Manor of Flete

Thirteen members of the family received the honour of knighthood[6] By 1420 the manor was in the hands of King Henry IV's nephew, John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter.

[6][8] The most prominent family of that name, descended from the judge Sir Robert Hill, a Justice of the Common Pleas in 1392, was seated at Shilston in the parish of Modbury (very close to Flete) from the reign of King Richard II (1377–1399)[9] until the 17th century.

[6][8] This prominent and widespread family, founded in the 11th century at Prideaux Castle near Fowey in Cornwall, had a branch seated at Orcharton, about 1 mile from Modbury (2 miles east of Flete), from the 14th century to 1590, when Sir Robert Prideaux sold Orcharton[11] to Sir John Hele (died 1608),[12] a serjeant-at-law, Recorder of Exeter (1592–1605) and a Member of Parliament for Exeter, who also purchased the manors of Yealmpton and Wembury,[13] and whose effigy survives in Wembury Church.

Thomas Hele's mother survived her husband and remarried to Elizeus Warwick of Holbeton in Devon, in which parish Flete is situated.

His elder half-brother, who predeceased their father, was Thomas Hele (1630–1665) of Wigborow, Somerset, a Member of Parliament for Plympton Erle in Devon from 1661 to 1665.

[26] He sold Membland to Peter Perring[27] (died 1796) of the City of London[citation needed], who had made a fortune in the East Indies.

[28] John Swete visited John Bulteel at Flete ("Fleet") in June 1793 and recorded in his travel journal that Bulteel showed him in what manner he had contrived, in the erection of his handsome front, not to destroy the principal part of the old Mansion; which I had remember'd about 20 years ago, a very venerable and extensive pile of Buildings – from the room in which we had been sitting at the Eastern extremity of the new front I was conducted through two others, to the other end on the West – which I found was lighted at both its extreme parts (for it was of an oblong form) preserving in the modern front a uniformity in its windows with the rest of the Building; and retaining at the opposite end an old semicircular window, with its stone mullions – through this, I perceived another similar bow correspondent – separated from each other by a doorway &c that in its antient state had formed the Western entrance.

A mural monument to John Bulteel survives in Holbeton Church showing two oval escutcheons[30] the one at dexter showing the arms of Bulteel: Argent semée of billets gules, a bend of the last[31] with inescutcheon of pretence of Croker of Lyneham (Argent, a chevron engrailed gules between three crows proper), the one at sinister showing Bulteel quartering Croker, impaling: Gules, a stag's head and neck couped between three cross crosslets fitchy within a double tressure flory counter-flory or (Bellenden).

[33] Elizabeth's mural monument survives in Holbeton Church, showing in relief sculpture of white marble, a lady in classical Greek attire mourning over a casket.

The great cost of the work, added to losses he suffered on speculative investments, later forced his son to sell the estate, then comprising about 5,000 acres (c. 2,080 ha).

[36] John Bulteel (1827–1897), son and heir, who in 1863 sold Fleet to William Francis Splatt[36] and moved his residence to Pamflete,[37] a much smaller house,[38][39] in the same parish of Holbeton.

[citation needed] In 1863 Flete was purchased by William Francis Splatt, J.P.[36][41] He was born in the parish of Chudleigh, Devon; emigrated in 1840 to Australia where he made a fortune as a merchant and pastoralist, and became a member of the first Victorian Legislative Council.

He returned to England in 1854 and lived at Flete from 1863 or 64 until he sold it in 1876 to Henry Bingham Mildmay,[2] brother-in-law of John Bulteel, and moved to Torquay where he became that town's first mayor in 1892, one year before his death.

In 1872 he acquired Mothecombe House, near Flete, in the parish of Holbeton,[43] a small Queen Anne mansion built by John Pollexfen in the 1720s.

[44] In 1876 he purchased his wife's ancestral home of Flete from William Splatt, and between 1878 and 1885 he rebuilt it in the form surviving today, to the design of the architect Norman Shaw, whose services had been used by other partners in Barings Bank.

As part of the arrangement Mildmay and Lord Revelstoke had to convey their estates of Flete and Membland to the Bank of England.

In World War II Flete House was requisitioned to serve as a replacement for the Freedom Fields Maternity Hospital, which had suffered bomb damage.

He was responsible for instiling an interest in Queen Elizabeth, wife of King George VI, in National Hunt racing: "as the long-term patronage of the Queen Mother can be seen as the single most important factor in National Hunt racing's acceptance into polite society, as it were, Mildmay's contribution should not be underestimated... To the general public, he was "The Last of the Corinthians", a man whose love of steeplechasing in a hard and mercenary age was based not on the profits or the adulation that success in racing brings, but on the pleasure he derived from riding a good horse fast over fences".

On 13 May 1950 The Times newspaper stated "that the well known steeplechase rider, Lord Mildmay, was reported missing yesterday after his usual early morning bathe at the mouth of the River Yealm at Newton Ferrers, Devon."

He lives at Mothecombe House,[43] a (comparatively) small historic Queen Anne mansion on the estate, built by John Pollexfen in the 1720s.