Pickwell Manor, Devon

William's eldest son, Samuel, who succeeded his
grandfather in 1727 at the age of 22, was probably the first member of the family
to desert the now old-fashioned house. He is described as being ‘of
Smallacombe’ and that very charming house next to Wortham, now a
farmhouse, with its early 18th-century brick front and outbuildings, probably
owes its present appearance to him.

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Wortham Manor History Album

Samuel Harris and his wife, Florence, had only two daughters, Dorothy and
Mary. Because he had no sons, most of his estates, being entailed on the male
line, were inherited by his brother, another John Harris, who had already
inherited the house at Pickwell, near Barnstaple, for which town he was MP.
John married Dorothy Herbert, sister of Henry, 1st Earl of Powis, and left an only
surviving daughter, Miss Honor Harris of Pickwell, on whose behalf the entail
appears to have been broken, perhaps for lack of male heirs, since she seems to
have inherited all her father's estates, including Wortham. According to two
early 19th-century histories of Devon, Lysons' and the Supplement to Risdon's
Survey, on her death in 1790, the old Harris, or perhaps even Dinham, estates in
Cornwall went to a Harris cousin, while she left Pickwell and the other Devon
properties to a Mrs Middleditch.

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Tenants and later owners

There is no mention that Mrs Middleditch, who inherited Honor Harris's Devon
estates in 1790, was a Harris cousin, nor indeed that she was any relation at all.
For the first time since the 15th century, in fact, Wortham Manor no longer
belonged to a descendant of William de Wortham. The connection was broken
still further when shortly afterwards it was put up for sale. It was bought by a Mr
Cook, who sold it in about 1820 to William Rayer Esq, of Holcombe Court at the
other end of Devon.