Catalogue description ARCHIVE OF MESSRS PAPER AND FOVARGUE OF BATTLE, SOLICITORS

This catalogue embraces the following ten deposits by the firm of Raper and Forvague. They are listed in the order of their receipt by ESRO (as indicated by the ACC number in the second column), under the references in the first column. For further details of their deposit, and details of other deposits by the firm in this and other record offices, see 'Archival History' in this catalogue

RAF/F 205 Fuller family papers, 1680-1886

RAF/F 654 Fuller family papers, 1680-1886

ACC2449 2449 Turnpike minutes and accounts, maps and papers of the Fuller estate, minutes of Battle Petty Sessions 1778-1789

SAS-HA/330-382 3096 Deeds and papers of the Pelham-Papillon family of Catsfield Place, 1736-1854

SAS-HA/580-582 3110 Three commissions of sewers, Pevensey Rape

SAS-RA/1-98 3206 Deeds, Battle, Hooe etc, 13th century-1916

SAS-RF/1-21 3213 15 boxes of Fuller deeds

ACC3715 3715 Papers concerning the Ashdown Forest dispute in the High Court of Justice, 1877-1881

ACC4609 4609 Deeds of land in Pevensey Marsh, 1679-1945

ACC5218 5218 Firm's records and clients' papers, 1662-1966

Raper and Fovargue, solicitors

Records are open to consultation unless otherwise indicated

There is no comprehensive list of the documents deposited by Raper and Fovargue at the East Sussex Record Office. Table 1 sets out, in order of ESRO Accession-number, all the groups of records which have been deposited by the firm at any archive repository and which have come to rest at ESRO, and also groups of records deposited by private individuals which derive from the offices of Raper and Fovargue. Table 2 lists the records which the firm has deposited at record offices other than ESRO

The archive of Raper and Fovargue has not been well served by the various archive repositories with which it has been deposited. The harshness of that statement can be mitigated by the very large size and wide scope of the archival material involved, by the long period - more than 70 years - over which the firm has passed documents to a number of different institutions, and by the haphazard way in which it has done so

The holdings of the firm which were then considered as historical were surveyed for the Sussex Committee of the National Register of Archives in about 1950. As well as its internal merits the list, NRA 126 in the ESRO searchroom, has enabled several documents from other sources to be identified positively as strays from the archive of the firm

The different deposits are listed, in the order of their accession by East Sussex Record Office, in Table 1. The paragraphs which follow set out in narrative form the sequence of those deposits and the archival treatment they have received

W A Raper, a member of the council of the Sussex Archaeological Society, recognised the archival importance of relatively recent documents and it is significant that the earliest records to be deposited by the firm were the notebooks of evidence which he, as a young man, had collected from the old men of Ashdown Forest in the late 1870s; these he passed to the Society in 1934. It is probably safe to assume that the firm's strongrooms were kept under strict control during Raper's lifetime, and it is perhaps not surprising that the first evidence of laxity comes from immediately after his death in December 1940. The Battle antiquarian Hugh Whistler deposited a group of deeds with the Society in 1942, and these were clearly only a selection, and an insignificant one, from the documents which he had perhaps saved from a wartime salvage-drive - further documents from the same source reached ESRO in 1965 and 1969

The firm continued to deposit with the Sussex Archaeological Society between 1938 and 1950, and in that time a large quantity of material, consisting both to the firm's own records and those of the Fuller family of Rosehill in Brightling, passed into its care. The Fuller deeds were listed by the Society, in the fifteen bundles in which they had been arranged by Frederic Ellman in 1838, as RF 1-15; so little attention was drawn by the list to the source of the documents that it was commonly believed that the mnemonic initials were those of Rose Fuller rather than the firm

The first of a series of deposits was made with ESRO on 5 October 1956, but it is clear from subsequent retrievals that members of the Battle Historical Society had the run of the firm's strongrooms, probably in the 1960s, and it is quite possible that further material remains at Battle Museum

