1890s
Mr Shenton
After Mr Marshall's death the Red House passed into the hands of another ironmaster, named James Shenton.
In the 1891 Census he is shown as an Iron Manufacturer aged 54 with a wife Elizabeth, aged 52 and three children. One remarkable alteration he made to the place was to dismantle the gas lamps in the grounds. Mr Marshall had always considered these a safeguard for the house; and it seems in this he was right, for not long after Mr Shenton took over the estate a carefully planned robbery was carried out there.
It appears it was an Autumn evening and Mr Shenton was entertaining a large party of guests. A maid in the house had her suspicions aroused upon finding an upstairs door locked. The alarm was spread, and the staff and guests began a search. It was recorded there was much commotion, and the servants, taking short cuts across the lawns to the house, found themselves continually tripped up by wires which had been stretched from tree to tree. The absence of lighting made a search or chase difficult, and the intruders got away with a useful haul, said to be in the region of £1,000.
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