Nat Gould

Brownhill

There is more than one place in Warslow parish in Staffordshire called Brownhill.

The family of William Gould 1704-1757 lived at Lower Brownhill, which is now Warslow Hall.

Families of several different surnames - Eaton (in the seventeenth century), and Johnson, Wood and Kidd (in the eighteenth century) are named at places in the parish called Brownhill or Upper Brownhill in the Alstonefield parish registers. In particular there is the family of Richard and Anne Gould at (Upper) Brownhill recorded in the registers from 1754 to 1772, and "Mrs. Rich. Gould, Brownhill" buried at Alstonefield on 7 October 1811. She is probably the Anne Hollyns whose brother William Hollyns was the great-grandfather of Penelope Boothby 1785-1791, the only child of Sir Brooke Boothby of Ashbourne (the sixth baronet) and his wife nee Susanna Bristowe commemorated in the famous monument in Ashbourne parish church (1).

The connection (if any) between Richard and Anne Gould of Upper Brownhill and the family of William Gould 1704-1757 of (Lower) Brownhill is unknown.

(1) The pedigree of the Hollyns family of "Mosseley" (probably Mossley Hall near Congleton in Cheshire), which includes the connection between Anne wife of Richard Gould of Upper Brownhill and the Boothby family, is in John Sleigh A History of the Ancient Parish of Leek in Staffordshire (1862) pages 200-201.

The same book preserves a story that John Sleigh heard about the 1745 retreat of the bedraggled army of Bonnie Prince Charlie from Derby back towards Scotland across the wild Staffordshire moors:

“We hear of the poor clansmen stretching as far on one side as to Elkstone, and on the other to Weever, whose summits an old man, living only as far back as about 1835, remembered to have seen covered with them there Scotch rabils ”thick as leaves in Vallambrosa”; and he probably was the last who could have given direct testimony of their locust-like flight through this hill-country. One John Gould, of the Brownhills family, happened to visit his relatives, at Lowe-hill, at the time of the Bonnie-Hielanders passing through, and caring no longer to “chaw the prickles of unpalatable law” with Counsellor George Osborne, of Beresford-hall (a near connexion of Charles Cotton, the poet-angler), at once joined them in the Retreat; leaving with his disconsolate friends a broad-sword, still preserved by their descendants --- “.

It is not known from which Warslow family of Gould this John Gould came. Because of his dispute with George Osborne of Beresford Hall, it could well be the family of William Gould 1704-1757 of (Lower) Brownhill.

The present whereabouts of the broadsword is unknown, unless it is that in the collections of the Harpur-Crewe family at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire. If so, then that increases the likelihood that John Gould was connected with the family of William Gould 1704-1757, as its Harpur-Crewe owner took (Lower) Brownhill into his own occupation when the second husband of the widow of the last Gould there gave up the tenancy and the house was converted into the present-day Warslow Hall as a summer residence for the Harpur-Crewe family.