Sutton House Society Newsletter
August 2006
For all interested in the past, present and future of Sutton House
Contents
Sutton House
Society Annual Lecture 2006
A Celebration
of the Quincentenary of Sir Ralph Sadleir: 23rd–24th June 2007
Booking form: summer outing and annual lecture
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Summer outing
Please join us on the Society’s summer outing to Buckinghamshire on Bank Holiday Monday (28th August).
In the morning we shall visit
There are various possibilities for lunch in Chalfont St. Giles, which is nearby.
In the afternoon we shall visit Chenies Manor, which is just a few miles from Chalfont St. Giles. This house is mentioned in the indictment of Catherine Howard. It has a very pleasant garden and a tea shop.
We shall depart by minibus from outside Sutton House at 9:30 am, and return there by 6:00 pm. The cost of the outing will be £12 for members and £15 for non-members. These prices include admission to both properties. To come on the outing, please fill in the attached form and send it with your payment to the Secretary.
Sutton House Society Annual Lecture 2006
We are very pleased to announce that the Dalston-based novelist and idiosyncratic travel writer Iain Sinclair has agreed to give the annual lecture this year. It will take place on Thursday 19th October, starting at 7:30. The subject is ‘Disappearances’. The cost will be £5 for members, and £6 for non-members. To book your place, please fill in the attached form and send it with your payment to the Secretary.
What the critics said about Iain Sinclair’s Dining on Stones (2004): ‘The ultimate road novel, and Iain Sinclair is in the fast lane’ [J. G. Ballard]; ‘The reach, integrity and beauty of Iain Sinclair’s writing is simply without parallel. He is the hierophant of contemporary English letters’ [Will Self].
Spring outing
A very select group of us came on the
Society’s spring outing to Hampstead at the end of April. We visited the
We are very grateful to Ailsa Pain, who once again was our indefatigable guide.
A Celebration of the Quincentenary of Sir Ralph Sadleir: 23rd–24th June 2007
Next year we are celebrating the birth, 500
years ago, of Ralph Sadleir, the builder of Sutton House and notable 16th
century statesman. Please register your interest now either via the Society’s website or to the Secretary, Sutton
House Society, High View, 44b
The Prince of Swindlers
The last five centuries in the history of the Sadleir family have seen many prominent descendants of Ralph, for example: the novelist Michael Sadleir (1888–1957) who wrote the famous book and film Fanny by Gaslight; Superintendent John Sadleir, the Australian policeman, who arrested the infamous Ned Kelly; and, notoriously, John Sadleir ‘The Prince of Swindlers’!
Bill Sadleir, a direct descendant of Ralph,
has written a very interesting article on the latter. Unfortunately it is too
long to be included in this newsletter; however, we have edited the opening
paragraphs of the article and if you would like to receive a complete copy
please send £1.50 (cheques payable to the Sutton House Society) to cover copying,
postage and packing to the Secretary, Sutton House Society, High View, 44b
‘These men are signs of the times – emblems of our era.’[1] What does the fall of John Sadleir, and of his fictional derivatives, tell us about his age?
John Sadleir, ‘the prince of swindlers’,[2]
was born in 1813 of a middle-class farming family in Co. Tipperary. His father,
a Protestant, married a Catholic and converted to Catholicism, and Sadleir was
educated by the Jesuits. He trained as a solicitor and joined his uncle’s
practice in
He
was, however, obliged to resign his position because of an electoral impropriety,
and his troubles forced themselves in upon him. So heavily had he speculated
(and lost) in Irish land, railway stocks, Californian gold companies, German
coal mines and commodities, that he had borrowed huge sums from the London and
County Bank and from the Tipperary Bank; he had embezzled trust assets and
misappropriated title deeds; he had forged conveyances and bills of exchange;
and he had sold counterfeit shares in the Royal Swedish Railways Company and
peculated the proceeds. Pressed for cash, with the elaborate edifice of his
malfeasance crumbling, he took prussic acid on Hampstead Heath on 17th February
1856. ‘Thus died, by his own hand … John Sadleir, one of the greatest, if not
the greatest … swindler that this or any other country has produced’, wrote the
editor of The Bankers’ Magazine in
1859. When the full extent of Sadleir’s defalcations was revealed, they were
found to have amounted to about £1.25 million (about £75 million in 2001
terms). According to Charles MacCarthy Collins, writing in 1880 on Irish
banking, his death precipitated ‘a panic which was the greatest that ever
occurred in
Update on the car yard site
I would like to thank the Sutton House Society for the generous donation of £2,000 and your offer to raise additional funds towards the cost of archaeological investigations which we wish to undertake on the land adjacent to Sutton House, once used as a car breaker’s yard. As I am sure you know, the land is believed to include the site where the Tan House was once situated.
Unfortunately, because of the nature of its former use, the land is believed to contain significant levels of pollution which would need addressing prior to any extensive archaeological exploration. The National Trust have now commissioned an investigation into the extent and nature of the pollution and this work is currently underway. Once the nature of the problem has been identified we will take the necessary steps to address the contamination.
The environmental investigation will involve
a small amount of hand-digging adjacent to the wall of Sutton House and we hope
that this will be monitored by an archaeologist from the
Naturally the Sutton House Society will be kept informed of developments. We are aware that there is great interest in observing any such activity and we intend to work with you to facilitate any visits or fundraising ‘event’ you may wish to organise.
So, watch this space, as they say, and join us at the Trust in hoping for a favourable environmental report so that we may progress with plans for the site.
[June Cook (Property Manager, Sutton House and other smaller London Properties)]
St. John-at-Hackney
For the
last three years the Society and the National Trust have shared a stall at the
St. John-at-Hackney Church Fete. This
year the fete took place on 23rd July. It was rather more constricted than usual,
because of all of the “improvements” that are taking place in the
churchyard. And unfortunately, in the
afternoon it started to rain – one of the rare occasions in July when rain was
not welcome! But despite this, we still
managed to achieve takings of £36. Many
thanks to all those who donated items to sell, and to Mike Gray, Alan Hayday,
Peter Mudge and Rhys Roberts for minding the stall.