As well the Historical Society and local antiquaries, other better-established repositories also received deposits from Raper and Fovargue. In 1937 W A Raper sent a court roll of the lathe court of the Rape of Hastings, 1586-87, to the British Museum (now BL Add Roll 71108), despite retaining several similar documents (see SAS-RA/69-74), and a copy of the 1433 rental of Battle manor, in his hands in 1916, had been alienated, perhaps to the College of Arms, before 1934 (see SAS-RA 65, 91). In 1959 records relating to the exempt jurisdiction of the Dean of Battle, 1610-1924, were deposited at the diocesan record office at Chichester; their current place among the episcopal archives provides an ignominious end to one of the great medieval disputes over ecclesiastical jurisdictions

In the early 1960s ESRO decided, although the use of that term suggests a policy decision which was almost certainly lacking, to quarry the enormous corpus of documents for arrangement into discrete groups, almost always into the Additional Manuscripts (later AMS) class. Thus the records derived from Raper's involvement in the great Ashdown Forest case, excluding of course those which had already passed to the Sussex Archaeological Society, were listed as AMS 3780-4104, and the records of Worrall's Charity and its manor of Moorhall in Ninfield as AMS 3507-3615. A single map of Rosehill Park was removed from the mass of Fuller papers and listed as AMS 3501. Subsequent, more methodical investigation of the firm's strongrooms and attics in the late 1970s revealed large quantities of material which augment that listed in the 1950s

A more methodical approach to the archive was adopted in the late 1960s, when what were perceived to be records relating to the Fuller family were removed from the mass of accessions and listed as RAF/F. This exercise was flawed in two major respects. It was not comprehensive, and a large number of records derived from the firm's work for the Fullers of Brightling remained unlisted; and, more seriously, many documents relating to the distantly-related Fullers of Catsfield and the more closely allied Fullers of Ashdown House were indiscriminately included. RAF/F is included here reluctantly, and it is hoped at some time in the future to dismantle the class and re-organise it along sounder lines

In 1978 and 1979 Christopher Whittick of ESRO spent several weeks at the firm's offices and removed a large quantity of material; it also proved possible to retrieve documents which had passed to Battle Museum. Since that date, as far as can be determined, the firm has deposited consistently at ESRO, and its archive forms the largest by far of the many records of solicitors' practices deposited here. The success in obtaining the deposit of this material, much of it of great interest, has not been matched with progress in its listing; over 250 boxes of documents, chiefly derived from ESRO Accessions 654 and 2300, remain with the most rudimentary finding-aids, none of which is included here. Among these documents is an unparalleled series of the firm's own bill-books and other internal records, including partnership agreements, stretching in a consistent series from John Tilden's succession to his father's business in 1765 to the retirement of W A Raper in 1939

TABLE 1

Groups of records now in ESRO, which have been deposited either by Raper and Forvague at any archive repository; or which have been deposited by private individuals but which derive from the offices of Raper and Fovargue; in order of ESRO Accession-number

Groups which do not have a reference in the right-hand column are still (2004) stored under the ACC number in the left-hand column. Groups with references in the right-hand column beginning AMS are separately listed in the catalogues with those designations. Groups noted in the right-hand column as 'this catalogue' are listed here

205 Fuller family papers, 1680-1886, Deposited 5 Oct 1956, RAF/F: this catalogue

205 Map of John Fuller esq's Rose Hill Park in Brightling by [?Michael] Russell and [Thomas] Gream, 1797, Deposited 5 Oct 1956, AMS 3501

317 Documents concerning the Hurst Trust, Eastbourne merged with ACC 654, Deposited 6 Mar 1959

334 Worrall's Charity and the manor of Moorhall, Ninfield, 1371-1931, Deposited 16 Jul 1959, AMS 3507-3615

334 Ashdown Forest case-papers, 1876-1882, Deposited 16 Jul 1959, AMS 3780-4104

386 Nichol family of Mountfield Place, 1764-1851 deposited by H S Egerton but clearly derived from RAF, Deposited 23 May 1960

