John Headon Stanbury (6 May 1835 – 20 May 1907) was an English hotelier, property developer, and Exeter businessman. Stanbury was born on 6 May 1835 in Barnstaple, Devon to Elizabeth Headon and John Stanbury, a yeoman and auctioneer.^[1]

Stanbury owned an estate at Thrushelton.^[2][3] He was a donor of the United Devon Association,^[4] the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.^[5] He was also a member of the Devon County Agricultural Association^[6] and the Royal Bath and West of England Society.^[7]

Career

J. Headon Stanbury, proprietor of The Grand Hotel, Plymouth in the ABC Hotel Guide, 1901–2

In 1876, Stanbury bought the Star & Garter, a now demolished pub in Brentford.^[8][9] In 1879, he purchased the Royal Clarence Hotel (now thought to be the second oldest hotel in England).^[10][11]

Stanbury was an assentor in the Exeter City Council elections of 1889 and 1892.^[12][13] He was also a member of the Exeter Theatre Company:^[14] in the 1890s, he served first as its vice-chairman^[15] and then as its chairman.^[16]

On 7 February 1890, Stanbury formed The Heavitree Brewery Limited,^[17] a company which had emerged from the Heavitree Brewery PLC, one of the oldest pub companies in the south west, founded in 1790. On 19 November 1892, the company purchased The Finch Eagle Brewery in Exeter, followed by the neighbouring Windsor Brewery in North Street, Heavitree on 9th January 1899.^[18]

In 1893, Stanbury gave evidence before the High Court of Justice (with Sir Francis Jeune presiding) at the hearing of Lady Alice Elizabeth Gooch's suit for judicial separation from her husband, Sir Alfred Sherlock Gooch, 9th Baronet.^[19] He bore witness that Lady Gooch had visited the Royal Clarence Hotel in 1884 with a man claiming to be her brother (possibly Capt. George Henry Eden, with whom it was claimed she was having an affair).^[20][21]

In 1895, Stanbury bought the Grand Hotel at Plymouth, soon after his purchase of the Seymour Hotel in Totnes and the Western Counties Hotel in Paddington.^[22] In 1898, he sold the Half-Moon Hotel in Exeter.^[23][24][25]

In 1899, Stanbury purchased Membland, an historic estate in Devon, from Edward Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke, senior partner of Barings Bank, who rebuilt the mansion house known as Membland Hall.^[26] Stanbury planned to develop the area that bordered the River Yealm, and in 1900, sold it to William Cresswell Gray, a shipbuilder from Hartlepool, at which point the estate included the Hall and 2720 acres of land.^[27][28]

Stanbury died on 20 May 1907 in Exeter. His will was proved on 6 July, at which point his estate was reportedly worth some £44,452 (around £6,841,595 in 2023).^[29][30] The Royal Clarence Hotel passed to his son-in-law (John Bailey Rowe Orchard) and then to his son (John Geoffrey Rowe Orchard).^[31] J. H. Stanbury & Co., one of his corporations, continued to make donations after his death, including to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.^[32]

References