Catalogue description Deeds of Lamb House, Rye [1838] - 1893

This small bundle begins with a lease of Lamb House to Henry Whitmarsh in 1856 and ends with a contract for sale to Francis Bellingham in 1893; abstracts draw the title from the £21,500 mortgage of the entire Lamb estate executed on 18 and 19 Jan 1838

Messrs Paine and Brettle of Chertsey acted as solicitors to the Lamb family and the archive deposited by them (PAB) as well as giving a full picture of the family's efforts to reduce the mortgage debt, provides some earlier title for Lamb House. The introduction to the PAB list also provides considerable information about the family's control of Rye for much of the eighteenth century, a control which they exercised from Lamb House

The property settled on the marriage of Allen son of Thomas Grebell of Rye merchant with Catherine daughter of Thomas Hodges of Warehorne Kent in Apr 1720 included a house occupied by Thomas, with an adjoining garden which contained a building called a banquetting house (PAB 302, 303). This property, formerly occupied by Henry Dodson and then by his widow Mary, was sold to James Lamb the elder by Allen Grebell of New Romney on 5 and 6 Apr 1756, a few months before Lamb's death. His will, proved in PCC on 22 Dec, makes it clear that he lived in another building in the same immediate area and it seems likely that Lamb House had been built by James Lamb on land belonging to his brother-in-law and political ally Allen Grebell, perhaps after the latter's murder in 1743 (PAB 9, 10, 304)

An annotation on the front of the 1756 conveyance (PAB 10) reads 'The Old Grebell house opposite to the house my father lived in; T[homas] L[amb]' (PAB 10), and a note in James Lamb's hand, formerly attached to the conveyance, reads 'these deeds belong to the house opposite mine in which Mr Hogben now lives' (PAB 12). Mr Hogben was appointed master of Sanders School from 25 Mar 1745 (RYE 114/13), which explains another annotation on the 1756 conveyance 'also school house and part of Mr Watson's garden'

By 1827, when the house was mortgaged, it was occupied by William Watson esq and was described as late Mrs Saunders widow (PAB 244); Watson was still in occupation in 1838 when the house formed part of the estate mortgaged for £21,500 by George Augustus Lamb of Iden, DD (PAB 250,251)

The Battle solicitors' firm of Ellman and Whitmarsh (formerly Barton and Bellingham, see RAF) had a branch office at Rye and it seems likely that Lamb House, as well as serving as the residence of successive partners, also acted as their office

In The Story of Lamb House, Rye (1966), H Montgomery Hyde attempted to associate the site of Lamb House with chantry land purchased by the corporation in 1585. Of the early deeds which he mentions, only one, of 1496, has been identified (RYE 135/2)

Documents in this bundle also present in PAB are calendared in the list of that archive and have not been described in detail here

On 15 July 1856 George Augustus Lamb of Iden DD leased Lamb House to Henry Whitmarsh of Rye gent for 14 years at £60. The property consisted of a capital messuage and large detached room formerly used as a banquetting room with a cellar beneath in Middle Street and Church Street, with a pew in Rye Church, all formerly occupied by Margaret Watson widow; a small house adjoining lately occupied by widow Shearer with a yard on the opposite side of the road. Two schedules contain a room-by-room list of fixtures and fittings (1)

By a complicated settlement of 23 Mar 1860, G A Lamb appointed Richard Curteis Pomfret of Rye esq, [his brother] Thomas Davis Lamb of West Hackney Rectory clerk and [his son-in-law] John Collins Allen of Purbrook House near Portsmouth clerk trustees for the sale of his estates, subject to the mortgage of 1838 (6,7); he died 30 Oct 1864. On 22 May 1866 Whitmarsh's executors (his widow Mary Ann of Rye and William Bennett Freeland of Saffron Waldon gent), with the consent of these trustees, assigned the lease to John Bellingham of Rye esq (1)

At the expiration of that lease, a new 7-year term was granted to Bellingham on 11 Oct 1870 at £65 by Thomas Davis Lamb of Ockham House, Bodiam clerk, and John Collins Allen of Finchcox in Goudhurst clerk; schedules contain a similar list of fittings (2); on 10 Mar 1874 the property was leased for the same rent and for a similar term to Francis Bellingham of Rye merchant (3) and again on 17 Jan 1881 for 14 years (4, 5)

On 13 July 1883, John Collins Allen, now of Hawkley Vicarage Hampshire, conveyed his moiety of the property to his joint tenant, Thomas Davis Lamb, then of 65 Lansdowne Road Notting Hill for £600; a plan of the property, with the description lot 8 appears on the deed (8). The abstracts drawn for this conveyance consist of a copy of the 1860 settlement which itself refers back to the mortgage of 1838 and gives a full picture of the estate, including a schedule of properties and of the efforts made to reduce the mortgage (6,7)

On 28 July 1893 Thomas Davis Lamb of 8 Bevington Road, Oxford clerk, contracted to sell Lamb House to the occupier Francis Bellingham esq for £1,000 (9-11)

Documents deposited by The National Trust, 42 Queen Anne's Gate, London, 1 November 1972 (ACC 1537 part)