Dowrich

Dowrich (anciently Dowrish) is an historic estate in the parish of Sandford, on the River Creedy, three miles north-east of Crediton in Devon, England.

Of the many separate estates granted by the early bishops within the manor of Crediton, one was recorded in the Cartae Baronum of 1166 as held as one knight's fee by William de Tracy[8] (d. post-1172), feudal baron of Bradninch[9] in Devon.

His daughter Katherine Dowrish, by his second wife, married John Sneddall and received from her father as her marriage portion the manor of Upton Helion.

His second son was Lt-Col. Thomas Dowrish, a Parliamentarian commander in the Civil War, who died childless, having written his will in 1652.

Another rendering of the legend is that Lewis Dowrish was cursed by one of his tenants, an old woman whom he had turned out of her cottage, who wished him to "die by drowning, afterwards returning to the house by cock's steps".

[47] Similar Devonshire legends concerning ghosts advancing in "cock strides" exist in relation to Otterton Vicarage and to Squire Fry of Yarty.

[48] By his will Lewis Dowrish (1677–1717) devised the estate to his widow, Elizabeth Clarke, who in 1719 remarried to Charles Challis (died 1745), a lawyer of Lyon's Inn, and of Ugborough, Devon,[49] who survived his wife and by his will devised Dowrish to his daughter, Mary Challis (died 1774), the wife of John Lock, lord of the manor of Boddington in Gloucestershire.

[50] Mary Challis (Mrs Lock) died childless in 1774, and according to Lysons (1822), bequeathed a life interest in Dowrish to "two maiden ladies of the name of Pitt".

[53] After the decease of the survivor, which happened in 1792, Mary Challis had specified in her will that the freehold tenure should pass to Arabella Morgan (1741–1828), who accordingly was residing at Dowrish House in 1822.

[65] An 1803 portrait of Edward Rolle Clayfield by William Armfield Hobday (1771–1831) survives on display in Bristol Central Library.

[66] During the Napoleonic War one of his partners Mr Gayner, of Bristol, who resided at La Selva, and afterwards at the Bay of Rosas, was imprisoned in Spain and charged with giving information to the English.

In January 1805 Clayfield wrote to Admiral Nelson in an attempt to have his partner released and received the following "characteristically brief" reply from Nelson, on board HMS Victory, dated 30 March 1805, six months before the Battle of Trafalgar:[67] Edward Rolle Clayfield married Frances-Constance Ireland (died 1812),[69] the elder of the two daughters and co-heiresses of James Ireland of Brislington Hall in the parish of Brislington in Somerset, Sheriff of Somerset in 1782, also a wealthy sugar and wine merchant whose inscribed monument survives in Brislington Church.

James Ireland's wife was Frances Godde, one of the wealthiest heiresses of the time and a friend of John Wesley.

[50] Thomas Priaulx Clayfield-Ireland (died 1872) was listed in the London Gazette (3 May 1872, p. 2173) [73] as of Dowrich, Brislington Hall and 7 Piccadilly.

[77] On 29 April 1880 at Froyle Church, near Alton, Hampshire, Arthur married Mary Anne Emily Pitman (living at Dowrich in 1919), daughter of Capt.

A table inlaid with marble formerly existed in Dowrich House, depicting the cards of two hands of a game of piquet.

[81] A tradition relates that in the 17th century whilst playing this game with his cousin Northcote, Thomas Dowrish gambled away the manor of Kennersleigh, near Crediton.

A drawing of this table, made in 1855 probably for Edward Ireland Clayfield (died 1862) [82] of Dowrish, survives in the collection of Saltram House, Devon (National Trust), with written commentary.

[83] Sabine Baring-Gould gives a full description of the hands played in the game in his 1898 book An Old English Home and its Dependencies:[84] An eye-witness account, dated 1848, of seeing the table, is recorded as follows:[85] In the year 1848 I was staying with a friend at Kennerleigh, who knowing I was fond of old places and old things, took me to Dowrish House, belonging to Captain Clayfield, built in the time of King John, the centre only remaining.