Description:Amongst the estate documents relating to Eccleshall is a list of ‘Freeholders and Incroachments at Hill Chorlton’ made in 1791. The document lists tenants of Sir Thomas Broughton and George Granville Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), Marquis of Stafford at Hill Chorlton during the late eighteenth century. Many of Broughton’s tenants are listed as families, such as ‘Wido Hemings & her two sons’ and ‘G[e]orge Bithil & his son’. As David Vincent suggests, the Broughton family occupied a significant place in Eccleshall society.
One of the tenants on the Leveson-Gower land in Eccleshall was a Mr. Thomas Sutton. An accompanying document dated 22nd July 1791 tells us more about Sutton who had come to Hill Chorlton in 1733 ‘to live with Mrs Sanden’ as a servant to her. The document states ‘she was then Tenant to Lord Gower for the Farm & Mill’ where Thomas ‘assisted in fishing the Pool, and the Brook…for the use of his Mistress’.
The document reveals a great deal about life in Hill Chorlton at this time, stating that Sutton paid for ‘Tythe Hay’ but not for wool or corn which were ‘taken in kind’. Thomas Sutton appears to have made payments on behalf of the Leveson-Gower family, probably in the capacity of an agent on the family’s estates in North Staffordshire. The document records that Sutton paid the Bishop of Eccleshall four pounds ‘per year for liberty for the Trentham family to hunt in the Bishop’s liberty of Eccleshall’.
Contextual Information taken from: David Vincent, Victorian Eccleshall (Keele University, 1982)