 exceptionally, timber and bark to the value of £1,635 was sold at Wicken. (fn. 292)
The estate under the Mordaunts and Douglas-Pennants.
In 1810 the Wicken estate passed to Sir John Mordaunt of Walton (Warwicks.), whose wife was a sister of Mrs. Prowse's husband George; the Mordaunts had already inherited Grafton Park in 1800. (fn. 293) At Wicken the mansion and 336 a. were let to General Charles FitzRoy for 12 years from 1812 at £616 a year. (fn. 294) FitzRoy died in 1829 and, after a short tenancy in between, Wicken Park was leased to Col. E.H. Douglas-Pennant from 1838, but with only 35 a. (fn. 295) The rest of the Mordaunt estate in Wicken was divided into seven farms, two of which were held in 1838 by the same tenant. If those are treated as a single holding, the size of farm ranged from 217 a. to 377 a. around a mean of 304 a. (fn. 296) The woodland, of which 236 a. lay within Wicken parish, was kept in hand. (fn. 297) Five freeholders had five acres between them in 1838, of which 4¾ acres were owned by Henry Gurney; another 10 a. belonged to the canal company; and the rest of the parish (131 a.) was glebe. There were two small quarries on the road from Wicken to Deanshanger at work in 1838 but no other industry. (fn. 298) Mordaunt made at least one small addition to the estate during his period of ownership. (fn. 299)
Sir John Mordaunt died in 1845, (fn. 300) leaving a son and heir, Sir Charles, who was a minor and whose trustees immediately announced a reduction in charitable donations on the Northamptonshire estates, expressing the hope that Col. Douglas-Pennant would make up the shortfall. (fn. 301) Since Wicken Park continued to be let to Douglas-Pennant until he bought the entire estate in 1877, the Mordaunts were never resident there. As effectively sole owners in the parish, they appear to have behaved in a conventionally paternalistic manner towards their Wicken tenants, providing land for allotments in 1838 (fn. 302) and a new school the following year. (fn. 303) When Sir Charles Mordaunt came of age in 1857 the usual tea, dinner and sports were arranged for his Northamptonshire tenants. (fn. 304) There are, however, few signs of new investment at either Wicken or Grafton Park to compare, say, with the model farms erected on the Grafton estate in the 1840s, nor any building of new cottages.
Little seems to have changed after the sale to Lord Penrhyn in 1877. (fn. 305) During the sixty-odd years in which the Douglas-Pennants owned Wicken, the income from which was unimportant compared with that from their North Wales estate, they made no attempt to develop its resources or to make it pay, apparently remaining content to subsidise the estate from their income from their Caernarvonshire slate quarries. (fn. 306) The estate was enlarged by the purchase in 1877 of Dovehouse Farm on the edge of Deanshanger village, just inside Passenham, whose land marched with that of Dagnail; (fn. 307) a house and four cottages at the Folly, also just over the Passenham border, in 1878; (fn. 308) and a couple of small additions in Wicken itself in 1882 and 1892. (fn. 309)
The estate after 1944.
After the death of Blanche, Lady Penrhyn, in November 1944 her son, the 4th baron, at once placed the estate (including the lordship and advowson) on the market, seeking a private treaty sale at £100,000 for just over 3,000 acres. At much the same time the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol, acting as trustee of the St. Monica Trust, founded in the early 1920s by Henry Herbert Wills (of the tobacco manufacturing family) and his wife Monica to establish a rest home at Westbury-on-Trym, obtained the approval of the Charity Commissioners to transfer up to a third of the trust's capital (i.e. about £500,000) from government securities into agricultural land. The Society accordingly undertook a programme of purchasing good quality estates, mostly in Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland, beginning in 1944 with Mentmore (Bucks.). The following year they were advised that Penrhyn would only secure the asking price for Wicken fr