Place Name
The Hampshire estate of Southwick has been the country seat of the Thistlewayte family – who were lessees of Paddington manor renting it from the Bishop of London. Southwick Priory was founded by Augustinian monks from Portchester in the mid-12thCentury but in 1539 it was seized by Henry VIII , during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the priory and its assets sold to John Whyte. It passed down through the family eventually coming into the hands of Robert Thistlewayte who in 1778 married Selina Burwood who had inherited half her father’s interests in the Paddington estate. When the property, then on the edge of the city, was developed around the close of the 18thCentury several streets were named after the places on the 7,500 acres of the Southwick and Roche Court estates. The Hampshire estates are still in the hands of the Thistlewayte-family. In 1943 Lt Col Eveyln Thistlethwayte left them to his nephew, Hugh Borthwick, and when he died in 1950 they were run by his widow, Eva. When she passed away, aged 96, in 1988 she left it to a distant relative Robin Thistlewayte, who for a while least was on The Sunday Times Rich List. Southwick means the south dairy farm.
