Sir George Ivison Tapps, 1st Baronet (5 January 1753 – 15 March 1835) was a British landowner and developer involved in the founding of

Bournemouth Bournemouth ( ) is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority area, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. At the 2021 census, the built-up area had a population of 196,455, making it the largest ...

. 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 and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

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 In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structur ...

Christchurch Christchurch (; ) is the largest city in the South Island and the List of cities in New Zealand, second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand. Christchurch has an urban population of , and a metropolitan population of over hal ...

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 11th and 12th centuries 13th century 14th century 15th century 16th century 17th ...

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 29 January 1820 until his death in 1830. At the time of his accession to the throne, h ...

. In the wake of the Christchurch Inclosure Act 1802 (

42 Geo. 3 This is a complete list of acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the year 1801. Note that the first parliament of the United Kingdom was held in 1801; parliaments between 1707 and 1800 were either parliaments of Great Britain or of ...

. c. ''43'' ), 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 collective land (sometimes only open to those whose nation governs the land) in which all 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 ...

, 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 in 1758 in Anderson, Dorset, Tregonwell lived at Cranborne Lodge ...

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