June 2024 Meeting Summary
This month’s meeting featured two talks given by members
Finchampstead and its Lords of the Manor by Christine Cox
Finchampstead is an ancient settlement lying close to the Roman road constructed between Staines and Silchester. From the 14th century there were two manor houses, later known as East Court and West Court. West Court was extensively restored for Rev Ellis St John, after he inherited it. It was let to various tenants after 1842 and eventually became the Officers’ Mess for REME.
In 1849, John Walter III purchased East Court and his son Arthur Fraser Walter demolished the house and built a Victorian house naming it “The Manor”. His son, John Walter IV, inherited it in 1910 and sold The Manor together with the Bearwood Estate at auction in 1911. The Manor’s new owner donated it and the grounds to the Church.
Michael Rea`s talk entitled An odd Fyshe, was an account of Charles Fyshe Palmer, 1769-1843. Charles, (the grandson of Henry Fish of Biggleswade, who had inherited in 1712 the estates of Luckley and East Court Manor, Finchampstead, after the required assumption of the name Palmer), was elected in 1818 as the Whig MP for Reading. This was a period of great depression in Britain following the Napoleonic wars. He advocated Parliamentary Reform, abolition of slavery, attacked government extravagances and supported low paid agricultural workers.
After he died in 1843 without issue, the estates passed to his wife`s son Sir John Gordon Sinclair, who then sold them to John Walter of Bearwood.
