Catalogue description Radcliffe-Cooke Collection

Court Rolls, Deeds and Papers of the Estates of the Wallwyn and Noble family, Herefordshire.

G57, E69 and AS8

Wallwyn family of Much Marcle, Herefordshire

Noble family of Much Marcle, Herefordshire

Cooke family of Much Marcle, Herefordshire

Transcripts of the Court Rolls are available and should be Used wherever possible to save the original records, which are frail. - J20

• Hellens Estate, Much Marcle, Herefordshire

In comparison with most Herefordshire parishes Much Marcle must be reckoned large. Within it lay several manors. Of these the manor called Marcle Audleys, otherwise known as Marcle Magna, formed the nucleus of the Hellens estate. From the fourteenth century it descended in the family of Wallwyn which was also established at Dormington, Stoke Edith and Sutton St. Nicholas.

Court rolls and rentals from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century give members of the Wallwyn family as Lords of the Manor, but few records of other kinds survive for dates before the death in 1686 of John Wallwyn, the last male heir of the direct line. His sons died without issue, and he was succeeded by two daughters who, as co-heiresses, accepted a partition of the Wallwyn inheritance. Frances, who married the Rev. John Shepheard, took Dormington and Sutton. Her step-sister Margaret married John Noble, mercer of London and took the Much Marcle property.

The general deeds and settlements for the Much Marcle estates record this partition, and subsequent settlement by John and Margaret Noble. The records of John Noble include two particularly interesting account books. One of these, [RC/MIII/274] concerns his estate affairs and some personal notes, the other, [RC/iv/JL] includes, as well as estate material, accounts of his business as a London mercer, 1691-1694. This account book has been described in some detail in an article by Miss Radcliffe Cooke, Woolhope Club Transactions, 1942. Among John Noble's papers are a number of items concerning Land Tax, its payment, and disputes concerning it, and these are of some interest for the history of the local collection of this tax. Margaret Noble survived her husband for a few years, and at her death the estates, under the previously made wills and settlement devolved upon her son William who died unmarried. This left the estate again open to division amongst co-heiresses. A large part of the eighteenth century papers, both records of estate management and personal correspondence, concern the many difficulties arising from the claiming of the shares, by the co-heiresses and their descendants. One of the daughters, Elizabeth, who married Edward James had a son Edward Wallwyn. He became the ultimate heir to the estates, partly through inheriting his mother's share which was increased by the death without issue of her sisters Frances, Margaret, Martha and Pye, and partly by his decision to buy out the remaining shares of the other heiresses and their descendants. The papers of Edward Wallwyn have survived in considerable quantity. He inherited the Pytts properties in Garway as well as the Much Marcle interests. He was orphaned early and brought up by his father's family, the James, but took the name of Wallwyn when he came into the estates. He was educated for the law and some of his papers reflect his professional activities, but these were very much overshadowed by his interest as a landowner.

The surviving papers recording the process of enclosure in Much Marcle in the last decade of the 18th century are of particular interest while his letters to his agents and tenants reflect in good detail the relations between landlords and farmers at that period. He died without direct heirs though he did have adopted daughters. The estates eventually developed upon the Cooke family, remote kin of the old Wallwyn family, who by the early eighteenth century were centred largely in Suffolk, and throughout the nineteenth century the Hellens estate was owned by members of the Cooke family. Their last descendant was Miss Radcliffe-Cooke, herself an historian greatly interested in social conditions whose papers survive in this collection in some small quantity.

This collection does not however tell the whole story of these families, or of the Much Marcle estates. Further information is to be found in two other collections now at the County Record Office, Hereford, which have been, by accidents of history divorced from this main group. The one [H.C.R.O. Ref E 69] contains much material complimentary and additional to the manorial estate and personal papers to be found here. The other [H.C.R.O. Ref G 37] is rich in muniments of title from the thirteenth century onwards for Much Marcle and for other places of the Wallwyn spheres of influence.