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The Sneyds and Bradwall Hall In order to understand the lives of Sarah Smith and her parents and the family of Charles Barlow, it might now be instructive to build a picture of the landscape and society in which the parishioners of Wolstanton lived two hundred and fifty years ago. And to do this we need to go much further back in time and follow the historical traces of the Sneyd family and their original family seat at Bradwall. The story begins in 1400 when Sir John Tocket, Lord of Audley, granted to Richard Sneyd and heirs all their messuages and lands in Bradwall for the yearly rent of 60 shillings. Two years later on the 1st Aug 1402 the ownership of the manor is confirmed in a ‘Quitclaim’ document drawn up at Heleigh castle that confirms Richard Sneyd’s title to the ‘...lands and tenements with their appurtenances, which the said Richard has in Bradwall and Tunstall and which formerly belonged to Henry de Tunstall.’ From
this date, the Sneyds moved from the manor at Tunstall to Bradwall
Hall which was to remain the Sneyd family seat for the next 180
years. The
main income at this time was the sale of agricultural produce from
their estates and the renting of land to tenant farmers. Sheep farming
and a variety of arable crops formed the basis for the district’s
agriculture and, quite early on, the Sneyds built a corn mill which
profited them further through its use by the area’s tenant
farmers. It is also discovered early on that the whole area is rich
in iron ore, coal, lead, copper, tin and clay. The extraction of
these natural resources was certainly exploited at this time though
on nothing like the scale that began with the early industrial revolution
which would transform the landscape for ever. By
1500, although Bradwall remained the family seat, the family had
moved to Chester. It was here that Richard Sneyd (d. 1537) became
the first of a long line of Sneyds to practice law and he also became
increasingly involved in the civil affairs of the town eventually
rising to become the Recorder of Chester between the years 1512-1537.
That he was a successful man is not in doubt - he doubled the family’s
land owning during his lifetime adding land and properties in Chester
as well as additional land in Bradwall, Whitmore, Clayton, Seabridge,
Newcastle, Knutton, and Keele - all within the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. His son and heir, Sir William Sneyd (d. 1571) followed very much in his father’s footsteps becoming Mayor of Chester and Sheriff of Stafford. In his prime at the start of the glorious reign of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) in 1558, and surprising many of his acquaintances, Sir William, along with his wife Anne Barrow and their children, returned to see out his days at Bradwall Hall. It was during this period that Sir William enlarged the hall itself and had the gardens extensively landscaped and also when he obtained the ‘Grant of Rectory’ for Wolstanton Church already mentioned. The family’s principal income still derived from the land and Sir William set about a series of major agricultural improvements such as land drainage and wood clearance to develop new sheep pastures and increase the fertility of the meadows. He
also increased his influence in the important Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme,
along with his income, through the acquisition of a number of corn
mills in the town of Newcastle. And in the small pottery town of
Tunstall, Sir William showed that he understood the emerging importance
of mineral extraction when he bought ten ironstone mines in that
town. But perhaps the most important acquisition Sir William passed on to his heirs was the Manor of Keele which he bought in 1544 for the princely sum of £334. It would not be long before building work would begin out here, a couple of miles due west of Wolstanton, of a sumptious new hall that would become the new family seat (and the present site of Keele University). On
his death in 1571 the family honoured him by commissioning the richly-carved
alabaster tomb that can be seen today in Wolstanton Church. Sir
William’s son and heir was Ralph Sneyd - the first of a long
line of Sneyd heirs to bear the name Ralph. Indeed, it becomes so
confusing that from now on all Ralphs will be identified with a
number to mark each one’s place in the complex genealogy. Seeing out the remainder of Elizabeth I’s reign and beyond, Ralph I would attain the positions of High Sheriff of Stafford and Freeman of Chester in his lifetime and, like his father and grandfather before him, he proved a particularly safe pair of hands to consolidate and expand the family’s huge wealth. During his tenure as head of family, Ralph I would add to the Manorships of Keele, Tunstall and Bradwall by the acquisition of the Manor of Norton. He also extended his ownership of North Staffordshire farmland tenanted to leaseholders so that his portfolio included land in Bradwall, Whitmore, Clayton, Seabridge, Newcastle, Knutton, Fenton, Keele, Chatterley, Chell, Talke, Red Street and Audley - many of these leases including mineral extraction rights. Ralph I not only liked to earn money on a large scale, he was also not averse to spending it in a way that would best reflect how well his family had prospered over the last hundred and eighty years. Hardly