Sir John William de la Pole, 6th Baronet of Shute in the parish of Colyton, Devon, was a Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of West Looe. In 1791 he published, under the title Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, the researches on the history and genealogy of Devonshire made by his ancestor the antiquary Sir William Pole, which he did not publish in his lifetime and which were enlarged by his son Sir John Pole, 1st Baronet, but which were partly destroyed during the Civil War at Colcombe Castle.
Origins
He was born on 26 June 1757, the son of Sir John Pole, 5th Baronet by his first wife Elizabeth Mills, daughter and co-heiress of John Mills, a banker and planter of St. Kitts, West Indies and Woodford, Essex. Thus he lost both his parents when a small infant, his mother when he was aged 1 and his 27-year-old father at the age of 3. He assumed the surname of de la Pole by royal sign manual.
Career
He was educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and appointed High Sheriff of Devon for 1782. He represented the constituency of West Looe in Parliament from 1790 to 1796. He was listed as hostile to the repeal of the Test Act in 1791.
Pole's greatest legacy apart from the collation and publication of the historical researches of his ancestor Sir William Pole, is his building between 1787 and 1789 of New Shute House, an Adam style late Palladian country house near the mediaeval and Tudor Old Shute House, Colyton, Devon, purchased by his ancestor William Pole. It was designed and built by Thomas Parlby, his father-in-law's partner in their civil engineering business. The house remained the principal seat of the family until the death in 1926 of the unmarried and childless Sir Frederick Arundel de la Pole, 11th Baronet, great-grandson of the builder. He bequeathed the entire Shute Estate to his distant young cousin Sir John Carew-Pole of Antony House in Cornwall, descended from Carolus Pole, the younger brother of the 4th Baronet. In 1926 to meet the heavy death duties the house was let and its contents were sold at auction. It became a girls' school between 1933 and 1974, and was then turned together with its stables and wings into eight separate apartments. The main block, converted into two vertically divided residences is in 2012 again a single residence. old Shute House was retained by Sir John Carew-Pole until 1955 when he gave it to the National Trust on the proviso that members of his wider family would remain tenants, which they did until 2008.
Marriage
He married Anne Templer the daughter of James I Templer of Stover House, Teigngrace, Devon, a self-made magnate who had made his fortune building dockyards under government contracts. Her mother was Mary Parlby, the sister of Thomas Parlby of Stone Hall, Stonehouse, in Plymouth, business partner of James Templer. The famous and immensely valuable portrait of Anne Templer painted by George Romney is now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Templer family
, father of Anne, was a self-made magnate. He was born in Exeter of a humble family, the son of Thomas Templer a brazier. He was orphaned young, whereupon his elder brother apprenticed him to John Bickley, a carpenter or architect of Exeter. He broke his indenture and set off for India where he made a fortune, either from government building contracts or possibly from dealing in silver bullion, before returning to England aged 23. He settled at Rotherhithe, Kent, where he obtained a government contract to re-build the dockyard with his partners John Line and Thomas Parlby. He married Mary Parlby, the sister of his business partner and daughter of John Parlby of Chatham, Kent. He obtained with his partners in about 1760 the contract to rebuild Plymouth docks, for which he used granite from Haytor, and moved to Devon. In 1763 he obtained a grant of arms from the College of Arms, and in 1765 purchased the manor of Teignrace and Stover Lodge, which in 1780 he re-built in grander form on a nearby site. He died in 1782 and is commemorated by a monument in Teignrace Church, rebuilt in 1786 by his sons. Pevsner thought highly of this family stating: "The Templers were people of taste, as is clear from the building and their monuments". His son James Templer built the Stover Canal in 1792 to help ship clay along the Teign Estuary from the Bovey Basin to the port of Teignmouth. Coal, manure and agricultural produce was also freighted along the canal. Granite from Hay Tor was used to build Stover House which was completed by 1792. By 1820 a granite tramway, which had rails cut from granite, was opened connecting the granite quarries of Haytor to the canal. This enabled large quantities of granite to be transported for major works like the new London Bridge which opened in 1825. George Templer, son of James Templer and brother of Rev. John Templer, rector of Teigngrace, was the father of Sophia-Anne Templer, wife of her first cousin Sir William Templer-Pole, 7th Baronet. George Templer however overspent his resources and was forced to sell Stover House, Stover Canal, the Haytor Granite Tramway and most of the rest of the family's considerable estates to Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset, in 1829, in whose family it remained until 1921. In 1932 it became the Stover Girls' School, which occupies it still in 2012.
Monument to wife
The mural monument to Lady Anne Pole , wife of Sir John de la Pole, in Shute Church is inscribed as follows:
A 1793 painting by Thomas Beach of these three children in a group exists at Antony House, Cornwall.
Death and burial
He died on 30 November 1799. His will directed that he should not be removed from his house till the clearest and most unequivocal signs of death appear, to be ascertained by six persons.
Monument in Shute Church
A marble mural monument in his memory exists in Shute Church, signed "P.Rouw sculp. London", by Peter Rouw. It consists of an inscribed tablet flanked on either side by a fasces supporting an entablature on top of which, above his coat of arms, is a classical oil-lamp with flame:
