Castle Malwood

According to a handwritten document now in the possession of RMS, the original house was built in 1802, and bought some time between then and 1840. Robbins was certainly in residence in 1838 and died in 1864. [The Standard, 2 May 1838; The Times, 10 Dec. 1864] Subsequently the house was occupied by Mrs Fanny Robbins, his widow (d. 1877 [The Times, 29 Dec. 1877]), and Major-General Richard Parker, the other executor of Robbins’s will. In 1885 it was ‘to let’ [The Times, 4 June 1885] and a Colonel Henry Shakerley was in residence in 1889. In 1891 it was for sale [The Times, 30 May 1891], and according to the ms, in 1892 it was purchased by Mr Charles Hill, a retired t[ea] planter from Malay [sic]. He enlarged the property and it w[as] described as ‘yellow brick’, low, rambling in free Jacobe[an] style with some baroque touches. The word ‘Slamat’ in the front porch is Malayan for ‘Welcome’. The stai[ned] glass window of King William Rufus is probably from the original house. Hill was there for less than six years, however, because he died in 1894; there was a Captain William Alexander Grant there in 1898. According to the ms, the house was bought by Daniel Hanbury in 1910. This was not the pharmacologist Daniel Hanbury (d. 1875 [DNB]) but his nephew . The Daniel Hanbury who lived at Castle Malwood: ‘made extensive improvements to the property and he also laid [a] cricket field and the tennis courts. Mr Hanbury was a[n] engineer and had the house wired for electricity, which [he] made with his own generator. He built a motor boat in ... to compete for the British International Trophy. Mr Ha[nbury] had one of the first Rolls Royce ‘Silver Ghost’ cars.’ So keen was Hanbury on cars that in 1918 he was ‘fined £100 at the New Forest Petty Sessions for unlawfully storing petrol and petrol substitutes, of which he had nearly 2,000 gallons, and a further £100 for storing without a licence’. [The Times, 11 Feb. 1918.] He had however contributed positively to the war effort by lending a lathe and volunteering to work in a munitions factory at Scafield Engineering College, Fareham.[The Times, 6 Sept. 1915.] He died in 1948. [The Times, 16 Nov. 1948.]