I don’t expect anyone but me to be interested in this, but I have just read that my great-great-great grandfather’s house at Shortgrove in Newport burnt down in 1966 owing to an insurance scam involving the Kray brothers and that its Capability Brown landscape is about to be developed for housing (see attached).
I’ve occasionally tried to find out about Joseph Smith, who was – I knew – William Pitt’s private secretary and I have just discovered that he was Comptroller of the Coins and Mint (1786), Receiver-General of Stamp Duties (1792l and Secretary to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (1792): so, a big wheel. The article says that the house stayed in the family, but his only recorded son was Richard Snowdon Smith, a clergyman, whom I delighted to find lived to the age of 96, but not at Shortgrove so far as I’m aware.
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/the-demise-of-shortgrove-estate/
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Quite a fascinating article, though accessing it wasn’t straight forward. The family seemed to have inhabited it for many years.
Yes, I’m a bit baffled by that aspect of it and am trying to find out a bit more. I think his son lived in Guernsey – at least the one I know about. Charles