Talk:Tottenham House

Tottenham House

I looked up Tottenham House to discover more about the house, and was redirected to Tottenham, Wiltshire, a redirect done by Lobsterthermidor in November 2015 after adding Descent of the estate and Sturmy's Horn / Savernake Horn sections. I left a message for Lobsterthermindor five days ago saying that I thought I could see what they were doing - that they had some information which in some way related to the house, and felt it would be best placed there, which then necessitated changing the name (and the scope) of the original article. However, I'm not seeing how the material sits comfortably in the article, especially as it obscures the original subject matter, and makes finding out information about the house somewhat confusing. It looks to me that almost all of the material added belongs elsewhere, perhaps in a new article. A search of sources does confirm that Tottenham House is the notable subject. I am unsure if the estate has quite enough notability for a stand-alone article; however, the Seymour family does have notability, and indeed we do have an article on that family - Seymour family, to which the bulk of the material could be moved. The Savernake Horn material could possibly be moved to a stand-alone article as there are a few sources which describe it in detail. Lobsterthermindor has been inactive since 7 November, so there's been no response yet.

Looking at the situation, my suggestion would be to create a Savernake Horn article and move the Sturmy's Horn / Savernake Horn there; merge the Seymour family details to the Seymour family article, and to restore Tottenham, Wiltshire to Tottenham House, keeping all relevant material from the existing article. I will notify significant contributors. SilkTork (talk) 13:15, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I would certainly agree that Tottenham House has sufficient notability to more than merit its own article. Many notable families also had/have notable houses but, as an extreme example, we wouldn't redirect Windsor Castle, Sandringham House, Buckingham Palace, and Balmoral Castle into the Elizabeth II, or House of Windsor articles, or into the Windsor, Berkshire, Sandringham, Norfolk, etc. etc. articles. KJP1 (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I have created a Tottenham House section, extracting the relevant house history from the family history ("Descent of the estate" section). My feeling is that the "Descent of the estate" and "Sturmy's Horn / Savernake Horn" sections can now be moved to other articles, and the article's title restored to Tottenham House. SilkTork (talk) 14:00, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I have built up the lead per WP:Lead. SilkTork (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

This is what the article would look like with the Seymour family details removed: [1]. SilkTork (talk) 16:38, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

And there is scope to expand it further - there could be a section just on Capability Brown's work in the garden. SilkTork (talk) 16:39, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

• I have restored the article and the title. I have moved the material on the Seymour family into the Seymour family article. I have temporarily moved the material on Savernake Horn to User:SilkTork/Chicha until I put in the appropriate sources, after which I will move it into main space. SilkTork (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
• What have you done to this page? It was informative and full of information about the house and estate’s history. It now appears a shadow of its former self. This looks like needless meddling to me. Giano (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

The information about the house remains. Only unrelated information has been removed, such as Savernake Horn. All material related to the house remains. SilkTork (talk) 17:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

There seems a lot more history in this version. Giano (talk) 19:13, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

There's a lot more words in that version, Giano, but not more history of the house. The additional words are, as Agricolae says below, more about family history. SilkTork (talk) 23:46, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

As an outside observer, I see you two talking cross-purposes. A page about Tottenham House should not have the same content as a page about the property of Tottenham, Wiltshire. I won't weigh in on whether one, the other, or both is the best way to handle this, but you are unlikely to achieve consensus when you can't even agree on what you are writing about. (That being said, I will say that the trend, particularly by one prolific editor of this and other pages, of using articles on properties as a COATRACK to incorporate massive amounts of family history not directly relevant to the ownership of the property is not an approach I am fond of - whichever the page is about, property or house, it had way too much peripheral family history.) Agricolae (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

What I saw was an article on an interesting house (Tottenham House) that had been renamed and refocused, and so had been lost beneath the weight of barely related material on two families, along with some again barely related material on the Savernake Horn (Tottenham, Wiltshire). I wondered if an article on the Tottenham Estate could be written to run alongside this article on Tottenham House, and that may still be possible. Having looked up "Tottenham estate" and "Tottenham house", and found the house to be firmly notable, and having raised the issue with several people, decided the best approach was to restore the focus to the house. The article on the house had been on Wikipedia since 2007 so had established links related to the house (such as the one from In Rainbows which brought me here), so it seemed, given the circumstances, appropriate to restore that. I agree that there are two topics here, and it is still possible to write an article on the estate, and if anyone wished to do so, the material is there in the history. SilkTork (talk) 23:46, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

