Manor of Knightshayes

Knightshayes is an historic estate near Tiverton in Devon, England.
Benjamin Dickinson (fl. 1785) was a wealthy merchant and banker at nearby Tiverton (a major centre of the cloth industry), and three-times Mayor of Tiverton. Between 1785 and 1788 he built the first mansion house at Knightshayes.
Knightshayes was successively owned by John Dickinson (died 1813), a wealthy merchant at Tiverton, then Benjamin Bowden Dickinson (1793-1851), JP, DL, Sheriff of Devon in 1824. Benjamin married Frances, eldest daughter and eventual sole heiress of William Henry Walrond (born 1762) of Bradfield House, Uffculme in Devon (on the opposite- south- side of Tiverton to Knightshayes). The Walronds were ancient gentry, seated at Bradfield since the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272). After his wife's inheritance, in 1845 Benjamin changed his surname by royal licence to Walrond.
Their son and heir was Conservative Party politician Sir John Walrond Walrond, 1st Baronet (1818-1889), of Bradfield House, (known as John Walrond Dickinson until 22 April 1845). Having moved to Bradfield, he sold the Knightshayes estate to the Amory family in 1867. His son was William Walrond, 1st Baron Waleran (1849-1925). The Heathcoat-Amory family demolished the Dickinson house and built a new mansion slightly above it, which survives today.
The surviving Victorian country house, Knightshayes Court, was designed by William Burges for the Heathcoat-Amory family.

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