The Manor of Welbourn Hall

The story of the Manor of Welbourn Hall begins in medieval Lincolnshire and, centuries later, crosses the Atlantic to the Virginia countryside.

Known in its earliest records as Sapperton, the manor lay immediately south of the village of Welbourn, along the ancient Roman road of Ermine Street. Sapperton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 and again in the Lindsey Survey of the early twelfth century.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the manor was in the possession of the Welby family of Lincolnshire, an old landed family whose estates included Welby, Denton, Swinstead, Stragglethorpe and Sapperton at Welbourn. In time, the manor became associated with the family seat there and was known as the Manor of Welbourn Hall. 

For more than two centuries the manor was held by the Welbys.

Then, in 1840, its history took an extraordinary turn.

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Millicent Welby Ridghill died at Welbourn Hall in 1840. Her sister, Mary Ann Welby deButts, had already died in America, where a branch of the family had become established in Maryland and Virginia. The line of inheritance consequently crossed the Atlantic.

Millicent's heir was her three-year-old great-grandnephew, John Peyton Dulany deButts, then living under the guardianship of his grandfather and namesake, John Peyton Dulany, in Middleburg, Virginia. Although separated from Lincolnshire by an ocean, the young heir's connection with Welbourn was remarkably close. His great-grandmother, Mary Ann Welby deButts, had been born at Welbourn Hall. And the Dulany family's Virginia home at Middleburg bore a familiar name:

Welbourne.

The name carried a small piece of Lincolnshire into Virginia and would become associated with one of the most prominent families in the early history of Virginia's horse country.

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Nearly twenty years after Millicent's death, an extensive collection of genealogical and estate records was assembled in England concerning John Peyton Dulany deButts' inheritance.

Dated 1859 and entitled "John Peyton Dulany de Butts, Esq. — Evidence in Support of Title," the surviving papers preserve an unusually detailed record of the family and estate.

They include genealogical evidence establishing the descent from the Welbys to John deButts; records of births and deaths; affidavits from individuals in England and America; and a detailed description of the property associated with Welbourn Hall.

The documents describe the manor and mansion of Welbourn Hall, together with its offices, demesne, stables, paddocks, cottages, courtyards, orchards, messuages and tenants.

What survives is therefore more than a family tradition.

It is a documentary record connecting a medieval Lincolnshire manor, the Welby family who possessed it, and their descendants in nineteenth-century Virginia.