525 Battle Deanery papers, 1900-1930 merged with ACC 654, Deposited 12 Nov 1962

654 Fuller family papers, 1680-1886, Deposited 10 Mar 1965, RAF/F: this catalogue

654 Records of Battle Burial Board, levels and turnpikes; some parts listed in RAF/F, Deposited 10 Mar 1965

681 Hastings-Flimwell Turnpike accounts, 1753-1773 deposited by J Whistler but derived from RAF; see ACC 987 below, Deposited 21 Oct 1965, AMS 5622

790 Pett Internal Drainage Board merged with ACC 654, Deposited 2 Mar 1967

987 Records of the firm, Battle Petty Sessions, the Ringmer-Battle turnpike, the Fuller family of Brightling, the Rason family, Pevensey Levels Commissioners and Battle Overseers' accounts; 1730-1867

Deposited by J Whistler but derived from RAF; see ACC 681 above, Deposited 25 Apr 1969, AMS 5622

2270 Battle Building Society, draft mortgages, 1870-1900; executors of Frederick Ellman, papers and bank book, 1870-1882; sale particular plan of St Mary's Villas, Battle, with papers concerning plot 48, 1871; terrier of the property of William Rason in Eastbourne, 'late Friend', taken by James Asser, land surveyor, 1790; land tax assessments, Battle, 1737, 1740 and 1789; merged with ACC2300, Deposited 28 Jun 1978

2300 Firm's and clients' records, c1250-date, c250 boxes manuscript list available, Deposited 21 Sep 1978

2449 Turnpike minutes and accounts, maps and papers of the Fuller estate, minutes of Battle Petty Sessions 1778-1789

Deposited by Battle Museum; many identifiable on NRA 126, Deposited 28 Aug 1979, This catalogue

2778 Deeds and documents, 2 boxes

Deposited by Battle Museum; many identifiable on NRA 126; box 1 merged with ACC 2300, Deposited 9 Dec 1981

3096 Deeds and papers of the Pelham-Papillon family of Catsfield Place, 1736-1854

Deposited with the Sussex Arcahaeological Society by Hugh Whistler in 1942 but clearly derived from RAF, Deposited 21 Jun 1982, SAS-HA/330-382: this catalogue

3110 Three commissions of sewers, Pevensey Rape, 1830; deposited with SAS in 1940, Deposited 21 Jun 1982, SAS-HA/580-582: this catalogue

3206 Deeds, Battle, Hooe etc, 13th century-1916; deposited with SAS in 1938, Deposited 21 Jun 1982, SAS-RA/1-99: this catalogue

3213 15 boxes Fuller deeds; deposited with SAS 1938-1950, Deposited 21 Jun 1982, SAS-RF/1-17: this catalogue

3673 Flimwell turnpike copy notices and orders, 1823-1826; account book of Stephen Fuller; deposited with SAS in 1942, Deposited 21 Jun 1982

3715 Papers concerning the Ashdown Forest dispute in the High Court of Justice, 1877-1881, including interview books and farm account books; deposited with SAS in 1934, Deposited 15 Jan 1997, This catalogue

4321 Fuller Estate, Rosehill, waste book 1821-1835; vouchers to account, 1839-1846; loose vouchers, 1829, 1836, 1837; balances of errors, 1824-1825, 1827; rentals, 1838-1842; Heathfield, Framfield, Selmeston and Chiddingly tithe accounts, 1838-1842; estate labourers accounts, 21 Nov 1837-9 Oct 1937; 1st edition 1:2500 Ordnance Survey sheets 56/14, 15, 69/1, 3, 6, 7, 11, with books of reference for Herstmonceux, Hailsham and Pevensey, Deposited 22 Aug 1984

4534 Indexed client account ledger, Oct 1806 - Dec 1809 merged with ACC 2300, Deposited 18 Oct 1985

4609 Deeds of land in Pevensey Marsh, 1679-1945; deposited from the offices of John Ward & Co, Robertsbridge, Deposited 25 Mar 1986, This catalogue

4692 Deeds of 206 Mount Pleasant Road, Battle, 1880-1971, Deposited 25 Jul 1986

4795 Battle Deanery, charters material relating to the exempt jurisdiction of the Dean of Battle, tithes, presentations; c1120-1954 temporarily deposited in 1985 and accessioned as from the Dean, but clearly derived from RAF, Deposited 20 Feb 1987

