Windermere's Edwardian Houses and the Great War?

[Guest]

I am new here as I am looking for information on the Great War and its effect on the Great houses dotted around Lake Windermere.  I was on holiday there a year or so ago and was sure that I was told that many of the houses, now hotels formerly schools etc, were disposed of because the families who owned them lost so many sons in the great war that they had no male heirs. 

 

So far I've not found any evidence of that being true.  I do know that wealthy Manchester and Liverpool families who owned them did lose sons in the Great War, I also know the casualty rate for the ranks they would usually occupy were even higher than the for most other ranks, but  other than being told about this, possibly as we were on one of the Lake's ferries, I can find no corroborating evidence.  Perhaps the commentary was for one particular house, but I wondered if anyone here had any information that may confirm or refute the idea.

 

Thank you in anticipation.

[4thGordons]

Suggest this thread might get more attention in the "Home Fronts" (Places and Infrastructure) forum rather than this one (Arms and Weapons)

A mod(erator) could probably move it for you.

Welcome to the Forum!

Chris

[DavidOwen]

Moved, hopefully the experts will come.

 

 

[PRC]

Welcome to the the forum.....and I'm not an Expert

 

Without going through all the local war memorials, including those to individuals, I suspect you won't find a direct source.

 

My suspicion is that that statement has conflated several things, one specific to the area and the others are more general phenomenon that I've come across in Norfolk.

 

1. A number of the peaks in the Lake District were donated to the nation by local landowners as permanent War memorials. A very quick and dirty internet search would indicate that none of those landowners had sons who died or had inherited because of a father that had died in the war, although at least two had members of the extended family, (cousins, uncles, brother-in-laws) who were amongst the fallen.

 

2. Many of the houses would have been requisitioned during the war for Military use. In Norfolk I find that while the Military paid for the decorative restoration and any building work done to retore the building to its original state on returning it to the owners, the fundamental maintenance work had been neglected during the years of Army occupation. Faced with costly repair bills, some owners knocked them down, while there were a suspicious number of fires during the 1920's and 30's, or the owners simply sold up and left the problem to someone else.

 

3. Many of those who would have served in the Great War from such families would have been in their twenties and thirties, the corrollary of which is that their parents were in their 40's and 50's. So come the 1920's the parents would have been of a generation that was starting to die off. The children would then have been faced with the prospect of keeping the old pile going, with the cost of death duties to be factored in. So in this scenario it's the children who choose to sell up.

 

4. Not every son who went to war either died or came back hale and hearty. I have instances in Norfolk in which elderly parents who had spent time abroad chose to sell up and take their permanently disabled son to warmer climes - also bearing in mind factor 5, they may have been going places where staff were cheaper.

 

5. Big houses required a large staff to run them - and post war that kind of employment became increasingly unattractive. In such circumstances it may have made sense to sell up. The building would then be likely to change usage from private domestic to a more commercial set-up - hotel, sanatorium, boarding school and the like.

 

Hope that helps,

Peter

[Guest]

Thanks all, and your last quote does help.

Edited 2 November , 2019 by Guest