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In 1786 John Hall-Stevenson inherited Skelton Castle from his
father. In 1788 he changed his name to John Wharton and received a gift of £100,000 from his miserly Aunt, Margaret Wharton. [Using the retail price index this amount would be worth close on 10 million today.] In 1791 he inherited the rest of her fortune. At enormous expense he had the old Castle torn down and between 1788 and 1817 the present one was built. He entered the corrupt world of Politics and became the MP for Beverley. At each election it was often the practice for a candidate to bribe the voters with his own money. [Instead of the modern method, whereby the Political Party in control, uses the tax-payer's.] By 1829 John Wharton was in the red and he spent the last 14 years of his life in the Fleet Debtors' Prison in London, where he died, childless, in 1843. His successor at Skelton Castle was his nephew, John Thomas Wharton of Gilling, near Richmond, N Yorks. He must have inherited his Uncle's debts and the document shown here would indicate that the Skelton Castle Estate still had financial problems even in 1876. It shows that the sum of £10,000 was borrowed from local farmers George Andrew of Saltburn and Robert Stevenson of Guisborough to be repaid over ten years at 4 per cent interest. Using the retail price index this amount would be £674,144 at todays values. By this time the Castle as well as receiving rents and tolls from land and property etc was also being paid income from the owners of the local ironstone mines. They had agreed to pay an amount for every ton of ore brought to the surface on Castle lands and no doubt the debt was cleared within the specified 10 years. [I have done a rough calculation and between the years 1860 to 1881 alone the five mines around Skelton produced 9,480,088 tons of ore. The landowner was paid 6 pence per ton, a net gain to the Castle of £237,000. Using the retail price index this would be 18 million at todays values. And the mines carried on producing way into the next century. Whether the landed gentry had any moral right to such great profits from stone that was taken 300 to 600 feet below ground, at great loss of life, by local men, who were paid a pittance is another story. |
| It was such vast inequalities that eventually produced the
rise of Socialism.] The witness to the loan deed is Edward Hamilton, the Agent for the Castle who lived at Rigwood. One of the lenders was George Andrew of the White House Farm,
Saltburn. He was the Grandson of the John Andrew of Hunting
and Smuggling fame. |
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A Thomas King, a brewer of Kirkleatham, who later married one
of Andrew's daughters, Elizabeth, was a partner. Together they bought a
lugger named
the "Morgan Rattler" and prospered. In 1780 John married Anne Harrison at Skelton Church. He used his illegal fortune to join the landed gentry by buying the White House, Saltburn and in 1817 he was elected as the first Master of Foxhounds by the newly formed Hunt. He died in 1835 and is buried in the South corner of Skelton Old Church yard. For the last years of his life he seems to have kept his son, also named John, living in comparative poverty in Boosbeck. But on his death this second John Andrew [1794-1855] succeeded him at the White House and as Master of the Hunt. He had also been involved in the smuggling trade. After a lifetime of dodging the Excise men, he was caught in 1825 at Hornsea off-loading an illicit cargo. He was fined the enormous sum of £100,000 and upon refusing or being unable to pay was imprisoned at York from 1825 to 1827 On the death of this second John Andrew the White House farm passed to his eldest son Thomas Pressick Andrew [1816-1870], who died of a heart attack while out hunting. On his death the farm passed to his younger brother George [1828-1891]. It was he who made the loan to the Whartons of Skelton Castle in 1876. When George died in 1891 he was residing at a large house in Saltburn, Glenhow. |
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Alan Ward is Mary's Grandson. He had a career in the local Police force, including service at Saltburn and Middlesbrough. He is an old Skeltoner and has kindly contributed all the images on this page, information about the Andrew family and many other items elsewhere on this website. |
He owned this property and the family seem to have also owned
Grange Farm near to the White House. He left the White House to his eldest son, also named George and the considerable sum in those days of £26,000. His 11 children were to receive £3,000 each upon their maturity. This division of the wealth seems to have been the beginning of the downturn in the Andrew family fortunes. George, who had inherited White House, sold it in 1897 for £5,000 and one of the younger family members was told his portion had been spent on his education. In 1900 George, age 36, appears to have committed suicide. For reasons that are not quite clear on the 11th August 1900 he was living in lodgings at Saltburn and had been there since March of that year. At around 5 pm neighbours heard two loud reports. When his landlady, with assistance, entered the room they found George bathed in blood and a revolver in his right hand. He seemed to have made a bad job of shooting himself in the head for his right eye was protuding. A bullet must have entered his temple and exited through the eye socket. He did not die until 8 a.m the next morning. Mary Elizabeth Ward, whose photograph is shown here, always bemoaned the fact that other members of the family had "frittered away" their share of the Andrew family fortune. |