An article on the estate would have considerable overlap with Savernake Forest. --Wire723 (talk) 14:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Ah yes. I see that. Tottenham House was a part of the estate, which is Savernake Forest. Thanks for that. Is there actually a Tottenham estate? I had difficulty finding information on a "Tottenham estate" because results kept giving me things such as Glenfarne and Broadwater Farm. The results I had which related to Tottenham House, refer to a "Tottenham Park estate", though I'm not entirely sure of the use of the word "estate" in referring to Tottenham Park, which appears to be the name of the garden around the house, rather than the entirety of the land belonging to the Seymour family. SilkTork (talk) 17:13, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

New article: Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire

Hi, I'm back to add my penny's worth. This appears to be the solution: One article on the bricks and mortar, as now exists here, another for a more detailed history of the occupants, basically descent of the manor, I've done dozens and dozens of them. I don't meet many people just interested in bricks and mortar, as houses usually acquire their fame and interest from the deeds of their illustrious occupants, but we'll strip all that out if required for any dry-as-a-bone Saab-driving architect readers. If you visit any country house open to the public the visitor's guide-book is mostly about the past occupants, their portraits, marriages, etc., not about the building.

The idea of an article on the Seymour family is a non-starter, the family is too large, diversified and far too complex, as is often the case with these large and historic estates. That family needs to be dealt with branch by branch, by estate/residence. That is how genealogists generally deal with families: by estate. That's what I was doing here. I will go ahead and move the previous text on the descent of the manor, etc to a new article Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire, with an approriate "main article" tag in this one. By the way I think the new article on the Horn is excellent and very helpful. Thanks to SilkTork.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:46, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Relevant discussion from Talk:Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire

I moved the talk to a subpage here and have transcluded the content below for now, for ease of reference. Explanations are at the end.  —SMALLJIM  15:51, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Misses the Mark

This is the history of a bunch of families that coincidentally happened to hold Tottenham manor, not an account of the manor. The whole history from the Esturmys all the way down to Bruce, ostensibly more than 500 years of history of Tottenham, never once mentions Tottenham. This is a clear case of losing the plot, of coatracking - using a page about a manor as an excuse for presenting a bunch of family history with no attempt whatsoever to link it to the ppage's subject. Agricolae (talk) 17:13, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@Agricolae: not only that, it's nothing more than the two existing articles Tottenham House and Seymour family copied and pasted together. Absolutely no need for this article to exist. Richard3120 (talk) 01:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@Agricolae and Richard3120: A belated comment, but I've just come across this page. This article is one of those created after this 2013 discussion on WikiProject UK history and this 2016 RfC. The articles were sort of agreed as a way of keeping this specialist information out of those on villages and notable houses where the content that Lobsterthermidor added severely unbalanced them. Examples: Molland, Combe Martin and Tottenham House (before SilkTork's clean up).  —SMALLJIM  13:32, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Agricolae, you want to see "An account of the manor"? What do you mean by that? What topics would you like to see covered? This article was intended by its creator (myself) to be about the descent of the manor, i.e. the same format as in the Victoria County History series, under the heading "Manors". That's mainly (exclusively in the case of VCH) about genealogy. If you want a discussion of the manor house, that would be about architecture, or if you want a discussion about the workings of the manorial court that would be about legal issues. If you want a discussion about the lie of the land, the physical features of the estate, the fields and hedgerows, that would be about geography. All are possible, but those are all different articles. This is intended to be about the people and families who held the manor, and their role in creating and forming it - nothing random about that, it was pristine forest before they appeared, now there's a grand house and parkland, that didn't happen by magic, they did it all, decided on every single alteration, and once created they preserved it. That was done by these so-called "random people". As for "bunch of families that coincidentally happened to hold Tottenham manor", in genealogy families are dealt with by seat, i.e. by place of residence (see Burke's Landed Gentry) for good reason as families tend to branch off over the centuries into separate estates or parts of the country. There is thus no such thing, for example, as "the Howard Family", or the "Grey family", they are too complex, with too many branches. Some branches of families with the same surname and a common male ancestor are complete strangers to each other. It's dealt with by convention either under holders of titles (Debrett's/Burke's Peerage) (i.e. Duke of Norfolk) or holders of estates where the family has no title (Burke's Landed Gentry). If you want the article title changed to "Descent of the Manor of Tottenham", I would be OK with that, then you can create new content about "the manor" as you wish, for example along the above subject lines as I have suggested.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 22:27, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

When VCH follows a manor it describes the families from the context of their interaction with the manor. They do not discuss various other manors the family happened to own, nor to whom their great-great-grandfather married 4 generations before they acquired the manor. This article, in contrast, managed to span 500 years of family history without once naming the manor or indicating any interaction of the families with the manor. It is a group of family histories for families that qualify for inclusion by having held the manor, but for whom their holding of the manor is so incidental their actions with regard to the manor are completely ignored, as opposed to a manorial history that gives its chain of ownership with a focus on the interaction of those owners with the manor, like in VCH. The justification that these families made all the alterations, decisions, etc., with regard to Tottenham is entirely inconsistent with presenting 500 years of family history without once mentioning Tottenham. Agricolae (talk) 00:47, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

• Lobsterthermidor, you said

  “This article was intended by its creator (myself) to be about the descent of the manor, i.e. the same format as in the Victoria County History series, under the heading "Manors". That's mainly (exclusively in the case of VCH) about genealogy.”

