Ombersley Conservation Trust Sandys Archive
The history of the Sandys family of Ombersley dates back almost 400 years. Ombersley Court – the impressive, listed manor and estate set in the Worcestershire countryside, home to the titled family since 1614 – forms the backdrop to their story; one that is of both local and national interest. When the late Lord Sandys, the 7th Baron, Richard Hill, passed in 2013, the manor was sold and its archive – the material left at the Court following his death – was deposited with Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service (WAAS). Evidencing the lives of the eminent Sandys and subsequent Hill families, the contents of the archive referred to is a treasure trove of records that honour the late Baron and his predecessors.
Copy of an engraving of Ombersley Court ‘the seat of Lord Sandys’ by V. Green, front elevation, 18th century – Reference Number: 899:156 WPS8349
Received in 2023, this collection is now the subject of a two-year project funded by the Ombersley Conservation Trust (OTC) – the charity set up by the 7th Baron and Baroness Sandys to preserve the historic material and contents of Ombersley Court. The aims of the project are two-fold: to complete the cataloguing of the family papers whilst also facilitating the promotion, publicity and use of the archive through a range of learning and outreach activities to raise awareness of its contents. Aware that they hold an important archive – it is unusual to have retained manorial records from the Medieval through to the Victorian Era, for instance – a spokesperson for the Ombersley Conservation Trust said:
“Trustees would like to ensure that it becomes readily accessible for research. We are looking forward to following the progress of this project and learning more about Ombersley and the Sandys family.”
Depositing the collection at The Hive for safekeeping will ensure its use by a full range of researchers both in our searchroom and online. As a result, the OTC have generously supported WAAS with the costs for the project.
The contents of the archive include: court rolls from 1272 – with some extracts dating back to 1191, accounts, correspondence, deeds and estate records concerning property in Worcestershire and around the UK, wills, maps, plans and household records. As well as an array of family and personal papers dating from the 17th to the 20th century. Fragments of Ombersley Court’s past, the collection sheds light on the fascinating history of a house and its inhabitants – whose complex lineage and cast of characters included a steady succession of MPs, members of the clergy and cousins who fought on opposing sides of the English Civil War. One family member also served in Wellington’s army during the Peninsular War and Battle of Waterloo.
Ombersley Court in 1962 – Reference Number: 899:156 WPS26439 © C V Hancock
It makes sense that the archive has come to WAAS. The first archive collections of the Sandys family were deposited here in 1938, and the late Lord Sandys was a keen supporter of what was then Worcestershire Record Office and the first president of our Friends committee. Dr Adrian Gregson, County Archivist, said:
“We are very pleased to partner with the Ombersley Conservation Trust on this project […] I remember meeting him [Lord Sandys] as the first president of our Friends committee.”
Prior to his passing, this Lord Sandys also deposited by way of permanent loan several existing earlier records for the Sandys of Ombersley, which will be made available on our online catalogue as part of this project.
We’ll be updating this page as the project progresses with details of interesting records we find or stories we uncover as we catalogue; as well as information on any events or activities organised down the line once the project is underway.
To find out more about the Sandys’ Story, visit: Home Page (thesandysstory.uk)
Of whom Augusta Anne (Gussie) (nee Des Voeux) – wife of Augustus Fredrick Arthur 4th Baron Sandys – was, little is known. Possibly a talented ceramicist, she lived in Brighton and Leamington prior to her marriage, where she was ‘lightly spoken of’ on account of rumours she had given birth to a child and acted improperly with a married man. Such ‘dreadful falsehoods’ her family emphatically denied.
When Augustus and Augusta married in 1872, the so-called Sandys affair scandal saw members of the former’s family refuse to attend their wedding, and meant Augusta was socially shunned. Quite unfairly, too, given her husband later fathered a son with his chambermaid. Indeed, the rumours about Augusta were never substantiated, whilst Lord Sandys’ love child lived nearby.
Born in 1892, Frederick Richard Warner, known as Richard, was raised by his grandparents in Uphampton Lane, in Ombersley. After his birth, his mother Rose Warner – previously employed at Ombersley Court – moved away and married. We know that on Lord and Lady Sandys’ request, Richard would occasionally visit them with his grandmother. However, after Lord Sandys death any involvement (and any assets paid) between Richard and the Sandys family ended. Richard’s birth contradicted Augusta’s, perhaps naïve, assumption that her husband was in fact impotent since they seemed unable to have a child.
Our archive holds correspondence between Lord Sandys, Lord Lyttelton, Sir John Pakington, Sir Charles Douglas and Sir William Paulet relating to the ‘most serious of rumours in Worcestershire [that] Lady Sandys, when a single woman, [had] had a child.’ In the first letter in a subsequently printed copy intended for Lord and Lady Sandys private consultation, Lyttleton writes to Sandys’ mother, Louisa, that it is ‘with the utmost regret…that after much consideration and consultation with others – Lady Lyttleton and myself will not be able to receive or visit Lady Sandys’.
In response, Douglas (Augusta’s white knight) and Paulet (her uncle) ask Lyttelton to speak personally with Lord and Lady Sandys before arriving at any prejudicial conclusion. What follows is a fierce back and forth that ultimately descends into a tit for tat on ‘mere matters of opinion’. Whilst Douglas argues Augusta did ‘nothing to forfeit her station in society’, Lyttelton and Pakington claim they ‘acted according to well established rules of much importance to social morality’. ‘We do not deny that “rumours” such as you have described exist’, Douglas writes to Lyttelton, ‘[but] you will find that some are false and others exaggerated’. But ‘what were we supposed to do?’, Lyttelton protests, ‘the lady who was the subject of these disparaging rumours and family differences was coming to us as a nobleman’s bride’. In handwritten letters from Lord Sandys to Lyttelton, Sandys refers multiple times to the rumour Augusta had a child before they were married as ‘a wicked untruth’.
First page of a letter from Lord Sandys to Lord Lyttelton – Reference Number: 705:56 BA15492/160/2/51
Second page of a letter from Lord Sandys to Lord Lyttelton – Reference Number: 705:56 BA15492/160/2/51
Although we know Pakington wrote to Lady Sandys regarding the ‘disparaging rumours’, it tells us something of the attitudes towards women and their place in nineteenth century British society, that it was discussed in great depth by ‘gentlemen’ in order to arrive at ‘truth and justice’.
“I conceive that one of the vital safeguards for the morality of our upper class…is the rule that no woman who has gone astray before marriage or after, shall ever again be received into society – I speak of actual and sufficiently established criminality…I conceive that a woman, who has unhappily so fallen, has made [a] gulf between herself and respectable society, and it is in her fault, though it may be also her misfortune, if that condition should be unfavourable to her.”
Lord Lyttelton, 26th August 1872
Reference Number: 705:56 BA15492/160/2/4
You can read a partial transcript of the letters, here: Sandys Affair Correspondence