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The history of
The early history can be traced back from 1412 to 1715 when a Queen Anne House was built to replace the original farmhouse. The present Drawing Room, with the exception of the window recesses, and the White Hall, as far as the Oak Room door give the frontage of the Queen Anne House. The depth can be judged by a view of the original back wall seen from the inner back-entrance hall through a window looking on the small inner courtyard, which in more recent years had been enclosed as an aviary. An old metal bell pull to the back door can still be seen in the original wall in this courtyard. The Queen Anne staircase from the White Hall was included in this early building. The present oak paneled Dining Room formed the site of the old conservatory. The house does not appear to have remained long in the ownership of any one family until 1859. Fanhams may
derive its name from John de Fanham who is recorded holding land in the
vicinity in the Lay Subsidy Rolls for Hertfordshire in 1296. Just
who John de Fanham was remains a mystery, but he may be identical with a
John de Fanham (or Farham) who is mentioned in the Calendar of the Patent
Rolls of 25th April 1285 granting a license to the abbot and convent of
Tychefeld (Titchfield) for the “alienation in mortmain of 10 acres of land
in Stubynton (Hants)”. Titchfield is situated a mere 4km to the west of
Fareham - which is occasionally referred to in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries as Farham - and it is possible that John de Fanham originated
there and moved up to Hertfordshire at some point during the 1290s. A brick embedded in a wall at the house bears the crudely carved date of 1412, and this has led some commentators to assume that this refers to the year in which the original brick farmhouse on the site was built. On the face of it this would appear to fit in extremely well with the first documentary references to the farm which occur in the first half of the fifteenth century. However, in England, brick making (a craft which had effectively died out with the departure of the Romans) only began to revive slowly during the beginning of the fifteenth century and it is extremely unlikely that valuable bricks would have been used in the construction of an obscure farmhouse. The date is more probably a later commemoration of the supposed antiquity of the original farm. Apart from a rent roll of 1599 held at Hatfield House, no further reference to Fanhams is made until 1651. In this year John North, a yeoman of Ware, is recorded in possession of the property. On his death in 1663 William Weld, second son of Alexander Weld of Widberry Hill, Hertfordshire, purchased the estate. William Weld is described as a ‘gentleman’, and it is probable that his status as a man of independent means required a rather more substantial home than that provided by the existing cluster of wooden farm buildings. Another brick preserved at Fanhams Hall bears the date of 1666 - the year of the Great Fire of London - and it seems quite possible that it was in this year that he built the first brick house on the site. Some improvements must have been made to the estate for when William Weld died in 1699, his executors (Sir Thomas Halton of Newington, Middlesex, bart, and Edward Cressener of London) sold Fanhams on the 30th September of that year for the impressive sum of £1810 15s 0d. The new owner of the house was John Evans, a citizen and cloth maker from London. Evans was responsible for building the Queen Anne house that stood on the site for almost two hundred years, possibly incorporating parts of Weld’s earlier structure. It has often been assumed that this house dated from 1715: the evidence being a third brick at Fanhams bearing the inscription ‘c1715’. However, the house was almost certainly built earlier. Evans had in fact commissioned John Lane of London in 1715 to survey and value his estate at Ware. As part of this project Lane produced a beautifully coloured map of Fanhams which clearly shows the two-storey Queen Anne house with its impressive central chimney (a third storey was added c1800). The house occupied a frontage which stretched from the present lounge to the dining room door in the White Hall. Unfortunately, little now remains of the building except for the elegant staircase in the White Hall and an old metal bell pull to the back door which can still be seen in an original wall situated in the courtyard. At the same time as the house was being built a garden and orchards were planted. This garden still exists and is dominated by quince and medlar trees; varieties which are seldom planted these days. However, there are also figs, peach, nectarine, walnuts, mulberries and morello cherry which add both colour and variety. The paths that lead through