Talk:Tottenham House

Tottenham House
I looked up Tottenham House to discover more about the house, and was redirected to Tottenham, Wiltshire, a redirect done by Lobsterthermidor in November 2015 after adding Descent of the estate and Sturmy's Horn / Savernake Horn sections. I left a message for Lobsterthermindor five days ago saying that I thought I could see what they were doing - that they had some information which in some way related to the house, and felt it would be best placed there, which then necessitated changing the name (and the scope) of the original article. However, I'm not seeing how the material sits comfortably in the article, especially as it obscures the original subject matter, and makes finding out information about the house somewhat confusing. It looks to me that almost all of the material added belongs elsewhere, perhaps in a new article. A search of sources does confirm that Tottenham House is the notable subject. I am unsure if the estate has quite enough notability for a stand-alone article; however, the Seymour family does have notability, and indeed we do have an article on that family - Seymour family, to which the bulk of the material could be moved. The Savernake Horn material could possibly be moved to a stand-alone article as there are a few sources which describe it in detail. Lobsterthermindor has been inactive since 7 November, so there's been no response yet.

Looking at the situation, my suggestion would be to create a Savernake Horn article and move the Sturmy's Horn / Savernake Horn there; merge the Seymour family details to the Seymour family article, and to restore Tottenham, Wiltshire to Tottenham House, keeping all relevant material from the existing article. I will notify significant contributors. SilkTork (talk) 13:15, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I would certainly agree that Tottenham House has sufficient notability to more than merit its own article. Many notable families also had/have notable houses but, as an extreme example, we wouldn't redirect Windsor Castle, Sandringham House, Buckingham Palace, and Balmoral Castle into the Elizabeth II, or House of Windsor articles, or into the Windsor, Berkshire, Sandringham, Norfolk, etc. etc. articles. KJP1 (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I have created a Tottenham House section, extracting the relevant house history from the family history ("Descent of the estate" section). My feeling is that the "Descent of the estate" and "Sturmy's Horn / Savernake Horn" sections can now be moved to other articles, and the article's title restored to Tottenham House. SilkTork (talk) 14:00, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I have built up the lead per WP:Lead. SilkTork (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * This is what the article would look like with the Seymour family details removed: . SilkTork (talk) 16:38, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * And there is scope to expand it further - there could be a section just on Capability Brown's work in the garden. SilkTork (talk) 16:39, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I have restored the article and the title. I have moved the material on the Seymour family into the Seymour family article. I have temporarily moved the material on Savernake Horn to User:SilkTork/Chicha until I put in the appropriate sources, after which I will move it into main space. SilkTork (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
 * What have you done to this page? It was informative and full of information about the house and estate’s history. It now appears a shadow of its former self. This looks like needless meddling to me. Giano    (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The information about the house remains. Only unrelated information has been removed, such as Savernake Horn. All material related to the house remains. SilkTork (talk) 17:47, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * There seems a lot more history in this version. Giano    (talk) 19:13, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * There's a lot more words in that version, Giano, but not more history of the house. The additional words are, as Agricolae says below, more about family history. SilkTork (talk) 23:46, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * As an outside observer, I see you two talking cross-purposes. A page about Tottenham House should not have the same content as a page about the property of Tottenham, Wiltshire.  I won't weigh in on whether one, the other, or both is the best way to handle this, but you are unlikely to achieve consensus when you can't even agree on what you are writing about.  (That being said, I will say that the trend, particularly by one prolific editor of this and other pages, of using articles on properties as a COATRACK to incorporate massive amounts of family history not directly relevant to the ownership of the property is not an approach I am fond of - whichever the page is about, property or house, it had way too much peripheral family history.) Agricolae (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * What I saw was an article on an interesting house (Tottenham House) that had been renamed and refocused, and so had been lost beneath the weight of barely related material on two families, along with some again barely related material on the Savernake Horn (Tottenham, Wiltshire). I wondered if an article on the Tottenham Estate could be written to run alongside this article on Tottenham House, and that may still be possible. Having looked up "Tottenham estate" and "Tottenham house", and found the house to be firmly notable, and having raised the issue with several people, decided the best approach was to restore the focus to the house. The article on the house had been on Wikipedia since 2007 so had established links related to the house (such as the one from In Rainbows which brought me here), so it seemed, given the circumstances, appropriate to restore that. I agree that there are two topics here, and it is still possible to write an article on the estate, and if anyone wished to do so, the material is there in the history. SilkTork (talk) 23:46, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * An article on the estate would have considerable overlap with Savernake Forest. --Wire723 (talk) 14:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Ah yes. I see that. Tottenham House was a part of the estate, which is Savernake Forest. Thanks for that. Is there actually a Tottenham estate? I had difficulty finding information on a "Tottenham estate" because results kept giving me things such as Glenfarne and Broadwater Farm. The results I had which related to Tottenham House, refer to a "Tottenham Park estate", though I'm not entirely sure of the use of the word "estate" in referring to Tottenham Park, which appears to be the name of the garden around the house, rather than the entirety of the land belonging to the Seymour family. SilkTork (talk) 17:13, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

New article: Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire
Hi, I'm back to add my penny's worth. This appears to be the solution: One article on the bricks and mortar, as now exists here, another for a more detailed history of the occupants, basically descent of the manor, I've done dozens and dozens of them. I don't meet many people just interested in bricks and mortar, as houses usually acquire their fame and interest from the deeds of their illustrious occupants, but we'll strip all that out if required for any dry-as-a-bone Saab-driving architect readers. If you visit any country house open to the public the visitor's guide-book is mostly about the past occupants, their portraits, marriages, etc., not about the building.

The idea of an article on the Seymour family is a non-starter, the family is too large, diversified and far too complex, as is often the case with these large and historic estates. That family needs to be dealt with branch by branch, by estate/residence. That is how genealogists generally deal with families: by estate. That's what I was doing here. I will go ahead and move the previous text on the descent of the manor, etc to a new article Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire, with an approriate "main article" tag in this one. By the way I think the new article on the Horn is excellent and very helpful. Thanks to SilkTork.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:46, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Relevant discussion from Talk:Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire
I moved the talk to a subpage here and have transcluded the content below for now, for ease of reference. Explanations are at the end. —S MALL JIM   15:51, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

per the last para in above transclusion, I've just nominated Manor of Tottenham, Wiltshire and Estate of Tottenham, Wiltshire for deletion at WP:RFD. I also made a few minor changes to this article to match those on the other. There were, as far as I could see, no significant changes to make to House of Seymour. —S MALL JIM   16:18, 25 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Noted. SilkTork (talk) 16:34, 25 September 2020 (UTC)