Much of the allure of Garth lies in the financial crisis that the young Richard Mytton brought upon himself in the building of his fantastical house. With expenditure amounting to not far off £100,000 on an estate rental of about £4,600 a year, a crash was inevitable. His first attempt to place his affairs in trust in June 1816 came to nothing when his trustee, his neighbour Edward Heyward of Crosswood declined to act. As the Treasury moved in to collect its debt, and to avoid his other creditors, the Mytton family fled to France, apparently to Boulogne, to avoid bankruptcy and the debtors' prison.Shropshire Record Office 3766/2/1/68 His affairs appear to have been managed by the his friend, Lord Clive, but, with the immediate crisis over and presumably in much straitened circumstances, he returned to England by 1818, when he was admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge. He gained a Bachelor of Laws Degree in 1820 and was ordained by the Bishop of Hereford, and was curate of Trelystan from 1820 to 1826. He left for India in February 1827 and in this year the Revd Richard Mytton, late of Garth, now of Calcutta, East Indies had to make over further lands to the commissioners of taxes in consideration of a large sum of money owed to Crown.Shropshire Record Office 3766/2/1/69-70). Mytton died in February 1828, and there is a memorial in Guilsfield Church describing him as chaplain of Barrackpore, Bengal and to the Governor General of India. At the time of his death on 23rd Feb 1828, the Revd Richard Mytton was on board the Palmyra, returning from India to England. The suggestion that Mytton made a fortune in India, which he used to fund the building of Garth is clearly a myth, and the house that he and his wife built at Garth owed no references to Mughal architecture. Rather, the house was in what Loudon himself described as his "Cathedral Style" of the "Gothic or pointed style", deriving from Loudon's enthusiasm for what is now referred to as the Perpendicular Gothic.Humphreys, (2020), 32-33.
