John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton

John Dunning was born at Ashburton on 18 October 1731 and died at Exmouth on 18 August 1783. He was Solicitor General in the late 1760s and was made Baron Ashburton in 1782. William Crossing wrote that he was "born at Ashburton in 1731", and that he left "the manors of Spitchwick and Bag Tor" and about £180,000.

• Born: Ashburton, 18 October 1731
• Died: Exmouth, 18 August 1783
• Titles: Solicitor General; Baron Ashburton from 1782
• Dartmoor: Bought the rest of the 99-year Wotton lease of Spitchwick and Widecombe in about 1769 for £4,700; built the house at Spitchwick

Spitchwick

Dymond, in the Devonshire Association Transactions of 1876, and Sabine Baring-Gould in Devonshire Characters (1908) both record the purchase: "Dunning now purchased for £4700 the residue of a lease of ninety-nine years of the manors of Spitchwick and Widdecombe". A trial report in the Western Times of 1 August 1846 gives the same price and calls him "the celebrated Solicitor-General (afterwards Lord Ashburton)", with Samuel Wotton and Anna Maria Wotton parties to the conveyance. He built a mansion on or near the site of St Leonard's chapel, enclosed a large garden with huge blocks of granite and planted widely. When he married Elizabeth Baring in 1780 the register describes him as of Spitchwick Park, Devon.

His son Richard Barré Dunning, the second Lord Ashburton, died in 1823 without children and the title ended. Dunning's own widow, Elizabeth, Lady Ashburton, died in 1809. By the second Lord's will of 1820 the Spitchwick lease went first to his wife; the 1846 trial report says a Lady Ashburton died in 1835, and that Miss Margaret Baring, his mother's niece, then held it until the lease ran out in November 1845. The rest of the story is told on the Spitchwick Manor page.

Baring-Gould and Dymond also preserve stories of Dunning: Jack Lee's quip that Dunning could have manors in Devonshire but that it was a pity he did not bring his manners up to town, and his old servant John Hext, brought to London from Ashburton.