Chute Lodge 1838: A Documentary Note on Farming in East Wiltshire

On 3 June 1838 George and John Everett, aged respectively 27 and 22 years, the fourth and seventh sons of Joseph Hague Everett of Biddesden House, left the family estate east of Ludgershall and close to the boundary of Hampshire, for New South Wales. There, by early 1839 they had established themselves at ‘Ollera’, a vast squatting run on the pastoral frontier of the New England District of the northern tablelands. A modestly sized estate of around 800 acres, Biddesden had been purchased in 1786 by Joseph’s father, Thomas, and was later enlarged by the acquisition of other properties. Although Joseph inherited and occupied the estate in 1810, it was never the sole source of the family’s wealth which seems to have been derived also from banking and textiles. While older brothers entered the Church and the legal profession, the estate could not provide them all with either a living or a home; at some point the decision was taken to send George and John to New South Wales, followed later by Edwin, the last of eleven children and the eighth son, in the hope they might carve out a colonial fortune to buttress the family’s wealth in England. In reaching this decision the family was undoubtedly following the example of another gentry family with whom they had a close relationship, the Wyndhams of Dinton, who already possessed a colonial estate in the lower Hunter Valley.