Fitzwilliams family, of Cilgwyn, Cardiganshire and Paddington, Middlesex

Family

Fitzwilliams family, of Cilgwyn, Cardiganshire and Paddington, Middlesex

David ap David ap Hywel Ychan (d. 1568) of Cilfachwen near Llandysul, and his son, Jenkin Lloyd David ap David owned lands in the parishes of Llandysul and Bangor Teifi on the Cardiganshire side of the river Teifi and in Llanfihangel-ar-arth on the Carmarthenshire side of the river.

It was the children of Jenkin who first took Lloyd as their surname. The Cilgwyn estate had been in the possession of the Lloyd family for generations before the death, unmarried, of Admiral Thomas Lloyd in 1801. It was his rather eccentric will that served as the basis of the acquisition of the estate by the Hall (later Fitzwilliams) family. By this will he devised a third of the Cilgwyn estate to his kinsman, Thomas Lloyd of Coedmore, and the remainder to a fellow naval officer, Admiral Richard Brathwaite of Warcop, Kent, and his wife, Ulrica Eleanora, for their lives. Following their deaths this two-thirds portion of the estate was to be divided equally between the Brathwaites' two daughters, Georgina and Jane Maria. The former, however, died unmarried in 1818 so that her younger sister eventually inherited the whole of the portion of the estate devised to her parents. Nine years previous to Georgina's death Jane had married Benjamin Edward Hall (1776-1849) of Paddington.

Thomas Lloyd's will did not stipulate how the estate was to be divided between his kinsman and namesake and the Brathwaite family. The beneficiaries of his will simply divided the estate rents between them until the estate was finally partitioned in 1833. The delay in the partition is explained by the fact that for legal reasons no division was possible until Benjamin and Jane's eldest son, Edward (1807-1880), came of age. The arbitrator awarded 463 acres to Thomas Lloyd and 1,068 acres, over half of which were in the parish of Llandyfrïog, to Benjamin Edward Hall in right of his wife. The estate in 1832 carried an annual rental of roughly £1,360, including £197 for the Cilgwyn demesne.

Benjamin Crompton, a prosperous paper-stainer, had, through a number of purchases during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, built up a smallish estate comprising building ground and dwelling houses around Paddington Green. By his will, proved in 1792, he devised his Paddington properties to his second son James. James Crompton died childless and by his will, proved in 1820, he in turn devised the estate to his nephew Benjamin Edward Hall, the second son of his sister Elizabeth who had married Edward Hall (1747-1798), a London apothecary, and first secretary of the Whig Club. Edward and Elizabeth's eldest son and heir apparent, William Crompton Hall, had died an infant in 1758. Thus the two estates, Cilgwyn and Paddington, became united in the persons of Benjamin and Jane Maria Hall.

The Hall family came originally from Preston in Lancashire (apparently the Cromptons were also from Lancashire). William Hall, the father of the Whig apothecary, moved sometime before 1748 to Bristol, where he traded as a dry salter. From the profits of his trade he acquired properties in Monckton near Honiton in Devon, which accounts for the Devonshire deeds in this group. The Hall's hold on this small estate was short lived, however, since it was sold in the late 1790s in accordance with the will of Betty Hall (dated 1796), William Hall's widow. The only notable addition to the Cilgwyn-Paddington estate during the nineteenth century was the purchase of the Van estate, centered on the parishes of Llangyndeyrn and Cydweli in Carmarthenshire. This was accomplished by the purchase of properties following the Cydweli Enclosure Act, and, more significantly, by the purchase of the Van farm and other properties, including a very valuable limestone quarry, for almost £4,700 in 1851. In 1880 the Van estate measured 346 acres and carried a rental of approximately £420.

In 1849, Edward Crompton Lloyd Hall (1807-80), the eldest son of Benjamin and Jane Maria changed his family name to Fitzwilliams, possibly because of his bitter disappointment at not inheriting the Cilgwyn-Paddington estate in its entirety under the terms of his father's will in 1849. In the offending will Benjamin Edward Hall had split the Paddington estate into three 'divisions' (the Cilgwyn estate was already entailed upon Edward Crompton Lloyd Fitzwilliams), the first of which he devised to his son Edward, the second to another son, Cuthbert, and the third to his grandson William Henry Hall. In the event Cuthbert's division, following his death, devolved upon his co-beneficiaries. It seems that Edward adopted the name Fitzwilliams in the mistaken belief that the Halls were descended from a noble medieval family of that name.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed the break up of the Cilgwyn-Paddington estate (the latter was renamed the Hall Park estate in 1858 when new streets were laid out). It seems that the first parts to be offered for sale, in 1880, were the first division of the Hall Park estate and the Van estate, in order, it seems to raise £40,000 charged upon the Cilgwyn estate by a deed of settlement, dated in 1855, by Edward Crompton Lloyd Fitzwilliams to provide portions for his younger children. Unfortunately the settlement had stipulated that the £40,000 was to be raised within a year of Edward's death (he died in 1880) so that sales became unavoidable. The estate had also become burdened with the debts of Edward who, within six years of inheriting the estate had apparently 'compromised himself to the extent of £40,000 in the Carmarthen and Cardigan railway'. The sale of the first division of the Paddington estate, which carried a rental of £244, raised £29,600, but the result of the sales of the Van estate is not known. Indeed, it is unclear how much, if any part of it, was eventually sold in 1880.

In 1932 parts of the Cilgwyn estate were offered for sale in 157 lots, mostly dwelling houses, but no evidence has survived in the estate records about the dispersal of the more substantial properties on the Cilgwyn estate or about the eventual fate of the Hall Park estate.