make ten glasses of grog his nightly quantum, another was not content with fewer than eighteen, while a third drank gin and water by the bucketful. Every now and then women would have a fight in the streets. A ring would be formed, whereupon the trulls grappled with each other, and with their long hair streaming down their backs, and blood down their faces, presented a pitiful and degrading spectacle. Things are better now.