Milton Hall
Milton Hall is a manor house near Peterborough in the English county of Cambridgeshire . It is the largest private mansion in the county. As part of the Soke of Peterborough , it was formerly part of Northamptonshire . The house dates back to 1594, when it was the historic family seat of the FitzWilliam family , and is located in the middle of an extensive park, in which some original oaks from an earlier deer park from the Tudor period have survived.
estate
Milton Park's Gardens and Pleasure Grounds are 3 miles from Peterborough city center, off the A47, and extend for 14 acres south of the property. The park can be seen from both sides of the house. The house and property are in private hands and are not open to the public. However, Peterborough Milton Golf Club operates a course on the property and many holes can be played with a view of Milton Hall.
history
In the Middle Ages, Milton was a hamlet in the parish of Castor , now a nearby village. The manor of Milton was bought in 1502 by William Fitzwilliam , a wealthy merchant from London. The oldest parts of the manor house had his grandson Sir William Fitzwilliam built in the 1590s , who also began to create the park. In 1599 his son, the fourth William FitzWilliam , followed, who continued work on the manor house and possibly also had the landscaped park laid out. After his death in 1618 he was succeeded by his son, who later became the first Baron FitzWilliam , whose granddaughter Jane married Sir Christopher Wren . A floor plan from 1643 shows the property surrounded by a moat with courtyards, fish ponds, orchards and gardens.
The third Baron FitzWilliam was promoted to Viscount Milton and Earl FitzWilliam. Around 1690 he had the imposing stables added, commissioning William Talman and John Sturges as architects. John FitzWilliam , the second earl, succeeded him in 1719, had the stables expanded and continued his father's work. He had the park enlarged and the gardens south of the manor house redesigned so that they received enclosures that are still preserved today.
John's son William , the third earl, married Lady Nurse Wentworth , daughter of the first Marquess of Rockingham . In 1750, after unsuccessful projects by his grandfather and father, who commissioned architects Talman, Gibbs and Brettingham to modernize the mansion, he hired Lord Rockingham's architect Henry Flitcroft to start the modernization process and a new south facade was added. After the death of the third earl in 1756, the work of Sir William Chambers for his son William , the fourth earl, was completed in 1773. In 1782, however, the fourth Earl Wentworth inherited Woodhouse from his uncle, the second Lord Rockingham, and made this much larger house his family home. Milton Hall was only used for hunting by the family in winter. To make this easier, the fourth earl commissioned Humphry Repton (1752-1818) in 1791 to advise him on improvements to the park.
The fourth earl died in 1833 at the age of 85, leaving his estates to his only son, Lord Milton . Wentworth Woodhouse remained the main family seat and the fifth earl left Milton Hall to his younger son, George Wentworth FitzWilliam, in 1857 . George lived there until after 1912 and it is believed that he commissioned Harold Peto to design a garden within one of the 18th century fencing.
The mansion was used by the military in both world wars. During World War II , parts of the mansion and stables were used by the Czechoslovak Army and later by the Special Operations Executive , who trained on the property and in the woods before their mass parachute jump behind enemy lines in France . The latter was a measure in preparation for the Allied landing in Normandy ( Operation Jedburgh ). After the war, Lord and Lady FitzWilliam returned to Milton Hall and made the house their family home. The Earl died in 1979 and the Countess in 1995. They bequeathed the estate to Philip Naylor-Leyland, 4th Baronet .
William Thomas George, 10th Earl FitzWilliam, (May 28, 1904 - September 21, 1979) married Joyce Elizabeth Mary Langdale (1898 - June 1995), the eldest daughter and heiress of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Joseph Langdale , in April 1956 (1883–1950) from Houghton Hall (Yorkshire) , formerly the wife of Henry FitzAllan-Howard, 2nd Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent (1883–1962), from whom she was divorced in 1955. Joyce Langdale had two daughters from her first marriage. The younger was Elizabeth Anne Marie Gabrielle FitzAllan-Howard (January 26, 1934 - March 20, 1997), whose first marriage was Sir Vivyan Edward Naylor-Leyland, 3rd Baronet, (1924 - September 2, 1987) in 1952 . Her son and heir, Sir Philip Vivyan Naylor-Leyland, 4th Baronet , (born August 9, 1953) succeeded his father, grandmother and mother in 1987 as owners of the FitzWilliam family's estates. He married Lady Isabella Lambton in 1980 . Elizabeth-Anne's first marriage was dissolved in 1960 and her second marriage was Sir Stephen Hastings in 1975 (May 4, 1921 - January 2005).
Relation to Daphne du Maurier
In 1917, at the age of ten , Daphne du Maurier first visited Milton Hall with her mother and two sisters. Du Maurier's correspondence with the 10th Earl shows that the happiness and freedom she was allowed to enjoy during her childhood visits made a great impression on the future writer that she has never forgotten. She told Lord FitzWilliam that when she wrote the novel Rebecca 20 years later , Manderley's interiors were based on the memory of the rooms and the impression of a grand Milton Hall house during World War I. In a later letter to the last Lord FitzWilliam she called the mansion "dear old Milton".
Relation to Margaret Thatcher
During the Falklands War , on April 30, 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis stayed at Milton Hall overnight after visiting Sir Stephen Hastings' constituency in Bedfordshire . The following morning the Prime Minister received a phone call informing her that an RAF Vulcan had successfully bombed Port Stanley airfield after a flight several thousand kilometers north from Ascension Island .
Individual evidence
- ↑ This Milton Hall is not to be confused with the other Milton Hall just north of Cambridge in the village of Milton . Milton Hall near Cambridge is also an old mansion and now serves as an office building. Sir Clive Sinclair used it before the current tenant Pi Innovo (formerly Pi Shurlok , Pi Technology and Pi Research ).
- ^ Peterborough Milton Golf Club .
- ^ Milton Hall, Bretton History. Parks and Gardens UK, July 27, 2007, accessed July 19, 2017 .
- ^ A b Five Villages, Their People and Places . A history of the villages of Castor, Ailsworth, Marholm with Milton, Upton and Sutton. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
- ↑ Peterborough City Council records of Wentworth-Fitzwilliam family of Milton ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 4.2 " N , 0 ° 18 ′ 41.8" W.