Catalogue description William Hicks Hicks Beach (1810-1844)

William Hicks Hicks Beach, younger brother of Sir Michael Hicks Hicks Beach, died unmarried at the age of 33 in 1844; according to a letter to Mrs Emily Susan Hicks Beach from Ellice Hicks Beach [catalogued as D2455/F3/5/8], "he strained himself cutting trees in Oakley Park and got, I think, some sort of tumour or internal injury. He was laid up and died in his mother's house in Portman Square [London]". William was intended to inherit the Great Witcombe estate from his first cousin once removed Lady Ann Cromie [nee Hicks], but predeceased her by forty years. He seems to have been a lively, likeable character, and a talented artist; he frequently drew sketches in his letters to family members and in his travel journals, and painted many watercolour views of the places he visited on a tour of the Mediterranean in 1834