Chapter 6: Victorian Occupants

In a sense, this perception of an alteration to the tone of its surroundings explains what now happened to Exmouth House. Since the next owner falls between censuses, meaning that census returns provide no data on his occupancy, we may instead start with Brett’s account, who writes, a propos the death of Eliza Ann Deudney aged 71 in 1875:51

Yet, long ere the widow her rest shall have sought, / Town-Councillor Gutsell the house will have bought. / ‘Fifty-two-‘Fifty-eight is the time very near / That Gutsell and wife, with their maid will be here. / They’ll move into High street, to live and to die, / A fact you may learn about more by-and-by.

This brief narrative calls for elucidation, in terms both of the ownership of the property and the social implications of this. On the basic facts of property ownership, the extant deeds are very helpful. As has already been explained, Exmouth House was auctioned at the Swan Hotel on 6 December 1852, being sold to Samuel Gutsell of Hastings for £900, as was ratified by a conveyance dated 14 February 1853. Gutsell is identified in the conveyance as a grocer, but, evidently largely due to his ownership of so grand a house, he is listed among the ‘Resident Nobility, Clergy and Gentry’ in Osborne’s Directories for 1853 and 1854; he is also described as a gentleman in the conveyance when he sold the house to Richard Moulton of Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury, for £700 on 26 August 1858. On the other hand, it is worth observing that Gutsell does genuinely seem to have lived at the house, as Brett describes: he therefore constitutes its first owner-occupier, in contrast to the position with Matthew Fagg, whose primary residence always seems to have been in Lydd, and then the entirely rentier status of the Deudneys and their successors.

Conveyance of Exmouth House to Samuel Gutsell, 14 February 1853

Directories and the like help to flesh out Brett’s brief account of Gutsell. The first reference to him that I have located is in the census for 1841 for Westfield, where he is described as a grocer aged 30: this tallies with the record of his death in 1876, when he was said to be 66 years old, thus taking us back to 1811 for his birth. In the Post Office Directory for 1851 he is described as a ‘grocer & tea dealer’ operating from 121 All Saints Street, and this is confirmed both by the 1851 census and by Osborne’s Directory for 1852. Unfortunately there are then no extant records, apart from the 1853 and 1854 directories that have already been referred to, in which he appears as a gentleman resident at Exmouth House (and not under ‘Grocers’).

By the time of the 1861 census, having left Exmouth House, he is recorded as living in more modest circumstances at 3 Portland Place, near Hastings town centre. In the directory for 1865, however, he appears under 40a High Street and is also listed as a Councillor for the East Ward of the town, and this continues in the 1867-8, 1871, 1874, and 1876 directories (he also appears under that address in the 1871 census). In 1876, however, he died, being buried on 3 November that year at plot AC K17 in Hastings Cemetery. Hannah Gutsell, his widow, who died aged 69 in 1877, was buried on 17 April 1877 in the same grave. This row in the cemetery was a fairly prestigious one, with Patrick Robertson on the end of it, so the plot must have been paid for, but no memorial to the Gutsells is extant.52 By 1878 Gutsell’s place at 40a High Street is taken in the directories by Madame La Garde, a dress and costume maker. Brett is unfortunately less forthcoming on Gutsell in his section on the High Street than might have been hoped from his allusion under Exmouth House, simply noting that Wandsworth House (presumably 40a) was ‘owned by Gutsell, of the Hastings Council’.

Reflecting on Gutsell, might one detect a slight element of hubris in his purchase of Exmouth House? Did he aspire to grandeur in buying so costly a residence, leading to his being listed among the nobility and gentry, rather than as a mere grocer? And did the cost of maintaining the debt involved in buying the house prove more than he could manage, thus leading to his sale of the house less than six years after buying it, at a loss of nearly a quarter of the £900 he had originally outlaid on it, and his moving to much more modest houses, first in Portland Place and then in the High Street (both of which still exist)? It is an intriguing speculation.

51 For the immediately preceding passage see n. 46.

52 Information kindly supplied by Anne Scott.