surprising that the principal thing he would be remembered for is the building of a substantial baronial hall at Keele and the transformation of its grounds into a beautifully landscaped park. By 1581 Keele Hall was ready to become the family seat and, from this time on, the hall and park at Bradwall would either be leased out or become the temporary home of future Sneyd heirs and younger sons. Captain Ralph Sneyd II (1570-1643) came into his inheritance at the age of fifty on the death of his father in 1620. This was a turbulent time in English history - the thrones of England and Scotland had only been united for a relatively short time with the accession of James I (1566-1625) and then, just five years after Ralph II had assumed the mantle at Keele Hall, Charles I (1600-1649) was crowned king. The simmering religious strife between Catholics and Protestants and Charles’ willful attempts to rule without parliament would finally erupt in the English Civil War one year before Ralph II died in 1643. The uncomfortable task of stewarding the royalist Sneyd family through the ten year horrors of the war, therefore, fell to William Sneyd (1612-1694). Again, the Sneyd succession passed into a very safe pair of hands. While Charles I lost his head and many royalist landowning families lost their lands, fortunes and influence, the second William to carry the Sneyd title must have been a very astute political and financial operator in order to consolidate the Sneyd wealth when his sympathies might have brought only the prospect of exile in France. He
certainly saw out Oliver Cromwell’s nine year Protectorate
for when, in 1660, Charles II (1630-1685) recovered the English
crown, that very year William Sneyd entered the first restoration
Parliament as the MP for Staffordshire. A few years later he enjoyed
a brief tenure of the title High Sheriff of Staffordshire which
placed him as the Crown’s senior executive officer in the county,
responsible for administering justice under the direction of the
courts and presiding over elections. William was buried at Wolstanton
Church - his burial record reads, ‘Gulielmus Sneyd Sen de
Keel Armiger. Sepultus fuit decimo septimo die January [1695].’
(William Sneyd Senior of the Keele Coat of Arms. Was buried the
seventeenth day of January 1695). [12] William’s son and heir, Captain Ralph Sneyd III (1641-1703), was fifty-three years old when he inherited upon the death of his father. And in those years he dutifully trod a similar path to his father - becoming a JP, the Member of Parliament for Newcastle-u-Lyme in 1681 and, in his final year, the Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire. It is when we get to the third son and heir apparent of Ralph III, that the history of the Sneyds takes a turn into uncharted waters. Ralph Sneyd IV (1667-1695) had the misfortune to be the first Sneyd in a long line never to inherit. Even more unfortunate for him was his untimely death at the age of twenty-eight that brought this awkward state of affairs about. In fact, he only just managed to outlive his grandfather William - Ralph IV’s burial record at Wolstanton Church is written just a few lines below and reads, ‘Radulphus Sneyd de Bradwall Armiger. Sep fuit 8 die Aprily [1695].’ [13] His father Ralph III outlived him by eight years so the succession and inheritance questions did not have to be resolved straight away. The awkwardness arose because Ralph IV had already produced a male heir. And being only three years old at the time, young Ralph V, had little choice but to watch from the sidelines through his boyhood and into young manhood while the affairs of his family drifted into costly legal dispute. And yet it had all started so promisingly for Ralph IV. The male heir of such a prominent family, well educated and utterly at home in the salons and drawing rooms of the day, Ralph IV was a good catch. And the lucky lady who took him to the altar in his twenty-third year was none other than Frances (1673-1750) daughter of Sir William Noel. The Sneyds had never known such a grand wedding in all their long years - Sir William booked Lichfield Cathedral. With pretentions to a minor royal connection, Frances not only brought a handsome dowry to the marriage in the form of land and property in Chester, perhaps more importantly she brought a formidable drive and ambition that would direct the affairs of the Sneyds for many years to come. After his marriage and for the next five years before his death Ralph Sneyd IV and his wife Frances lived at Bradwall Hall. At this time, the Bradwall Estate comprised not only the 520 acres of Bradwall Park but at least six other neighbouring farms as well taking the total acreage under his management to well over a thousand. In his brief time there, Ralph IV continued to make agricultural improvements to these lands - the more productive the land, the greater value per acre it had. With leasehold rents being his main source of income and with a wife of expensive tastes, it is no surprise that periodic surveys would be undertaken by his land agent to measure how the improvements translated into £.s.d. Just
to give some idea of the style of their married life together, an
inventory was taken on the death of Ralph IV in 1695 of the contents
of the hall - the silver plate alone was valued at £100 while
the land at Bradwall Park had an annual value of £408.8s.3d.
