Sir George Ivison Tapps, 1st Baronet (5 January 1753 – 15 March 1835) was a British landowner and developer involved in the founding of Bournemouth. Tapps inherited some of the estates, including Hinton Admiral, which formerly belonged to Sir Peter Mews of Hinton Admiral, from his cousin, Joseph Jarvis Clerke, when the latter died without issue in 1778. In so doing he became

Lord of the Manor Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...

s of

Hinton Admiral Hinton Admiral is the estate and ancestral home of the Tapps-Gervis-Meyrick family and located in the settlement of Hinton, near Bransgore in Hampshire, England. It is a Grade I Listed building. The walled gardens to the north of the house and ...

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...

and Westover. He was also appointed

High Sheriff of Hampshire This is a list of High Sheriffs of Hampshire. This title was often given as High Sheriff of the County of Southampton until 1959. List of High Sheriffs *1070–1096: Hugh de Port "Domesday Book Online" *1105: Henry de Port (son of Hugh) *1129: W ...

in 1793. Tapps was widely known as a "wilful and hard living confidant" of the Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent), the future King

George IV George IV (George Augustus Frederick; 12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from the death of his father, King George III, on 29 January 1820, until his own death ten y ...

. In the wake of the Christchurch Inclosure Act 1802, Tapps purchased in what is now the borough of Bournemouth for £1,050 (1,000 guineas). As lord of the manor he was also trustee for the areas set aside as

common land Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person who has a ...

, for cottage dwellers to dig for turf and suchlike. In 1809 he opened a public house called The Tapps Arms (later renamed The Tregonwell Arms). It stood where the current Post Office Road meets Old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth. In 1810 Tapps sold on the west bank of the Bourne Stream to

Lewis Tregonwell Lewis Dymoke Grosvenor Tregonwell ( ; 1758–1832) was a captain in the Dorset Yeomanry and a historic figure in the early development of what is now Bournemouth. Early life Born 1758 in Anderson, Dorset, Tregonwell lived at Cranborne Lodge as ...

for £179 11s. In 1834 Tapps obtained a loan of £40,000 from the Earl of Arran and John Augustus Fuller, into whose family his son had married, on the mortgage of the Tapps-Gervis estate at

near Christchurch. With this money he intended to develop his estates on the east bank of the Bourne Stream. Building for this project finally began in 1837 under the direction of his son, as Tapps died in 1835.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tapps, George Baronets in the Baronetage of Great Britain High Sheriffs of Hampshire 1753 births 1835 deaths