Rev Henry Wilder and Joan Thoyts of Sulham

Wilder's Folly has long been associated with the story of the Rev. Henry Wilder and his wife Joan Thoyts. The red-bricked structure towers over the fields of the Sulham Estate on Nunhide Lane, a short walk from either Tilehurst or Calcot in Berkshire. But who were they? Their stories have been lost to time, but I've managed to find scraps of their lives in old newspapers, nineteenth-century pedigrees and monuments. 

Henry Wilder was born in 1744 to John Wilder and his wife Beaufoy Boyle (b.1714). It's believed that his birth took place in Shiplake, at the family home. The earliest Wilders came to the area in the fifteenth century, and had based themselves at the village since then, meaning that it had been the family's ancestral home for centuries. John Wilder was a local government official, serving as a Captain of the Militia and Magistrate. He and Beaufoy had married in 1735, the Newcastle Courant of that year reporting that she was 'an agreeable young lady of £10,000 fortune', over £1.1 million in today's value. Beaufoy also had royal blood, according to nineteenth-century genealogist Bernard Burke. He traced Beaufoy's descent through the dukes of Norfolk in the sixteenth century, back to Edward I and Eleanor of Castile of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. John had relatives that had settled in the American colonies, the first of those travelling as pilgrims in the 1630s.

The couple lived in Shiplake, but also had property in Nunhide Lane, Sulham. John succeeded to his family estates in 1765, settling into an active role locally and into family life with his son Henry and daughters Harriet, Mary Ann and Amy. 

When Henry was around twenty-three years old he married Joan Thoyts, daughter of William Thoyts, a landowner at nearby Sulhamstead. She was a few years younger than Henry, born in 1748, and was around nineteen years old at their wedding. It is at this point that the local legend surrounding Wilder's Folly is believed to have emerged. The tale is that Henry, in love with his future wife, had the folly built in 1769 so that they could both see the structure from their respective homes, reminding them of one another just before their marriage. The tower is said to have later been used as a dovecote. There's limited actual physical evidence for Henry's intention behind the building of the tower, and I have been unable to find proof that it was actually built in 1769 but it does appear as a 'pigeon tower' on a map of 1830, just a decade or two after Henry's death. It's possible the building was always intended as a dovecote, as if it was constructed in 1769, as local legend states, it wouldn't have made sense for the couple to to be gazing out longingly at the tower while they were already married. If so, it doesn't cancel out the romantic legend associated with it. Wealthy families bred pigeons for fertiliser, messaging or as a status symbol or hobby, and so the building may still have meant something to the couple in their early years. 

Wilder's Folly, Nunhide Lane

After their marriage, Henry and Joan had a number of children - eleven in total. Genealogies track only eight of them, but this was because three children died young and are often ignored in family trees that focus on tracing descent. Their children were John (born in 1769), George Lodovick, William (baptised 1773) Francis Boyle Shannon (born in December 1775), Mary Ann (baptised May 1775), Harriett (born 1778), Lucy (baptised 1779)and Charlotte Beaufoy (died in 1870). A son named Henry died at the age of eight, baptised on 7 December 1771 and buried on 18 January 1780. Another, Richard, lived until the age of five, his baptism taking place on 20 September 1776 and his burial on 15 December 1781. A daughter, Joan, was baptised on 25 October 1770 and was buried a few weeks later, on 10 November of the same year.

Henry pursued a career in the church, and received his degree at St John's College in Oxford, where he became a Fellow, later serving as rector of Sulham church. The year 1772 brought the death of Henry's father John, and his succession to the family estates. In 1777 Henry sold the family home at Shiplake and purchased Purley Hall, just off Long Lane in Purley. It was said to have been a brick and stone structure with carved heraldry, grounds, stables, a library and courtyards. He would be known in future correspondence as 'the Rev. Henry Wilder of Purley Hall' although the family were also based at Sulham House, which could be seen from the folly on Nunhide Lane.

Sulham Church

We see Henry appear often in newspaper reports and in papers of the House of Lords. In 1776 he was presented the rectory of Edgecut in Buckinghamshire, and served on the Reading Commission for George III in 1799. In 1783 he was responsible for committing sentenced locals to gaol, and attended judgements in the local courts. In various documents he was permitted by the king to appoint a gamekeeper at Sulham Manor, whose name, in 1795, was Thomas Lovegrove. While Henry was dealing with official and church business, his wife Joan was tending to their growing family, with evidence that she was appointing a governess for the children to ensure their education. In 1777 the couple were both involved in a petition for a Bill at the House of Lords regarding the sale of some of the Thoyts' family estates in Kent. 

Rev. Henry Wilder's Memorial Tablet in Sulham Church

Henry died on 22 June 1814 at Purley Hall, and was buried at Sulham. His monument lists others that are buried with him, including five children who had died young. In a document of 1830 his widow Joan was mentioned as the administrator of Henry's estate, showing that he trusted her to carry out his wishes after his death. It also hints that there was some legal trouble following Henry's death, with Joan asserting her role sixteen years after he died. A newspaper report in the Morning Post of 11 April 1837 shared Joan's death, at the age of 89 in Westminster in London, at Langham Place. She was carried to Sulham to be buried alongside her husband and some of their children. 

Henry and Joan are the subject of a local romantic legend, but that is not where their relationship ended. Married for 45 years, they were figures of local power, justice and spiritual support. They adopted their own roles, Henry in local government and as rector, and Joan as rector's wife and carer of their growing children. They left a trace in legal records, putting both their names to a petition to ensure the sale of Thoyts lands, and seem to have had a happy and long marriage, having to endure the early deaths of five of their infant children. Henry made Joan his administrator after his death, and she asserted her rights as this long after she had lived as his widow. Joan outlived Henry by some years, and would have coped with the loss of some of their adult children. Their eldest, John, died in February 1834. Every time we look up at the towering red-bricked folly in the centre of the Sulham countryside we should remember Henry and Joan, but this was not their only legacy. They were three-dimensional figures who lived through their own grief and challenges. They changed lives, and their descendants went on to serve too, in the church, local government and community.

Liked this? You might also like my other posts about the history of Reading and surrounding villages and towns here. 

You can hear me talking to BBC Radio Berkshire about Wilder's Folly and the history behind it here.