the garden are a later addition. They were added early last century using bricks from an original wall that used to conceal the garden from the house. It was also around this time that the part of the pleached lime alleys - round what is now the croquet lawn but which used to be a tennis court - were set out. John Evans died in 1729 without leaving a will and the property, now known officially as Fanhams Hall, was inherited by his younger brother George. It is possible that John was married to Mary Evans, who by her will dated 10th August 1739, left £100 to the Ministers and Churchwardens of Ware to be invested for the benefit of the poor widows of the town. This money was used to purchase £105 worth of old South Sea Annuities which for many years provided 5s payments to the deserving widows of the town. George Evans died at Fanhams Hall on 28th December 1747, again without leaving a will, and the property past first to his cousin Elizabeth Phelps, and then later to her son George. George Phelps sold Fanhams for £4,000 on 16th March 1771 to William Plumer of New Place, Gilston. William Plumer (1736-1822) was a man of immense wealth and influence. In 1781 the English Chronicle described him as “one of the most opulent country gentlemen in the kingdom besides possessing the most extensive property of any gentleman in this country, his additional estates in Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk, make up a clear income of fifteen thousand pounds per annum”. With such wealth at his disposal Plumer was able to pursue his own course, and entered Parliament for Lewes on 21st February 1763. He represented Lewes until 1768, then Hertfordshire from 1768-1807 and finally Higham Ferrers from 1812 to his death in January 1822. While in Parliament Plumer adopted an independent stance supporting first Rockingham and later Fox. He also placed himself firmly behind the movement for parliamentary reform voting in favour of the - albeit moderate - measure of 1783 and 1785. In fact in 1820, near the end of his career, Charles Lamb described him as “The fine(st) old Whig still living”. Plumer’s liberal attitudes made him a respected man in the locality and the people of Ware supported him handsomely in the two contested elections for Hertfordshire of 1783 and 1785. Their faith in his principles was repaid in 1788 when an over zealous supervisor of excise was appointed to the town. At this time the town had begun to grow wealthy on the profits generated by its huge trade in corn and malt products. It was not surprising, therefore, that the local merchants viewed the activities of the new official with considerable suspicion and carefully set about hindering and obstructing him by every means at their disposal. The supervisor of excise responded by summoning troops into the town, a move that in turn caused a riot in which a number of notable citizens were arrested. A petition demanding the release of those detained was presented to Pitt by Plumer and Lord Erimston, and largely through their combined efforts the troops - and the unpopular official - were ordered to leave the town. While much admired and respected in Parliament, Plumer’s domestic life was far from happy. In 1760 he married the Hon Frances Dorothy, daughter of the 5th Viscount Falkland, but she died a mere seventeen months later. His second marriage to his cousin Jane Hamilton, the grand-daughter of the 7th Earl of Abercorn and thirty years his junior, was a disaster. She gradually began to take over the administration of his estates, while he was obliged to retire to a solitary life at New Place, Gilston (later Gilston Park). On the 24th June 1784, largely through Jane’s efforts, Fanhams was mortgaged for its purchase price of £4,000, a debt that was only cleared on 23rd April 1805. Jane’s misadministration of the estate is further revealed by Arthur Young in his General view of the Agriculture of the County of Herts (1804) where he expressed complete amazement at the excessive nature of the fallowing allowed on Plumer’s Land. So completely was the MP dominated by his young wife that on his death in 1822, aged 86, he left all his lands, tenements, hereditaments, “and all household goods and furniture, wines, books, pictures, plate, linen and china, all horses and carriages . . . and all the live and dead stock in Husbandry” to his widow. It is extremely unlikely that Plumer ever stayed at Fanhams, though he probably visited it at various times. Instead the farmland was let out to local farmers while the house was occupied by tenants of independent means. Such arrangements were common during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Fanhams played host to a number of distinguished tenants. From an examination of the Herts County Session Records which contain a record of the issuing of certificates for the