Highfield was built in 1850 for William Sheldon, a man who had made his fortune as a coach operator. Sheldon was a rough and ready individual, seen as somewhat unrefined by some of his more genteel neighbours. He was a big bruiser, a hard driving entrepreneur from Preston who followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to become a coach driver on the Lancaster-Kendal-Carlisle route, but also across the central Lake District to Whitehaven. There are several records of fines for speeding and brawling…
He married Quaker, Esther Harris in 1842, and she seems to have had a steadying influence on him and his business. By 1850 he held the contract for the carriage of mail from Windermere Railway Station (est 1847) to Keswick, Penrith and Cockermouth. Highfield was built with the business in mind, with a lot of bedrooms providing the potential to accommodate travelling customers, and a coach house and stables for the rapid changing of horses.
In 1855, in her celebrated book “A complete guide to the English Lakes” Harriet Martineau referred to the recently constructed Highfield as being possibly the most enviable abode in the country because of its proximity both to scenery and convenience.
Sheldon became a leading campaigner against taxation of coach travel (he would, wouldn’t he?) but eventually tired of the limited scope in this part of the world, and in 1859 moved to London with his family, becoming the director of various tramway companies in London and Madrid.
It is not clear to whom Sheldon sold the property, though there was a legal document affecting the property in 1867 involving the Earl of Lonsdale and Edmund Cavendish Bentinck (a relative of the Duke of Portland) and a James Stansfeld regarding hunting and mineral rights (we believe the hunting rights may have been ceded in 1931 by the Lowther Estates, acting for the Earl of Lonsdale). The document suggests that the then owner was one Edward Banner. A woollen merchant by the name of Hatton Hamer Stansfield JP was resident here in the 1861 census and died in June 1865 here. A Liverpool solicitor called Edward Banner (President of the Liverpool Law Society in 1855) was listed in Slater’s Directory as resident here in 1879, and he was also a member of the Royal Windermere Yacht Club. From this we may speculate that Hamer Stansfield purchased from Sheldon, his son James sold it on to Banner whilst clarifying the hunting and mineral rights, and that Banner sold at some point to Mary Isabella Carver.
Enter to our story the Carver family, described as engaged in the “cartage” business (connected to Sheldon?). William Carver who built up this business, had built for himself The Priory, the Victorian pile next door, sometime between Harriet Martineau’s first edition in 1855 and her third in 1866. Carver’s sons, Thomas and John, bought into a cotton business in 1857 at Hollins Mill, Marple, near Stockport. Mary Isabella Carver sold Highfield in 1891 and the sale was witnessed by John Carver of Greystoke, Ealing, Middlesex. John Carver of Greystoke and of Hollins Mill left a will when he died in 1911. His eldest daughter was recorded as Mary O Carver, spinster, but this could have been mis-transcribed. Thomas also had a daughter Mary, but she married Frank Barlow in 1883 (incidentally they had a son who was shot down by the Red Baron). Mary Carver was described as “of The Priory”. It is conceivable that William Carver owned Highfield and carved out some land to build The Priory, whilst retaining Highfield, though it is unclear where Banner would then fit in.
The property was purchased from Mary by William Crewdson of Kendal, the uncle of Henry Broadrick, who held the property until his death in 1957. At some point during this tenure, between 1919 and 1957, the property was extended to add what is now the sitting room and the two bedrooms above it.
After Henry’s death, between 1957 and 1958, Highfield was split up into several smaller properties by Dalefield Investments and Elsie Evans of Purley. They sold off Highfield Cottage (the old coach house and stable buildings at the back of the plot) to Julia Hopkinson of Bradford, and divided the main Highfield into three parts. No 1 is what is now referred to as Highfield and is the other part of this main building. Numbers 2 and 3 Highfield together make up what is now North Highfield. The divide between Numbers 2 and 3 is essentially between the two staircases, and this is why we have two kitchens.
Dalefield and Evans sold No 1 to JT Butterworth, and No 2 to JH and Kathleen Butterworth. We think JH may have been JT’s son, and at a later date Kathleen Butterworth is the owner of No 1. No 3 was sold to Mrs Irene Hartwell. Irene sold No 3 to the Leaches in 1966 who sold to the Maddisons in 1977 who sold to the Jones in 1981 who sold to Victor Haluska (a retailer from Santa Monica) in 1987 who sold to Hugh and Judy Charlton in 1993. Judy Charlton was to stay for nearly 25 years, but prior to that No 3 didn’t seem to have enduring appeal, even though it boasted the present sitting room and several fine bedrooms. Judy did something about this.
Alice Cockroft of Halifax purchased No 2 from Kathleen Butterworth in 1976. Alice had an MBE, and we think this was for being Mayor of Dewsbury in 1966, where she ran a fish and chip shop. She sold No2 to Judy and Hugh Charlton in 1995 and it was a little while after this that Judy, then separated from Hugh, proceeded to put 2 and 3 together to make North Highfield.
Judy married Gordon Dootson (the then owner of Highfield Cottage) after separating from her first husband. She was the owner and principal resident of North Highfield from 1993 until she decided in 2017, at the age of 82, to sell up and move to a modern flat near her eldest son in Derby. Alas, she never completed that transition. Shortly after she put the house on the market she was taken ill, and was in and out of hospital over the following weeks. With the help of her family, she completed the sale to the Murrays at 3.30pm on a Friday afternoon and passed away at 7.30am the following morning.
Judy was a talented painter, and many of her silk paintings hang around the house. She was a director of a business inherited from her father, Pointing Chemicals, which she sold in 1999 to the American corporation, Sensient Technolgies of Wisconsin. Judy was a busy participant in Windermere life, a regular at Troutbeck parish church and an energetic gardener, even in her later years (when a golf buggy enabled her to reach the parts of the garden other octogenarians couldn’t reach).
Jane and Phil Murray, who own North Highfield today, are both Scousers who remember their honeymoon in Ambleside in the 1980s with great fondness, and even though they now live in the deep South of the Home Counties continue to think nothing of the monthly trek up the M6 for their Cumbrian fix.