In 1870 William Vilett Rolleston inherited an estate worth an estimated £20,000 (today approximately £2.3 million). By 1874 he was declared bankrupt and you have to ask the question – where did it all go wrong? The Vilett presence in Swindon is believed to date back to the sixteenth century when the family were among those who snapped up local properties during that great land dispersal event at the dissolution of the monasteries. But where did William's Vilett connection come from? The eldest son of George and Mary Augusta Rolleston, William Vilett Rolleston was born in Leamington Priors, Warwickshire in 1842. William's father George was the child of Samuel Rolleston and his first wife Elizabeth Herring. In 1827 the widowed Samuel married Harriet Vilett but there were no children from this second marriage. When Harriet died in 1870 William Vilett Rolleston inherited the estate left to her by her brother Thomas Vilett. What became known thereafter as the Rolleston...