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What Wikipedia has to say about
Piercefield
House. For convenience, the owners mentioned are listed here:
1727 : Thomas Rous
1740 : Valentine Morris (senior)
1743 : Valentine Morris (junior)
1785 : George Smith
1794 : Mark Wood
1802 : Nathaniel Wells
c1850-1856 : John Russell
1861 : Henry Clay (senior)
1874 : Henry Clay (junior)
1926 : Chepstow Racecourse Company
Read the The Times
1789 obituary of Valentine Morris who inherited the property
from his father in 1743, together with property in Antigua, and lost
the lot by the time he died. This Wikipedia
article on
Valentine Morris sheds some light on aspects of his character
skated over in the obituary. Note that the obituary gives Valentine
Morris the credit for the improvements to Monmouthshire's roads.
An
advertisement appeared in The Times
1 June 1805 stating that Piercefield was available to let,
furnished.
Read the astonishingly verbose 1833
advertisement in The Times
when Piercefield was put up for auction, apparently during the
ownership of
Nathaniel Wells (1779-1852) who had bought Piercefield, in 1802
from Mark Wood, having been left around £120,000 in
his father's Will. It is presumed the auction was unsuccessful.
Read a report
in The Times 20 February 1874 about the Will of Henry Clay
(senior)
The Times reported that the
first meeting at Chepstow
Racecourse took place 6 August 1926
Locate Piercefield House on
Google Earth
A comprehensive report by Cambria Archaeology can be
downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF). It is entitled
"The Piercefield Walks and Associated Picturesque Landscape
Features: An Archaeological Survey". It runs to 57 pages and
includes colour maps and photographs and is invaluable for anyone
wishing to locate the features of the Piercefield landscape. A
summary
is available online.
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