This original plan is dated 1864, although the ink-written label looks much more recent.

Besides the date there is ‘Dix’ in the catalogue designation (SHI 1864 DIX). This means that the surveyors were the well-known partnership of either Dixon & Hart or Dixon & Hindle. As early as the 1850s one Thomas Dixon is listed in trade directories as a land surveyor of Bridge Street, and later Rawson Place. I assume Hart and Hindle were his partners at various times.

The juxtaposition of Thackley Old Road and Leeds Road makes the position easy to locate in that part of Shipley once called Wood End, or seemingly Wood Hill. The Alma Inn is still present today although the whole area has been substantially redeveloped and several of the road names altered. The battle of the Alma had been fought in 1854 but it’s not safe to use this to date the building, which may have simply had its name change to fit in with contemporary events. But who was Admiral Duncombe?

John Wilmer Field was Lord of the Manor of Heaton & Shipley. He lacked a male heir but had two daughters Mary and Delia. In 1836 Mary married Lord Oxmantown (soon to be the Earl of Rosse), bringing her Heaton and Shipley estates to the marriage. Her sister Delia married Captain Arthur Duncombe MP (1806-1889) and the couple inherited her father’s other properties in 1837. They lived at Pocklington in East Yorkshire.

Delia wouldn’t die until 1873 but Victorian marriage arrangements would have considered that, even in her lifetime, any property became that of her male partner. I have read that the Duncombes inherited the East Yorkshire properties of John Wilmer Field, but evidently some of this property was in Shipley. I would guess it was managed by an agent although both Mary and Delia did occasionally visit their old childhood home of Heaton Hall.

Anyway, it would appear that both the future Earl of Rosse and the future Admiral Duncombe made wise choices when ‘in want of wives’; no fortune is so good that it cannot be usefully augmented!