5218 Firm's records and clients' papers, 1662-1966, Deposited 28 Feb 1989, This catalogue

6077/23 Fuller and Barton papers recovered from home of former curator of SAS museums; probably part of ACC 3213, Deposited 21 Jun 1991

TABLE 2

Records deposited by Raper and Forvague at record offices other than ESRO

c1920, British Museum, Daybook of the siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1780, British Library Add MS 45188

1937, British Museum, Hastings Rape lathe court roll, 1586-1587, British Library Add Roll 71108

1965, Kent Archives Office, Pett Levels records, possibly returned to ESRO

1959, West Sussex Record Office, papers relating to Battle Deanery, 1610-1924, WSRO Ep VIII/1-11

• East Sussex
• Land tenure

The history of the firm

Battle perhaps owes its role as an administrative centre to the abbey's Court of Record, which from the earliest times entertained pleas brought by and against the tenants within the leuga. It was still active in the 16th century - for a discussion of its jurisdiction, records, litigants and personnel see J H Baker, 'Personal actions in the High Court of Battle Abbey 1450-1602', Cambridge Law Journal 53(3) (1992) 508-529). The presence of the court and of the great secular household in the town after the dissolution of at Battle Abbey, as well as the pattern of communications in this part of the Weald, must have encouraged lawyers to base themselves at Battle, and by the 17th century several members of the profession, both barristers and solicitors, can be identified. The coronership for the liberty of Hastings Rape, from which Battle itself was exempt but nevertheless lay at its central point, was always held by one of the town's attorneys. Certainly by the middle of the 18th century, Battle supported two practices, which catered to the Tory and Whig elements of the locality. The firm which emerged as Raper and Fovargue had a clientele of predominantly conservative landowners, and the present Sheppard and Sons was engaged by liberals. The growing number of public offices available to firms of solicitors tended to alternate between these two firms according to the politics of the group which controlled them, and the business of the Webster family of Battle Abbey tended to depend on the powerful whim of succeeding baronets

Although it is possible to speculate about the firm's earlier ancestry, the first practitioner who can be identified with certainty as the forerunner of Raper and Fovargue is George Tilden of Battle (1710-1765), the son of John Tilden of Brede Place (1670-1730) by his wife Alice Parker (c1673-1740)

The Tilden family's origins lay in Tenterden in Kent, but they were well established in Brede by the early years of the 17th century. George Tilden (d1702) occupied Brede Place as tenant to Sir Thomas Dyke and Richard Parker, and in the Hearth Tax of 1670 he was assessed there for 14 flues (PRO E179/191/410). Between 1696 and 1715 his eldest son George Tilden (1667-1744) ran the estate of Sir Edward Frewen of Brickwall in Northiam, who purchased Brede Place in 1708 (FRE 7324-7329, 544-547, 7079). In 1690 George Tilden was admitted to Clement's Inn, and Inn of Chancery, and resided there until before 1705 when he moved to the parish of St Bride (Selden Society 78 (1960) 6, 32, 265). By the time of his death in 1744 he lived at Putney in Surrey (PRO PROB 11/732); for a map of two of his farms in Icklesham by John Stonestreet, 1736, see AMS 6114

His brother John Tilden (1670-1730) took a lease of Brede Place from Sir Edward Frewen in 1713 (FRE 7452). George Tilden of Battle was the sixth of their seven children, and was born at Brede on 30 July 1710. He was at school with the Revd Thankful Frewen at Northiam between 29 July 1717 and 29 July 1720; details of his subsequent education are unknown (FRE 533 and Sussex Record Society 81 (1998) 470). He was in practice in Battle by 1735 (MIL 4/4) and married Mary Markwick at Ashburnham on 14 July 1736; their children were baptised at Battle between 1738 and 1752 (WSRO Ep II/16/7A, ESRO PAR 236/1/1/2). Little is known of his private practice, but by his death he had acquired three of the public offices which were later to provide the bedrock of the firm's business. Tilden was appointed coroner for the Rape of Hastings in 1737 (SHE 2/1/8), acted as clerk to the trustees of the Flimwell to Hastings Turnpike from its inception in 1753, and as clerk to the Land Tax Commissioners for the Rape of Hastings. From before 1741 he accounted for the revenues, enjoyed by the Pelham family, of the castleguard and cottage rents in the Rape of Hastings (ASH 500). He died in June 1765 and is buried at Battle; the register describes him as 'attorney at law' (PAR 236/1/1/2, MI, PRO PROB 11/910)

