Relhan Collection : 7 Great Abington church. Hatchment of Thomas Western and Arms of Sir William Halton

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p><b>7a Hatchment of Thomas Western. 1754</b></p><p>Thomas Western was a friend of Cole’s from university days at Cambridge and lived at Abington Hall. The hatchment could not be found (2020) but Cole describes how, on the way to Horseheath, he ‘<i>had a curiosity to visit a tomb of my old friend Mr Western, who died in Bath in 1754, aged 59’</i>, and records his handsome free-stone and black marble tomb with arms and inscription. In 1697 Western’s grandfather, a wealthy London ironmonger, also Thomas Western, had taken possession of the Abington estate that was mortgaged to him. He left the estate to his son Maximilian, who undertook rebuilding work at Abington Hall and died 1720, but the estate was then contested in Chancery. Maximilian’s son was the Thomas Western of this hatchment, Cole’s friend, and he eventually bought out other claimants and later left the estate to his son, another Thomas.</p><p><b>7b Arms of Sir William Halton, from tomb, 1639</b></p></p>