John Phillpotts

John Phillpotts (1743–1814) was a landowner and entrepreneur chiefly noted as the father of Henry Phillpotts, a controversial Bishop of Exeter. Biography John Phillpotts inherited the Sonke estate in Llangarron, Herefordshire, in 1769 when his father died. The estate had been in the ownership of the Phillpotts family since the mid sixteenth century. In 1770 Phillpotts moved to Bridgwater in Somerset where he acquired a brick and tile factory. The following year he married a local woman, Elizabeth Everard. This marriage ended prematurely with Elizabeth’s death just over twelve months later; no children had been born. In 1773, at the age of thirty, John married again. His new bride, Sibella Glover, was ten years younger than he and came from a well-off Somerset family. In 1782 Phillpotts sold his brick factory and moved with his family to Gloucester where he purchased the Bell Inn and secured for himself the office of Land Agent to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral. He was registered as a freeman of the City of Gloucester on 28 September 1782. He acquired this status "by fine", i.e. on payment of a fee, the standard fee at that time being twenty pounds. In 1791 Phillpotts cut himself off from his rural origins by selling the Sonke. He sold off the Bell Inn in the same year.