Littlecote House
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Littlecote House is a large Elizabethan country house and estate in the civil parishes of Ramsbury and Chilton Foliat in the English county of Wiltshire. The estate includes 34 hectares of historic parklands and gardens, including a magnificent walled garden from the 17th and 18th centuries. In its grounds is Littlecote Roman Villa.
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[edit] History
The first Littlecote House was built during the 13th and 14th centuries. It was inhabited by the de Calstone family from around 1290. When William Darrell married Elizabeth de Calstone he inherited the house, around 1415; and his family went on to build the present brick mansion in the early 16th century. Henry VIII, who courted Jane Seymour at the house; she was related to the Darrells. Charles II and William of Orange also stayed there, William on his march from Torbay to London in the Glorious Revolution.
Sir John Popham bought the reversion of Littlecote, and succeeded to it in 1589; Popham's descendants, Pophams and (from 1804) Leybourne-Pophams, retained it until 1929, when the house was purchased by Sir Ernest Salter Wills. Seton Wills sold the estate to the entrepreneur Peter de Savary in 1985. In 1996, Warner Holidays acquired the house and estate and now operate it as a country house hotel and resort.
[edit] Wild William Darrell
The last of the Darrell owners is connected with several scandals and the house's resident ghost story. William Darrell's father had left the house to his mistress, but Darrell was able to recover it when he came of age in 1560. He spent lavishly, left his debts unpaid, and went to law with most of his neighbors; acquiring enemies in the process. Sir John Popham was his relative and lawyer.
He had an affair with the wife of Sir Walter Hungerford, his neighbor; when Sir Walter sued for divorce, she was acquitted, and Sir Walter sent to prison. Some twelve years later, Mother Barnes, of Great Shefford, recalled being brought secretly to the childbed of a lady, with a gentleman standing by who commanded her to save the life of the mother, but who (as soon as the child was born) threw it into the fire. Barnes did not name or indicate either Darrell or Littlecote, but his enemies quickly ascribed this murder to him.
Darrell's financial troubles increased, and he mortgaged Littlecote, first to Sir Thomas Bromley, and then to Popham. He moved to London; but died in 1589, of a riding accident while visiting Littlecote. Legend has it that the ghost of the child appeared to him. Darrell is said to haunt the site of his death (as well as the church as Ramsbury), two miles away).
Rumor managed to increase this scandal, suggesting that the sale of the estate was fictitious (to avoid confiscation if Darrell was ever convicted), and that Popham kept Littlecote from Darrell's heirs (which he did not have). John Aubrey tells that Littlecote was a bribe to Popham as his judge for acquittal, which is impossible: Darrell was not charged or tried, and Popham was not yet a judge. Nevertheless this story was borrowed by Sir Walter Scott, in Rokeby, and by Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities. [1]
[edit] Location
Littlecote House is located on the banks of the River Kennet between the villages of Ramsbury and Chilton Foliat and about two miles north of the small Berkshire town of Hungerford. It is also in the heart of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Position: grid reference SU303703
Nearby towns and cities: Hungerford, Marlborough, Newbury, Swindon
Nearby villages: Ramsbury, Chilton Foliat
Nearby places of interest: Crofton Pumping Station, Wilton Windmill
[edit] Note
- ^ Rice, Douglas Walthew. The life and achievements of Sir John Popham, 1531-1607 : leading to the establishment of the first English colony in New England. Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp.83-90; Oxford DNB sub Popham calls Aubrey "demonstrably inaccurate", but suggests the mortgage was a fiction. "The Sources of a Tale of Two Cities". Modern Language Notes (Vol. 36, No. 1. (Jan., 1921). p.8 of 1-10.
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