The archive record goes on to list a total of 69 animals on the
Bradwall Park farm - 8 horses, 20 cattle, 36 sheep and 5 pigs. In
losing his father at the age of three, Ralph Sneyd V (1692-1733)
had an extremely unsettled childhood being shipped about from place
to place and never really settling down. Not one to don the black
widow veils, his ambitious mother Frances proceded to marry three
more times in fairly quick succession (all without issue) and some
idea can be gleaned about her robust stature that she outlived every
one of them! Of course, she dearly hoped to inherit the Bradwall
Estate and so began a long expensive, legal battle to have her widow’s
rights, as she saw them, recognised. But eventually, on August 15
1699 the decision was declared in favour of her son Ralph V. It
would be wrong to describe her motivation in this legal battle as
poverty, because Frances did enjoy a generous settlement. Her desire
was always much more aroused by the hope of becoming Lady of the
Manor and, as her first husband had foreclosed her hopes by his
untimely death, there was nothing to stop her bagging another good
catch. Her marriage to Sir John Chester, though short-lived, did
at least give her the title of Lady Chester which she carried with
great pride for the rest of her long life. After
Frances and the children had moved out after the death of Ralph
IV, Bradwall Hall itself was put to rather an unusual use for a
short time. Between 1695 and 1698 it was leased to the Dutchman
John Philip Elers (son of the Elector of Mentz) who had arrived
in England in the wake of William of Orange (1650-1702) being crowned
King of England in 1689. Elers was a potter who had developed some
new techniques and he was keen to see whether he could exploit them
commercially in the home of English pottery - which happened to
be a stone’s throw away from Bradwall in the pottery towns
of Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke and Fenton. The area around
Bradwall Park was sitting on vast quantities of clay and so, with
a vacant leasehold on the property, Elers develops an early pottery
factory on the site. A few
years later in 1703 Captain Ralph Sneyd III would die leaving his
daughter in law, Frances, Lady Chester, to manage the estate affairs
for the next ten years until her son Ralph V came of age. After
an unsettling childhood Ralph V seemed, on the face of it, to make
a bright start to carving out a path for himself in the well-trodden
manner of his recent forebears. In his twenty-first year he was
elected Member of Parliament for Staffordshire, by the age of twenty-eight
he became High Sheriff of Stafford and, four years later in 1725,
he attained the position of Deputy Lieutenant of Stafford. But this outward show of dutiful service, so familiar in the Sneyd annals, actually hid a willful and dissolute life. Perhaps the earliest indication that Ralph V placed the gratification of his desires above the responsibilities that came with his position occured on 22 April 1718 when, at the age of twenty-six, he married the vivacious sixteen year old Anna Maria (1701-1775) against his mother’s and his family’s wishes. It was not so much the age of his betrothed that unsettled his mother, rather it was Anna Maria’s coquettish character that Lady Chester deemed so unsuitable in a bride of the Sneyd heir. Ralph V’s death on 30 October 1733 at the age of forty-one plunged the family into another long period of uncertainty. His burial record at Wolstanton Church reads, ‘Radulphus Sneyd de Keel Armiger. Sepultus fuit cum Affid: Nov 4 1733.’ [14] As a result of his reckless spending and poor management, the Sneyd Estate affairs were not only in a terrible mess but Ralph V left behind him a trail of massive indebtedness. But it was the children who probably suffered most - on his death Ralph V’s pregnant widow Anna Maria had a brood of five children to look after. That we have almost arrived at the period we are chiefly concerned with in this narrative is evident when we learn that the third son of Ralph V is none other than Edward Sneyd (1732-1795), the future Vicar of Wolstanton - the man who recorded the few fragmentary details that remain of the short life of Sarah Smith. Along with three brothers - the heir Ralph VI (1723-1793), Dryden and William and two sisters Honora and Anna, (a first Ralph had died at the age of one and a first Edward had died at the age of nine) - young Edward was brought up largely by relatives under the matriarchal care of Frances, Lady Chester. Their mother, the widow Anna Maria, confident of getting a generous settlement from the estate, seemed to neglect her children in favour of capturing a promising husband instead - and she had plenty of suitors to choose from. Anna Maria became the talk of Staffordshire and Shropshire society with her flirtatious and coquettish behaviour. Frances,
Lady Chester, once discovered her entertaining a suitor while her
children ran amock next door in tattered clothes. Anna would soon
remarry and, with her new husband, move to Ireland never seeing
her children again. With
Ralph VI, the Sneyd heir, being a minor on the death of his father,
Frances, Lady Chester would spend years sorting out the family debts.
Employing the vigour of a born chief executive, she gradually imposed
order on the Sneyd Estate and ushered in a new era of stability.
But the heavy losses in the books were only too apparent. Even
though by 1742 - a couple of years before Ralph VI inherits - Lady
Chester had paid off all the big creditors, it was decided that
in order to raise some urgent capital Bradwall Hall must be sold.
With a value of £1,900 being put on the Hall and the 520 acres
of farmland, the auction took place on the 2 August 1742 and, as
there were no decent bids, Lady Chester herself bought the leasehold
for £300. From the time that Ralph VI came into his inheritance in 1744, the Sneyd line would be setting out on a renewed period of prosperity thanks, in large part, to the efforts of his grandmother. As the only woman who had taken the reigns of the Sneyd Estate and as one who only entered the Sneyd lineage upon marriage, Frances, Lady Chester certainly proved to be one of the most remarkable trustees. She eventually died at the age of seventy-seven and passed back, in her will, the deeds of Bradwall Hall to her grandson. While his brother Ralph VI marries Barbara Bagot and comes into his inheritance, Edward Sneyd goes up to Bracenose College Oxford where he matriculates on the 16 March 1752. Three
years later he becomes a Bachelor of Arts and, shortly afterwards,
he must have made his way back to Keele because, the very next year,
he becomes the Vicar of Wolstanton Parish. The first marriage ceremony
he conducts takes place on the 24 August 1756 and, four days later,
he is on duty at the font performing his first baptism. Unnoticed by the Sneyds, in the very year of 1742 in which Bradwall Hall was put up for auction, somewhere beyond the boundary of Wolstanton Parish a healthy daughter is delivered to Samuel and Martha Smith. Her name is Sarah. Copyright 2006 Jeremy Crick Sneyd
archive documents published with the permission |
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The carved alabaster tomb of Sir William Sneyd in Wolstanton Church |
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Ralph
Sneyd I |
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Keele Hall today |
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Captain Ralph Sneyd II |
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Captain Richard Sneyd - the brother of William Sneyd |
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[Figs 12, 13] |
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The map from the 1830 Sneyd estate survey showing a detailed plan of the 520 acre Bradwell Park |
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Ralph Sneyd VI - the elder brother of the Rev Edward Sneyd - who inherited two years after the birth of Sarah Smith |
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Barbara Bagot - the wife of Ralph Sneyd VI - who was the lady of the manor in Sarah Smith's lifetime |
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