Inheritance and Oblivion on Urra Moor

On the bleak expanse of Urra Moor, a lone boundary stone stands sentinel over the heather. Winter has tried to lay its white shroud over the name FOULIS, once lord of the manor at Ingleby, but hasn’t quite succeded. It reads like a quiet obituary in stone, the record of a family slipping out of the world under a cold hand of law.

The extinction began in 1845 with the death of Sir William Foulis, his estate passing to his daughter Mary. As the “FOULIS” face of the stone dulls and softens, the southern side stays clear and hard: FEVERSHAM 1848. The neighbour wasted no time. While one house mourned, another measured fields and tightened his grip on Bilsdale. The world carried on, brisk as a market day, long before the accounts were settled¹‘Ingleby Manor’. 2024. Inglebymanor.co.uk <https://www.inglebymanor.co.uk/history-of-ingleby-manor> [accessed 16 August 2024].

The end came in 1850. By coverture, Mary Foulis’s marriage to Lord de Lisle and Dudley folded her legal self into her husband’s shadow²‘Ingleby Manor and Greenhow Park | Yorkshire Gardens Trust’. 2022. Yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk <https://www.yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk/index.php/research/sites/ingleby-manor-and-greenhow-park> [accessed 16 August 2024]. A bitter joke of history. A name that endured civil war and steel met its finish not by battle, but by paperwork³Ord, John Walker. The History and Antiquities of Cleveland. London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1846. [Ord records the Foulis lineage (p. 591) and their Civil War service (p. 435) at the family’s historical precipice, just prior to the 1850 extinction]..

After that, the name lingered only as an echo. Her husband briefly took “Foulis” by Royal Warrant to secure the inheritance, then cast it off once she died⁴‘Mary (Foulis) Sidney (1826-1891) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree’. 2025. Wikitree.com <https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Foulis-62> [accessed 14 February 2026]. The name served its turn, like a borrowed key returned without thanks.

Generations labour to build a legacy; a change in inheritance law can sweep it away before the dust settles. The moor abides. The names upon it do not.

• 1
  ‘Ingleby Manor’. 2024. Inglebymanor.co.uk <https://www.inglebymanor.co.uk/history-of-ingleby-manor> [accessed 16 August 2024]
• 2
  ‘Ingleby Manor and Greenhow Park | Yorkshire Gardens Trust’. 2022. Yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk <https://www.yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk/index.php/research/sites/ingleby-manor-and-greenhow-park> [accessed 16 August 2024]
• 3
  Ord, John Walker. The History and Antiquities of Cleveland. London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1846. [Ord records the Foulis lineage (p. 591) and their Civil War service (p. 435) at the family’s historical precipice, just prior to the 1850 extinction].
• 4
  ‘Mary (Foulis) Sidney (1826-1891) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree’. 2025. Wikitree.com <https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Foulis-62> [accessed 14 February 2026]