killing of game, we have some clues to the identity of the tenants between 1788 and 1805. These reveal that Captain John Baker was in residence between 1788 and 1791, and that he was followed by John Currie (1797-1800) Lieutenant-Colonel (later Colonel) James Copley (1800-1804) and finally Thomas Byron (1805). On the death of her husband, Jane Plumer put Fanhams Hall up for auction. In the catalogue of this auction the property was described as a “Delightful Freehold Residence . . . now in the occupation of John Telford, Esq., situate on a pleasing eminence, fronting the South, commanding rich views of the adjoining country; and containing a Breakfast Room, Dining Room, 4 best Bedrooms, 2 servants Bedrooms, Kitchen, Pantry and Servants’ Hall; with a Coach-House, and Stabling for 5 Horses, large Garden, and Drying Ground”. A local man, Samuel Adams, was clearly impressed with the house, and he and Jane Plumer agreed terms for its sale on 31st October 1822. Despite being a prominent citizen of Ware, little is known about Samuel Adams. It seems probable that he started out as a barge owner exploiting the opportunities offered by the booming malt and corn concerns in the town. In 1813, however, he diversified his activities by founding a banking business which traded under the name of Adams & Co and drew on Maiteman & Co in London. This banking business was almost certainly a modest concern to begin with, just operating on market days (in fact no bankers of this name are recorded in the town until an entry in Kelly’s Directory of 1855 but this could be because their main office was actually in Hertford). The first Samuel Adams died before 18th February 1834 after having mortgaged the estate on 6th August 1833 for £4,000. He was succeeded by his son - another Samuel - who while maintaining his father’s barge concern, also set up business in the 1830s as a maltster in Water Row, later moving to Baldock Street. Early in 1847 this second Samuel Adams employed Messrs Shuttleworth & Sons of London to value his Fanhams Hall Estate. For a few weeks Shuttleworth’s surveyors occupied the property and presented their report and valuation on 23rd February 1847. They assessed the acreage of the estate at “One Hundred and thirty eight Acres, one rood and thirty four poles” which in their opinion lay “very compactly together”. The Hall itself was described as “an ancient residence and sporting box, containing accommodation for a moderate sized family, lawn, gardens, coach house and stable”. The land and buildings together were valued by Shuttleworth at Six Thousand Seven Hundred and fifty pounds”. An interesting side line is that despite the valuation taking place in February, the receipt for Mr Shuttleworth’s twelve guineas fee is not dated until 18th May 1847 - some three months later! Samuel Adams appears to have died at some time in the earlier part of 1850, for the estate was put up for auction at the Saracen’s Head Hotel in Ware on Tuesday 15th October 1850 by his heir Thomas Bell Adams. The sale notice for this auction describes Fanhams Hall, then occupied by a Captain Read (though in fact rented at £250 per annum by Edward Sumner) as “Delightfully situate within its own grounds, and approached from the road by a pair of Folding Gates and a Carriage Sweep, leading to an Entrance Hall, opening into a well proportioned Dining Room, and a Library or Morning Room; above is a spacious Drawing Room, with Bow window and French Sashes, opening on to a Balcony; a large and cheerful Principal Bed Chamber, with French Windows opening on to a Balcony; Four Secondary Bed Chambers, mostly fitted with closets, and from one there is a flight of steps leading to the Roof”. Samuel Adams had evidently carried out a number of improvements since Shuttleworth’s visit for it is also noted that “a considerable sum . . . (had) been lately most judiciously expended” on the estate. Whether this auction ever took place is uncertain, but we do know that Fanhams Hall definitely remained in the hands of the Adams Family until 1859. It was during this period - in July 1856 - that Adams & Co were declared bankrupt. It is somewhat ironic, in view of the subsequent history of the house, that the London and County Bank (one of the forerunners of the National Westminster Bank) took full advantage of the failure of their local rivals to establish their first permanent branch in Ware. Amongst the records held by the National Westminster Bank are letters which show that the London and County Bank secured the co-operation of Mr George Chambers, 2nd Clerk of Adams & Co, and were able to take over the accounts of many of the private bank’s previous customers. In addition they were also able to take over Adams & Co vacated premises in the High Street at a rental of £30 per annum.
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