A case of pure buffoonery

The Spanish Armada wasn’t even a twinkle in Phillip of Spain’s eye when the Goddard family swept into Swindon to rule the roost for almost 400 years, the title Lord of the Manor seamlessly passing from one generation to the next, thus ensuring centuries of unbroken cap-doffing.

But the arrogance and sense of entitlement that often went hand in hand with the landed gentry – the “squires” who felt it their right to receive subservience from ordinary folk – backfired spectacularly on the Goddards during the later stages of the 19th Century.

They were forced into such an embarrassing and ignoble climb down that you could almost feel sorry for them. Almost, but not quite.

The episode pretty much signalled the end of the Old Order in Swindon at a time when industrialisation by way of the fast growing railway works was ushering in the modern world and chipping away at archaic notions of a ‘lord and master’ dominating our lives.

And the man at the helm of the Goddards humiliation – one of the chief protagonists in a drawn-out chapter that attracted widespread interest and notoriety – was none other than William Morris (1826-1891), outspoken founder, publisher and editor of the Swindon Advertiser.

A modern-thinking Liberal who launched the Adver as the country’s first penny newspaper in 1854, Morris never shrank from speaking – or writing – his mind… no matter how controversial, against-the-grain or against-the-established order.

Morris must have cut a distinctive figure around town with his impressive Charles Darwin-like bushel of facial hair. He always enjoyed a barney and was not averse to having a pop at the Goddard dynasty’s present incumbent, Swindon’s 12th Lord of the Manor, Ambrose Lethbridge Goddard.

Head of the table at the family’s palatial 40-room Lawn manor house (see panel) father-of-five Ambrose (1819-1898) was a man of wealth, power and influence. For 27 years he was MP for Cricklade (which included Swindon), Major in the Royal Wilts Yeomanry, and deputy chairman of “Swindon’s other railway” the Midland and South Western Junction, which had a station and HQ in Old Town.

He was, we can safely assume, a man very much used to getting his own way. So when he became sick to the teeth of people using a road that ran close to his Old Town mansion he declared it private property and closed it to the public, erecting posts, chains, fence and gates.

Today Old Mill Lane is a sleepy, leafy thoroughfare largely the preserve of residents, dog-walkers, joggers, cyclists, lunch-time summer strollers and squirrels.

But back then, more than 130 years ago, it formed part of a well-trodden route to Old Town for tradespeople, farmers and ordinary Swindonians going about their business.

But from now on, anyone using the said route, his lordship haughtily proclaimed, would be prosecuted for trespass.

The actions of Ambrose were rightly met with outrage from the majority of the public, and members of the Old Town Board (Old Town council) – or at least those who were not Goddard ‘toadies or lickspittles,’ as Morris put it.

Naturally, this newspaper’s esteemed editor considered Ambrose’s actions as an affront to the People of Swindon and railed against it in a most vehement though eloquent manner.

As a body, the Old Town Board stood firm and objected loudly while one member a Mr Reynolds purposely accessed the route – presumably climbing a gate – prompting Ambrose to issue proceedings.

Writing in the Adver – or the Swindon Advertiser, Wilts, Berks and Gloucester Chronicle to use its full title – Morris decried Goddard and his supporters as mean and bullying.

Mill Lane, as it was then, had been used by the people of Swindon since “time immemorial,” he argued… centuries before the Goddards acquired the ancient manor on the hill. It could not suddenly become a private walkway.

Imagine the incandescent rage of Ambrose Lethbridge Goddard, then, when the tables were dramatically turned.

Instead of Reynolds being hauled before the beak, Goddard himself was charged with committing two offences of obstruction – unlawfully erecting barriers on a public right-of-way.

The presumably raging Ambrose threatened to take the case to the House of Lords, if necessary.

But after months of “boasting, fuming, threatening and bunkum” (as our editor wrote) it all came to a head in July 1884 when Ambrose appeared at Salisbury Assizes, pleading not guilty, confident of asserting his rights as a much respected landowner and MP.

Such was the relevance and widespread significance of the case that the nation’s leading legal gaffer John Duke Coleridge (1820-1894) Lord Chief Justice of England, presided.

And get this for sheer stomach-churning arrogance – Ambrose insisted on sitting on the judgement bench next to His Honour, as opposed to in the dock where anyone else would have been ushered.

However, if he expected any other favours from m’lud he was swiftly, sadly disappointed. Some 60 Swindon folk made the trip to Salisbury with the intention of giving evidence for the prosecution, if required.

Only six had spoken when the clearly agitated 1st Baron Coleridge brought the proceedings to a halt and, we’d like to think, gave Ambrose a severe, stony-eyed going over for wasting the court’s precious time.

The case was proved on the grounds that although the Goddards had been encamped on Swindon Hill since the 1560s, the road had been used since at least 1250 – so it couldn’t be filched from the people.

The gates were quickly removed and Swindon people could once more exercise their age old right to tramp the length of Old Mill Lane, which today links High Street with Lawns parkland.

Ambrose, we assume, had to fork out considerable court costs. He had also – and this must have hurt – become a local laughing stock, a pompous relic absurdly out of touch with the ever changing age in which he lived.

A buffoon, really, albeit a wealthy one.

• AN Aldbourne family, the Goddards built a manor house at the nearby hamlet of Upham in the 15th Century and erected Aldbourne church tower in 1460.

  Family members first came to Swindon in the 1400s before Thomas Goddard acquired High Swindon in 1562 to become Lord of the Manor, owning virtually all the land from Old Town to Okus.

  The Goddards initially lived at Westlecot Manor House in Westlecot Road before re-locating to Lawn parklands off High Street, possibly during the early 17th Century.

  It is likely they built a house on the site of a former medieval manor home there, before dramatically replacing it with a fashionably Georgian abode during the 18th Century.

  Initially known as Swindon House, it was re-named The Lawn and was used by the Army during the World War Two.

  The once elegant and imposing structure fell into increasing decay and was bought by Swindon Corporation along with its 52 acres in 1946 and demolished in 1952.

  Some 13 members of the Goddard family became Swindon’s lords of the manor in an unbroken chain from 1562 until 1927.

  The last of the Goddards – Ambrose Lethbridge’s second son Fitzroy Pleydell – died without an heir and his widow Eugenia packed her bags in 1931.

  They left us, however, with some very eccentric street names: Pleydell Road, Ambrose Road, Lethbridge Road, Fitzroy Road…

  ROAD OUTRAGE

  EFLECTING on The Great Road Case, as he called it, Morris wrote in the Swindon Advertiser of July 19, 1884, that it incontestably proved “public rights are paramount above all private claims and considerations”. As the paper had maintained since the row erupted, the right of Swindon inhabitants to the old road were “too sacred a character to be ever irrevocably sacrificed either to pride or greed”. He went on: “We cannot but congratulate the inhabitants of Swindon on the result of this trial.” There was never, he asserted, a “shadow of an excuse” for claiming roads were “private property”. Clearly enjoying himself, he continued: “As we have proved a more audacious attempt to filch away public rights was never attempted… it was clear the defendant did not have a leg to stand on. The case became hopeless.” Morris had never shied away from criticising the Old Town Board when he felt it was his duty to do so. But on this occasion he wrote: “Had members of the local board allowed themselves to be frightened or intimidated by cheap indignation and the impotent threats or the senile bullying to which they were constantly being subjected a great public wrong would have been done.” Those members of the board who sided with Goddard, however, were guilty of “chicanery, spite and ignorance”.