Milford Hall

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Milford Hall is a privately owned 18th century country mansion house at Milford, near Stafford. It is the home of the Levett Haszard family and is a Grade II listed building.

The estate passed to the Levett family in 1749 when Reverend Richard Levett, son of the Rector of Blithfield, Staffordshire, married Lucy Byrd, heiress of Milford and a descendant of the Byrd family of Cheshire.[1] (The Levett family came from Sussex, and the Staffordshire Levetts retain ownership of the papers of Sussex native William Levett, Esq., who was groom of the bedchamber to King Charles I, and accompanied him on the day of his execution.[2] The family also produced Sir Richard Levett, Lord Mayor of London and a former owner of Kew Palace, who was the son of Reverend Richard Levett (brother of William, courtier to King Charles) of Ashwell, Rutland, and Dr. William Levett, Principal of St. Mary Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and Dean of Bristol. The family is of Norman descent and derives its name from the village of Livet in Normandy.)[3]

Levett replaced the existing house with a new mansion in the Georgian style. The main east fronting block had three storeys and four bays flanked by two double storey two bayed wings and with a five bay Orangery attached to the south.The central doorway carried pediment and Ionic pilasters.

The house was much extended and altered in 1817 by his son, also Richard Levett, when the pilasters and pediment were removed and the main entrance was moved to the west front.[4]

The English 1881 census records show the Levett family and fourteen servants in residence. On the death of Captn William Swynnerton Byrd Levett in 1929 the estate passed to his daughter Dyonese Haszard, and the Levett Haszard family retains ownership. (Dyonese Haszard's brother, Lieut. Richard Byrd Levett, had been killed in France in the First World War in 1917.) Col. Gerald Fenwick Haszard served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1952 and Richard Byrd Levett Haszard is nominated for that position in 2009. (The Levett family represented Staffordshire in Parliament in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.)

Nearby is Shugborough Hall, the ancestral estate of the Anson family, the Earls of Lichfield. The Levett family of Milford is related to the Ansons, and the Levett Haszard family sit on the board of Shugborough Hall.

Also in Staffordshire, another distant branch of the Sussex Levett family owned Packington Hall and Wichnor (Wychnor) Park, two country mansion houses. Ultimately, these two branches of the Levett family were reunited in marriage, so that the current owners of Milford Hall are descended from both branches of the family.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bird of Cheshire, The Visitation of Cheshire, in the Year 1580, Robert Glover, William Flower, William Fellows, ed. by John Paul Rylands, London, 1882
  2. ^ William Levett, Hampton Court, or the Prophecy Fulfilled, 1844
  3. ^ Levett Tomb and Monument, Saint Anne's Church, Kew, British History Online
  4. ^ A History of the County of Stafford, Baswich, L. Margaret Midgely (editor), 1959, Victoria County History, British History Online

[edit] External links