  No, that isn’t so. There is indeed a lot in a VCH article about the descent of land, but it is usually not as much as a tenth of the article, which also covers the history of the manor itself in as much detail as it can find. Someone has to pay for VCH articles to be written, and one which was *exclusively* about land ownership would not get funded or published. You say you intended the page to be about the descent of the manor, so perhaps you should have called it that? Descent of the manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire, would not be of great interest, but it would comply with WP:N. I agree with Agricolae that topographical articles should not be overwhelmed by genealogy. I do think the answer to the problem is more separation. Moonraker (talk) 05:45, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

There may be another problem. The Wiltshire VCH doesn't mention a Manor of Tottenham at all - I think this is where it would appear if it did. There are ten paragraphs about Tottenham park, Lodge and House, only one of which (exactly a tenth!) deals with the descent, with details broadly in line with those here. But no mention of it being a manor.  —SMALLJIM  11:11, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Tottenham House section

Main article: Tottenham House

This section all seems to be duplicated from the Tottenham House page, perhaps as part of a strange pattern of page moves. In any event, Tottenham House is a house, certainly an aspect of the manor, but as it has its own page I see no reason why it can’t be dealt with in one short paragraph, with a link as above. Moonraker (talk) 05:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I've renamed the article (per above there was no "Manor of"). Also rm all content but the original lead. Too much content on the house, I think, but at least it's not just a duplicate of other content now.  —SMALLJIM  13:00, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I am wondering whether the pruning has lost anything worth keeping, Smalljim. Lobsterthermidor could perhaps take some of the genealogical content elsewhere, and the best place for it is surely on pages like House of Seymour. Moonraker (talk) 15:29, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think anything significant has been lost, though this article could be plumped up a bit, I guess! This article duplicated chunks of Tottenham House and House of Seymour: as you said, probably by a former set of content moves (I haven't looked into what came first). We now have a short article on the estate, a longer one on the house and one on the descent of both, which, as far as I can tell, will be the same for other Seymour estates, too. So to deal with that descent on one article and link to it in any articles on constituent parts seems to be the right way to go. I'm not really happy with House of Seymour#Descent of the estate though - why it deals with other family names isn't explained. Maybe that should be another article, with details of and links to its constituent parts?  —SMALLJIM  16:55, 24 June 2020 (UTC).

Restored text, "the pruning" has lost everything worth keeping and left a useless stub. Sadly that action was possibly more about a long-term series of personal attacks against anything and everything I contribute to wikipedia by that person (look at his edit history, he spends most of his time deleting my text, on any topic). Genealogy of families in the sources/literature is always done "by seat"/ by residence. In fact this format was specifically agreed long ago after much heated talk - with this very person, who I have not communicated with since 2013 and that's how it's going to remain. As advised by a very wise admin (User:Kim Dent-Brown) in 2013, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive818, section 41(31 October 2013 - 9 November 2013): The consensus appears to be that you should both go away, act your age, leave one another alone and get on with editing. I have followed that advice to the letter. Old families like this have many branches, thay cannot all be dealt with in a single article - that's why they are split into separate branches. The article on the Seymour family is Byzantine and confused. Lobsterthermidor (talk) 13:59, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Lobsterthermidor, how about dealing with the relevant points detailed above instead of yet again trotting out your tired seven-year-old favourite quotation that is incomplete, misses the point and persuades no-one? We have moved on. Remember that it is discussion that is central to how WP works and straw man claims of harassment (e.g. [2]) carry no weight and cannot be used as a reason for reverting another's edits. If you truly believe that I am harassing you then you should take action to get me officially reprimanded.

Now - back to the point. Unless you can explain (1) why we should have an article on a Manor of Tottenham in Wiltshire when, as far as I can tell, no such named entity ever existed, (2) why we need to duplicate material from other articles here, and (3) why my other edits to the article, with explanatory summaries, were invalid, then I will undo your changes. Regarding (1), I admit that I'm not an expert on this topic and maybe there are reliable sources of which I am unaware: so I may be wrong and will gracefully acquiesce if so. I await your response - but not with bated breath, since I'd likely expire unfulfilled.  —SMALLJIM  23:43, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

