Charles Barron Esq. had been one of the two churchwardens in the parish continuously for ten years. Also maintaining a residence in London, at Pall Mall, he was the owner of Aldershot Place, an Italianate mansion he had built in Aldershot Park in 1842. Although not a large estate by national standards, at 212 acres in extent, his freehold property was the largest cultivated part of the parish. With 76 acres of woodland, it was managed by a bailiff and keeper.
He had been gifted ownership of Aldershot Park, and that of the adjacent Grange Farm at Tongham, in 1826 from his mother who had inherited it from his stepfather Stephen Boyce, his mother’s second husband.
Charles and Cassandra Golsworthy were married on 6 Feb 1813 at Saint Martin In The Fields, Westminster. Their second son was baptised as Fenwick Boyce in 1818.
The elder son, Charles Stephen Barron, had held the copyhold of a cottage and land from 1839, up by Crooksbury Common on the south side of the Hog’s Back. That had all meant that Charles Barron had been listed as an elector in the Polling District for Farnham in 1834, although giving his address then as Pall Mall, London. Charles’ younger son Fenwick had given Aldershot Place as his address when he had obtained a commission in the 4th Light Dragoons by purchase in 1840.
Charles the Younger, as he had been sometimes been called, had inherited and run his father’s property business and also had extensive experience in the liquour trade. That included his ownership properties all across London. There are entries in the Westminster Rate Books for a Charles Barron living in Pall Mall, St James Piccadilly from 1841 until 1854. The properties included that of the Old Red Lion in Islington, an establishment dating as far back as the time of Agincourt in 1415 with a greater claim to antiquity than almost any other hostelry in London.
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- The history of the Old Red Lion includes several stories involving Charles Barron and his father.
None of that detail about Charles Barron was required, however, on the Census form in 1851: it just recorded that he was a ‘Landed Proprietor’.
Having just stepped down from the position of Chair of the Vestry in favour of Captain Newcome, Barron. At age 62, he was likely looking forward to peaceful retirement.