Summary
Broom Hall had been a part of the properties of the Williams-Wynn family, whose junior branches were seated at Llanforda to its west. It had been sold to Rev. Turner Edwards (d. 1803), Vicar of Oswestry and Llansilin and also Mayor of Oswestry in 1793. After his death at the age of forty-four, his widow, Sarah née Basnett, was able to occupy the house for a year, whereafter it was to be sold. The purchaser appears to have been the succeeding Vicar of Oswestry, the Rev. Daniel Griffiths, who had married Martha, daughter of Harcourt Aubrey, son of Herbert Aubrey of Clehonger in Herefordshire. The Rev. Griffiths had died prior to 1813 at which date his widow married Henry Pinson Tozer (d. 1848) who assumed his wife’s maiden name of Aubrey. Tozer had come to Oswestry in 1811 in charge of French Prisoners of War and became one of the first permanent Magistrates for the Borough and Mayor of the town in 1822. He died at Broom Hall in 1848 and his widow, Mary, remained in residence until her death in 1873.
The property was then purchased by Edward Williams, the son of Edward Williams of Lloran House, Oswestry, a partner in the Oswestry legal firm of Longueville, Williams and Jones. In 1891 Williams changed his name to Edward Williams-Vaughan since he proved to be the eventual beneficiary of the will of the late Mrs Dymock of Penley Hall, Flintshire, whose intended heir – an adopted son named Edwin James Vaughan – had died just days after her.
Williams-Vaughan died in 1901, at the age of sixty-two, when he was described as the owner of considerable property at Llansilin. The contents of Broom Hall, afterwards offered for sale by Whitfield & Sons auctioneers, included a number of bardic medals and a George III silver-covered tankard which bore an inscription commemorating Ellesmere Races 1825.
By 1908 Broom Hall was the residence of Captain Joseph Edward Radcliffe (b. 1858) when his father, Sir Joseph Pickford Radcliffe Bt of Rudding Park, Yorkshire, died, leaving him the family’s estates and baronetcy. The new baronet had already arranged to leave Broom Hall when his father’s death was announced.
The house was demolished in 1980, having been used by the Ministry of Defence and, latterly, converted to three flats. It was said, at the time, to have become unsafe.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 136 - 137Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021