| Description | This fairly large accumulation, comprising over 70 boxes of documents, represents almost the whole of the Hoare family archives. A few documents have been retained by the family and some others – notebooks and literary antiquarian MSS of Sir Richard Colt Hoare – are deposited in the Devizes museum. To judge from the size of the estate, the records appear to have suffered fairly extensive destruction and the condition of a proportion of the surveyors is poor.
The bulk of the records is composed of deeds. These include eleven of the medieval period, the earliest dating from 1275 being among those mentioned by Richard Colt Hoare as having been communicated to him by William Hamper of Birmingham. On the other hand those he acknowledges to have been communicated to him by the Duke of Somerset are not among the collection and may have been returned. The properties concerned in the deeds lie mainly in Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset.
The majority of the deeds are of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a large number of them occurring loosely, consequently a number of the bundles have been made up. Estate documents comprise the second largest category and they belong mainly to the second half of the eighteenth century. A series of account books survives for the period 1784-1841, with some later volumes. Similarly volumes of household accounts survive imperfectly from 1749.
A number of loose estate, household and personal accounts and vouchers survive for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a proportion of which had to be destroyed outright because of their decayed condition. Those of the eighteenth century that remained have been preserved. Those of the nineteenth century have been preserved up to 1838 (the death of Richard Colt Hoare), (i) in the absence of an account book for the corresponding period, (ii) where the association justified it, eg accounts personal to Richard Hoare himself, (iii) where the nature of the account or voucher justified it, (iv) where the account or voucher provided evidence of the date of another, undated, document. Accounts and vouchers and most of the correspondence for the later nineteenth century have not yet been preserved.
Some interesting correspondence survives from the first half of the eighteenth century, and some, relating to the private life of Thomas Hardy, for the first quarter of the twentieth.
For two letters from Henry Hoare to lord Bruce about his proposal to build Alfred’s Tower, 1762 see 1300/4280-1.
The principal estates were in Stourton, including Bonham and Gasper, Kilmington, including Norton Ferris, West Knoyle, Chaddenwick in Mere in Wiltshire, Brewham, Bruton, Castle Cary, Penselwood, Pitcombe, Stavordale, in Somerset, and Stourton Caundle, Stourton Marsh and Purse Caundle in Dorset. |