He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son John Tilden (1741-1810), who carried on the coronership of the Rape of Hastings and the firm's clerkships, and acquired further public offices. He acted as steward of the Pelham family's hundreds in the Rape of Pevensey and of many manorial courts. It is clear from his personal account-books, among the unlisted records of the firm, that he acted as a wine-merchant and as a banker at Battle Market. On 21 August 1783, at Catsfield, he married Leonora Markwick, and by 1797 had changed his name to John Tilden Sampson. He was buried at Battle on 14 June 1810 and Leonora, aged 72, in 1818. On John Tilden-Sampson's death the coronership of the Rape of Hastings passed to Thomas Thorpe of Hastings, but the firm retained the appointments for the other liberties within the Rape

In September 1806 Tilden-Sampson took into partnership Thomas Barton (1778-1830), who had previously practised in Eastbourne; his ledger of his work there, covering 1802-1806, is among the firm's unlisted records. Barton was the grandson of the Revd Thomas Barton, rector of Warbleton (died 1768) and son of Henry Barton and Jane Rason, who had married at St Matthew Friday Street, London, on 7 February 1775. He was baptised on 4 June 1778 at Hellingly, where his father occupied Carters Corner Place as tenant to his brother the Revd Thomas Barton, vicar of Waldron; for a map of Carters Corner in 1671, then the property of Samuel Barton, see AMS 740. On 6 August 1799 he married Harriet Croft at St Dunstan in the East, London. Thomas Barton was buried at Hellingly on 16 November 1830, and his will was proved in PCC on 4 January 1834 (PAR 375/1/5/1, PRO PROB 11/1826)

In August 1817 Barton went into partnership with his son-in-law Thomas Charles Bellingham, and in 1819 the firm regained the coronership of the Rape of Hastings (SHE 2/2). In about 1829 Frederic Ellman, the grandson of John Ellman of Glynde and brother of the Revd Edward Boys Ellman, joined the firm from school at Winchester as a clerk; for his brother's reminiscences of him, see Recollections of a Sussex Parson (1912) 8

Bellingham died prematurely on 5 April 1838 and a fascinating insight into the challenge which the event presented to the firm can be gained from his letters to the Earl of Ashburnham, continued by Frederic Ellman, his former managing clerk, after his death (ASH 1302-1353). Bellingham's deteriorating health becomes more apparent in the course of the correspondence, which begins in 1836, and his last letter, written from Battle on 25 March 1838, tells of his impending departure for London to consult Dr John Ayrton Paris

Ellman's letters soon turn to the question of his continued tenure of the clerkships which Bellingham had held; 'an attempt on my part to arrange the distribution of the appointments with Mr Kell would I apprehend provoke a jealousy on the part of those in whom the patronage is vested which might introduce others and supersede both Mr Kell and myself... I should not be justified in entering into such a treaty without the previous approbation of Mrs Bellingham's friends which I cannot at this moment obtain'

On 15 August 1838 Lucy Bellingham, Thomas Barton's daughter, agreed with Frederic Ellman to take over the business for a period of 20 years. The agreement, among the firm's unlisted records, includes a schedule of clients, including Augustus Elliott Fuller of Rosehill in Brightling, Lord Ashburnham, Sir Peregrine Acland, Sir Charles Lamb, Sir Godfrey Webster, John Nicholl, John Cresset Pelham and George Darby of Markly in Warbleton, the clerkship of the Battle bench of magistrates, of four turnpike trusts and several commissioners of sewers; the profits of the business amounted to £1500 a year. The coronership had already been lost - the Earl of Chichester appointed Nathaniel Polhill Kell, another Battle attorney, on 19 April, and the lords of the other franchises followed suit in the course of the next two months. Kell's practice, later Sheppard and Son, retained the coronerships until the end of the jurisdiction on the death of Frederic Charles Sheppard in 1960

