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Since
page 1 was written we have made further discoveries!
For example Dunfield House was not originally called
Downfield House. It began as Dunfield House as far
as we are able to tell – it was certainly called
that in Elizabethan times, when first the Vaughans
and then the Bulls lived here. A Charles Vaughan was
born at Dunfield, Hereford in 1545, and it seems he
married from the house in 1564 before the Vaughan family
moved to Hergest across the valley. It seems probable
that a well-known Lingen family of the village of Lingen
owned the house at this time although the Vaughans
lived here. By the 1580’s the Bulls were in possession
and apparently occupation and still calling it Dunfield.
Now of course, when we wrote the earlier history page
we had found only that the house went back to the time
of Charles 1 (1645-1649) but there is no doubt that
there was a house here further back. Elizabeth reigned
from 1533 to 1603 and the Bulls were certainly already
here before she died and the Vaughan had been in occupation.
We are still looking at the possibility that the original
house was built on an ecclesiastical site, but may
never be able to prove this. What may well have been
the case is that an original mediaeval house was changed
substantially, and that that changed house was again
materially changed in Victorian times, all of which
makes tracing the history very difficult!
The property seems to have become Downfield or Down
Field or Downefield during ownership by successive
generations of the Bull family, who were very prominent
in the area. A map of Radnorshire in the Judges’ Lodgings
at Presteigne, drawn in the mid-1600’s, shows
Downfield just across the Herefordshire border with
the annotation “Bull Esqr.” beside it.
Henry Bull, for example, was elected a burgess of the
Borough of New Radnor in 1708.
The Price family owned the house from about 1796,
though there is no trace of their having lived here.
The original Price owner was Richard Price of Presteigne,
who left the house to his son, Charles Humphries Price,
who left it to his son, Robert Bell Price, who left
it to his son, Robert Henry Price. After Richard, the
Prices seem to have lived in Shropshire, until Robert
Henry, who was an army officer, a Major, eventually.
Robert Henry sold Downfield to Henry Miles in 1844.
He took to calling it “The Downfield!” Miles
was in furniture, a successful businessman. Before
Dunfield he lived in Harley Street, London, and, with
a partner, had a shop in Oxford Street. He apparently
made, and certainly sold, high class furniture to large
houses. Look at the Dunfield fireplaces! Families who
lived in what are now National Trust houses bought
his furniture. Miles’s daughter married an architect
who re-vamped Dunfield according to Victorian taste.
It seemed to revert to the name Dunfield after Miles.
Our researches continue!