@Moonraker, SilkTork, and Agricolae: I don't want to do the wrong thing here, so can you confirm that you agree that there is no RS for a Manor of Tottenham in Wiltshire (see above). If that is the case, then I propose that we don't just undo Lobsterthermidor's move from Estate of Tottenham, Wiltshire to which I previously moved this, and re-trim it to remove what's irrelevant and duplicated elsewhere, leaving it as a stub again. I now think this page should be converted into a redirect to Tottenham House, because this isn't a notable topic. Over at Talk:Tottenham House last November, SilkTork made the case that the subject area is adequately covered by the articles Tottenham House, Savernake Forest, Savernake Horn and House of Seymour (though the latter is rather a mess). And as Richard3120 pointed out in January above, the article as it was then (and is now) is basically the two existing articles Tottenham House and House of Seymour copied and pasted together.  —SMALLJIM  15:20, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I tried to find mention of a manor of Tottenham, Wilts, and found no mention of one, so it appears to be a figment of Wikipedia's imagination. Certainly none of the citations on this page that I looked at make any reference to such a manor (unsurprising, given that most of the content of this page is not about Tottenham at all). As such, there is no justification for a page of that name. Unless someone can come up with a source documenting its existence and history of it as a manor (and not just a passing reference, or reference to the House or park) then it should either be converted to a redirect or AfDed. Agricolae (talk) 17:37, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Smalljim, I agree with Agricolae, but I would suggest giving Lobsterthermidor a few days to check whether there is any genealogical content not at House of Seymour which could go there. I haven’t tried to collate. Lobsterthermidor, I do not agree that genealogy of families is always done "by seat", but if the House of Seymour article needed to be split into notable branches to avoid confusion, that could surely be done, so long as any such branches were indeed notable. Moonraker (talk) 18:58, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

It needn't even be split - sections will do the trick, and that way the individual branches need not be notable, only noteworthy. We just need to stay on the right side of WP:NOTGENEALOGY - avoid presenting family history just for the sake of presenting family history. Agricolae (talk) 19:02, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

• I am baffled and a little concerned. This is a recreation of [3]. How many times does this need to be sorted out? User:Lobsterthermidor, can you explain what is going on here? Why have you recreated that article? We looked into the possibility of creating an article on the manor of Tottenham and found that there was no such manor, so the conclusion was that an article on the house: Tottenham House, the family: House of Seymour, and the area: Savernake Forest would be appropriate. If there were a manor of Tottenham it would be appropriate to write an article on it, but it appears there is no such manor. So we have house, family, and location, and articles on those things. Absent an appropriate explanation, this article should be taken to AfD. SilkTork (talk) 02:20, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I'm happy to leave it another day in case Lobsterthermidor wants to comment, but I think after that, I should move this back to Estate of Tottenham, Wiltshire without a link from previous title (since we all agree that there is no "Manor of"), then convert it to a redirect to Tottenham House. With four interested editors agreeing, I don't think there's any need to get wider input via AfD and the sooner we get rid of the misleading "Manor of" title the better. Deleting the page would lose this useful discussion too, wouldn't it?  —SMALLJIM  11:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

"Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire" does not exist, so it is best if that term is deleted as its existence, as you say, is misleading (and already the term is starting to leak onto the internet, so the sooner we get rid of it the better). We can do as you say, though we are still left with a redirect. I'm not entirely sure that either the article or the redirect actually meet speedy criteria, so we either take the article to AfD or the redirect to Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion. This talkpage discussion can be moved to the talkpage of Tottenham House as a record of the discussion. I'm also unsure if we should keep "Estate of Tottenham, Wiltshire", as the only returns on a Google search are Wikipedia related.

There's also the question of what to do about User:Lobsterthermidor. I'd really like to get their explanation for what has happened here, as this is to my knowledge the second time that they have created a situation that had to be cleaned up, and this is simply a recreation of the situation at Tottenham House so it appears as though they have difficulty in learning from a situation. If there isn't an adequate explanation I feel we need to take the matter further and see if we can get a binding sanction on Lobsterthermidor to prevent them from creating more problems. SilkTork (talk) 14:51, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

OK thanks. I'll leave this a day for a possible reply from Lobsterthermidor (but I don't expect one due to my involvement). Then I'll move this back to Estate of ..., convert the article into a redirect, move this talk to Talk:Tottenham House and put both redirects up for WP:RfD. The only question is whether anything significant has been added here that isn't in one of the other articles - I don't think there is, but I'll check that too. Regarding Lobsterthermidor's actions, I'll post something on your talk page.  —SMALLJIM  16:30, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

@Agricolae, Lobsterthermidor, Moonraker, and SilkTork: per the last para in above transclusion, I've just nominated Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire and Estate of Tottenham, Wiltshire for deletion at WP:RFD. I also made a few minor changes to this article to match those on the other. There were, as far as I could see, no significant changes to make to House of Seymour.  —SMALLJIM  16:18, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Noted. SilkTork (talk) 16:34, 25 September 2020 (UTC)