Monthly Archives: July 2020

A Kings Weston family

We were contacted recently by David Pickering who has a family connecting to Kings Weston and still lives nearby. He’s kindly send us some historic images to publish in our newsletter and we’re grateful to him for adding to our understanding of the estate’s history.

Fred Whapshare, head gardener at Kings Weston, probably in the late 1920s. The stone gate piers are those outside the Brewhouse (courtesy of David Pickering)

One of the photos is of his uncle Fred Whapshare posed, probably in the 1920s, in front of the stone gate-piers at the back of the house, one of which still stands. Mr Pickering writes that his uncle “ worked on the estate most of his life, as a gardener ,being born in about 1893. His wife worked as a housemaid there, and they were left in charge as custodians when the house was closed up before the old lady (Sybil, Philip Napier Miles’ wife) moved to the House in the Garden. They eventually bought the attached-row of Hawksmoor cottages in the lane, before one day selling up and building the bungalow ‘Wingrove’ in some of their garden.”

He continues “My uncle carried on as gardener when Mrs Miles moved to the House in the Garden, and I have fond memories of being taken round the place as a child, being given my first-ever peach from a hot-house wall. Really I have always felt that the estate was part of my own background. My Aunt and Uncle were devoted to the place, and worked there most of their lives. Some entertaining stories of staff parties, with exuberant footmen!”

When, in 1937, the contents of the house were auctioned, after the death of Philip Napier Miles, Mrs Whapshare bought a few keepsakes. These included some paintings and etchings of Italy done by the Miles’s brother in law, the artist Robert Goff. Goff regularly joined the Miles’s at their villa on the Italian coast and they shared a love of the country. Also amongst Goff’s works Mrs Whapshare bought was this painting of Kings Weston, dated 5th September 1911, and looking across Shirehampton Park. The haystacks in the middle distance are at the bottom of Longcombe, now on the golf course, and the present location of a utilitarian steel shed, but the focus of the painting appears to be the twisted red pine tree, a feature that appears in many of Goff’s other works.

A view by Robert Goff, dated 5th September 1911, and showing the view into Longcombe in Shirehampton Park. (courtesy of David Pickering)