Warneford House: Tracing the Residents

Warneford House taken from Radford Road, c. 1900. | Warwickshire County Record Office reference PH1035/A6451.
Warneford House taken from Radford Road, c. 1900.
Warwickshire County Record Office reference PH1035/A6451.
Site of Warneford House, 2014. | Photo by Richard Neale
Site of Warneford House, 2014.
Photo by Richard Neale

At the time of its demolition the part of the property known as Warneford House had a postal address of 13, Forfield Place, Royal Leamington Spa. Although this part of the property had its main front on Forfield Place, which, in theory, should make tracing its residents fairly straight forward, before the address was fixed in 1890 it was usually recorded as being in High Street!

So as with the other part of the property , tracing the residents from 1883 forwards has been fairly straight forward, going backwards from there has been rather more tricky. However, as with Gower House, I am confident I have managed to track it back to when it was built in 1834 and include the details in the attachment accessed via the Downloads section of this page.

Spennell’s

The Spennell’s directory for 1883 tells us that a Mr T. Dunbar was the resident of Warneford House at the time. The census for 1881 tells us that this was Thomas Dunbar who was a draper and the 1880 directory tells us that the house was at number 57 High Street. Mr Dunbar is named in directory for 1876, living at Warneford House, which is recorded as being in High Street. He is also recorded in the directory for 1874, this time in Forfield Place. While the house is not named it seems safe to assume he was still at Warneford House. I include further details about the residents in the attachment below.

The directory for 1835, when the house was newly built, records it as Warneford Terrace, a name used again in the 1851 census. So I would assume this was the name originally intended for this part of High Street / Radford Road but the rest of the grand terrace was never built.

The name Warneford Terrace was later used as the name for a row of labourer’s cottages, facing the canal, at the bottom of Althorpe Street.

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