John Shaw Sr.

In 1799 Shaw married a cousin, Elizabeth Hester Whitfield, who was from a missionary family, at St George's, Hanover Square, in London Shaw worked with Humphrey Repton, remodelling Lord Uxbridge's property at Beaudesert, and was later employed to redesign parts of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire by Colonel Thomas Wildman who had just bought the estate from Lord Byron.

He employed a gothic style, with buttresses, battlements and pinnacles, designing a large rectangular building, with octagonal towers housing staircases at either end.

The Great Hall itself, 187 feet (57 m) long, was on the upper floor, lit by nine large windows filling the spaces between the buttresses.

[4] Charles Locke Eastlake commentedNeither in the basement nor in any part of the building which is out of public sight were any pains taken to preserve a structural consistency of design.

This had a covered cloister running along the front, and staircases at each end of the building housed in rectangular projections surmounted by pinnacles and domes.

[7] As architect to Ramsgate Harbour in Kent he designed the clock house, the Jacob's Ladder stairway and an obelisk commemorating King George IV passing through the port on a journey to Hanover.

Another son was Thomas Budd Shaw, who became tutor of English literature to the grand dukes of Russia in St Petersburg.