Ellman was anxious to retain the clerkship of the Battle Bench, in which he told Lord Ashburnham he had nine years' experience, but its loss is clear from the firm's unlisted records. The business of the much less lucrative Sewer and tax Commissioners and of the Turnpike trusts was retained, but Ellman seems to have developed the firm's work for private clients, notably the Fuller family of Brightling Place. On 1 January 1839 Ellman formed a 25-year partnership with Henry Whitmarsh, and for almost ten years the firm practised as Ellman and Whitmarsh. On 3 April 1848 they took Charles Eudo Bellingham, almost certainly son of T C Bellingham, into partnership for 16 years; he and Whitmarsh were each to enjoy three-tenths of the firm's profits, the remaining four-tenths to Ellman. By 1851 Whitmarsh, who had been born in Salisbury in about 1810, was practising in Rye, and Charles Eudo Bellingham, born in Battle in about 1825, was at the firm's address in Upper Lake, Battle, with Frederic Ellman. Bellingham left the practice in December 1853 to join his stepfather William Bennett Freeland in practice at Saffron Walden in Essex, and in April 1864 Ellman and Whitmarsh entered a further partnership of seven years, which was terminated by Whitmarsh's death on 13 October 1865; he had been tenant of Lamb House since 1856 (AMS 5984)

Ellman continued in sole practice until his death on 15 January 1870; his obituary draws attention to his role as the political agent of John Fuller, and in the development of the new town of Polegate on land belonging to Owen Fuller Meyrick (Sussex Express 18 January 1870 page 2). By 1881 the firm was in the hands of his son Hugh Frederic Ellman, who had been an articled clerk there in 1864. At the time of the census he was living at Upper Lake in Battle with his wife and daughter, his mother and two sisters and four female servants (PRO RG11/1034/11)

In the 1870s Ellman was joined by William Augustus Raper (1845-1940), son of the Medical Officer of Health for Portsmouth. Raper, who had come to Battle in 1870 and practised alone, was a member of several local authorities and of the council of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and served as president of the Law Society. But it is as clerk to the Conservators of Ashdown Forest for 42 years from 1885 (having acted for the commoners since 1874) that he is best remembered; his management of the great Ashdown Forest litigation of 1877-1882, in which he indulged his antiquarian interests to the full, produced a large accumulation of documents (AMS 3780-4104, ACC 3715), and the notebooks in which he collected the evidence of long user from the old men of the Forest have been edited for the Sussex Record Society (B Short, 'The Ashdown Forest Dispute 1876-1882'; SRS 80 (1997), including a photograph of W A Raper opposite page 9)

In 1922 the firm was joined by Reginald West Fovargue (born 1892), son of Henry West Fovargue, Town Clerk of Eastbourne 1890-1939. In 1928 R W Fovargue was clerk to Eastbourne Rural District Council, and the firm opened offices at 39 Gildredge Road, Eastbourne, in the 1930s. W A Raper died on 31 December 1940 and the firm was joined by his son William Augustus Raper, by R G L Simpson and later by Fovargue's son Henry Hugh Fovargue; the three were partners in 1959. R W Fovargue became a consultant between 1965 and 1967, and in 1971 the firm, with eight partners, was also practising at Eastbourne as Raper & Fovargue, at Hastings as Herington Willings & Penry-Davey and at Robertsbridge and Burwash as John Ward & Co; by 1979 they had merged with Dawes, Son & Prentice of Rye. By 1986 the group of practices had been re-branded as Heringtons, with each of the three major constituents bearing a different version of the name; that of the Battle, Eastbourne and Robertsbridge offices was Raper Fovargue & Herington. W A Raper died in 1987, and H H Fovargue in the 1990s

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