Greswolde Dynasty
Greswold takes its name from the Old English greosn, meaning gravel, and wold, meaning woodland — a name rooted, quite literally, in the Warwickshire landscape. The family who took this name had been established in Solihull and its surrounding parishes since at least the early fourteenth century. Their arms Argent, a fess Gules between two greyhounds courant Sable are referenced today in the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, the family’s identity absorbed into the town they had helped to shape.
The spelling of the name varied over time: Greswold, Grissolde, Gryssould, de Greswalde. By the fifteenth century the family were figures of local consequence. Thomas Greswold held custody of the Manor of Solihull under King Henry VI, granted in 1437. The adjacent Manor of Longdon, containing what would become Malvern Hall, passed to the Greswolde family in the Elizabethan era, establishing their territorial connection to the lands east of Solihull that would define the family for the next two centuries.
Henry Greswold, Lord of the Manor of Greet, (a small manor lying between Sparkhill and Hall Green) was established there by the late sixteenth century. His son Humphrey had two children whose descendants would share inheritances across the following two centuries: the Reverend Henry Greswolde, who established the family’s principal seat at Malvern Hall; and his sister Anne Greswolde, who married Henry Palmer of Olton End in 1631.
The Reverend Henry Greswolde, Rector of Solihull from 1660 to 1700, purchased Malvern Farm in 1680. His eldest son Humphrey built the hall that gave the estate its permanent character. By the early eighteenth century Malvern Hall was the Greswolde family’s principal seat.
The second branch followed Anne Greswolde’s marriage to Henry Palmer of Olton End. Anne and Henry had a son Benjamin, who married Ann Grimshaw, and two daughters. Benjamin and Ann’s son, another Benjamin Palmer known in the family as Ben, was born in 1711. He became a lawyer and was appointed Sheriff of Warwickshire. In 1754 he purchased the manors of Knowle, Diddington and Kinwalsey from Henrietta Smith, having previously acquired the Manor of Nuthurst. Ben married Elizabeth Knight but had no children of his own, and the question of inheritance fell instead to the descendants of his two aunts.
Elizabeth Palmer, the elder of Ben’s aunts, had married Thomas Doley in 1672. Their daughter Anne died before her cousin, but Anne’s own daughter Elizabeth carried the line forward, with her daughter Jane marrying into the Wilson family. Gumley Wilson described his grandmother Jane as “the thorough gentlewoman of the old school - well read” and mixing in the world, in the best society. She was a rich woman, heiress to an estate in Pembrokeshire, and with £3,000 odd per annum from funds and the Palmer estate, inherited through a female succession. She took responsibility for Gumley Wilson’s upbringing, paying for schooling, clothing, Army commissions and his allowance.
Mary Palmer, the younger aunt, married William Makepeace of Pensham Court in Worcestershire and they had two daughters. The elder, Ann Makepeace, married into the Wigley family of Birmingham. The younger, Martha Makepeace, married her mother’s cousin, the Reverend Marshall Greswold of Malvern Hall, uniting the two branches. Palmer’s will, drafted with an entail for male heirs, bound these lines together in principle. As daughter followed daughter through every branch the properties passed not down a single agnatic line but In moieties, divided across branches of the family tree, shared and re-shared between cousins descended from Ben Palmer’s two aunts, for several generations to come.
Arms: Chequey Or and Azure a chief Gules
Crest: A griffin sejeant with wings endorsed Argent
Olton End passed initially to the Doley line, though it would later be held by their Wigley cousins. Gumley Wilson, who lived at Olton End between 1841 and 1844, then known as Olton Hall, described it as “an old-fashioned brick manor house full of superb oak carvings”, which originally stood in a small park. Malvern Hall descended through Martha’s branch to her daughter and son-in-law David Lewis. The manors of Knowle, Diddington, Kinwalsey and Nuthurst followed their own complicated path of shared ownership among the same scattered family branches.
Arms: Gules three serpents nowed in triangle Argent within a bordure engrailed Or
Crest: A nag’s head couped bridled proper
David Lewis held Malvern Hall, Knowle and Diddington together until his death in 1773, when the estates passed to his son Henry Greswolde Lewis, born in 1754. The double surname proclaimed his descent from the Greswolde family through the female line, preserving the name alongside the inheritance. His portrait was painted by Daniel Gardner around 1776 and in 1784 he married Charlotte Bridgeman, daughter of Sir Henry Bridgeman, 5th Baronet of Weston Park in Staffordshire (whose brother Orlando would become the 1st Earl of Bradford). Charlotte was accomplished and musical, taking much of her own music to Malvern Hall when she married. The union lasted barely a year. Henry recorded in his memoranda book that the separation had been effected by his mother-in-law, whose interference he described as intolerable and insufferable from the beginning. They separated in March 1785. There were no children.
Henry Greswolde Lewis managed his estates alone for the remainder of his life, taking a close interest in the history of the family whose name he bore and particular about its spelling, preferring Greswolde. In 1809 he commissioned John Constable to paint Malvern Hall and its park, the resulting work now in Tate Britain. Constable also painted a grand portrait of Lewis’s ancestor ‘Humphri de Grouswolde’ as well as a portrait of Lewis himself. Several copies of his portrait were painted and distributed to family members, including his cousin Jane Wilson at Knowle Hall. Lewis and Constable remained friends for over twenty years.
By the time of his death in 1829 the ownership of the Greswolde and Palmer estates was complex. The manors of Knowle, Diddington, Kinwalsey and Nuthurst were held in shared portions across the broader family, the provisions of Palmer’s entail reaching forward across generations, binding together branches that bore different surnames. The Wilsons lived at Knowle Hall and had a son who, according to the entails in both Palmer’s and Lewis’s wills, should inherit Malvern Hall, Knowle Hall and the manors. The Wigley branch also had a male heir, who was given a life interest in Malvern Hall in Henry Greswolde Lewis’s will. The will also named his uncle Henry Wigley as tenant for life. The manors and the Greswolde name had survived until this moment. Whether they would continue to hold together between the Wilson and Wigley families was another matter.
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