Sir John de la Pole, 6th Baronet

Sir John William de la Pole, 6th Baronet (26 June 1757 – 30 November 1799) of Shute in the parish of Colyton, Devon, was a Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of West Looe. In 1791 he published, under the title Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, the researches on the history and genealogy of Devonshire made by his ancestor the antiquary Sir William Pole (d.1635), which he did not publish in his lifetime and which were enlarged by his son Sir John Pole, 1st Baronet, but which were partly destroyed during the Civil War at Colcombe Castle.

He was born on 26 June 1757, the son of Sir John Pole, 5th Baronet (c.1733–1760) by his first wife Elizabeth Mills (d.1758), daughter and co-heiress of John Mills, a banker and planter of St. Kitts, West Indies and Woodford, Essex. Thus he lost both his parents when a small infant, his mother when he was aged 1 and his 27-year-old father at the age of 3. He assumed the surname of de la Pole by royal sign manual.

He was educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and appointed High Sheriff of Devon for 1782. He represented the constituency of West Looe in Parliament from 1790 to 1796. He was listed as hostile to the repeal of the Test Act in 1791.

Pole's greatest legacy apart from the collation and publication of the historical researches of his ancestor Sir William Pole (d.1635), is his building between 1787 and 1789 of New Shute House, an Adam style late Palladian country house near the mediaeval and Tudor Old Shute House, Colyton, Devon, purchased by his ancestor William Pole (1515–1587). It was designed and built by Thomas Parlby, his father-in-law's partner in their civil engineering business. The house remained the principal seat of the family until the death in 1926 of the unmarried and childless Sir Frederick Arundel de la Pole, 11th Baronet (1850–1926), great-grandson of the builder. He bequeathed the entire Shute Estate to his distant young cousin Sir John Carew-Pole of Antony House in Cornwall, descended from Carolus Pole, the younger brother of the 4th Baronet. In 1926 to meet the heavy death duties the house was let and its contents were sold at auction. It became a girls' school between 1933 and 1974, and was then turned together with its stables and wings into eight separate apartments. The main block, converted into two vertically divided residences is in 2012 again a single residence. old Shute House was retained by Sir John Carew-Pole until 1955 when he gave it to the National Trust on the proviso that members of his wider family would remain tenants, which they did until 2008.

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