The heads of three successive generations of the same English family were each named Gregory Page. A wealthy family whose fortune was not inherited but initially accumulated through trade, the Pages were closely associated with the development of north-west Kent (now south-east London) during the 18th century.
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Gregory Page (1626 – November 1693) was a wealthy London merchant, shipwright and director of the British East India Company.
His son (c. 1669 – 25 May 1720), also named Gregory Page, followed in his father's footsteps as a merchant. He was elected MP for Shoreham in West Sussex in December 1708, a seat he retained until 1713. Created a baronet (3 December 1714), Page regained the seat in 1715 and held it until his death.
His wife, Dame Mary Page (nee Trotman - daughter of Thomas Trotman of London), with whom he had four children, died on 11 March 1728 aged 56 and was buried at Bunhill Fields in the City of London, with an epitaph that hinted at a painful illness (possibly Meigs' syndrome[1])
His daughter, also Mary Page, married Edward Turner in 1718. Page and his son-in-law invested in the South Sea Company.[3][4] Page died in 1720.
Page was succeeded by his eldest son, the second baronet, also named Sir Gregory Page (c. 1695 – 4 August 1775). A minor in the care of two guardians, he inherited several properties and a substantial fortune in South Sea Company shares, which were sold just before the so-called ‘South Sea Bubble’ burst[3][4] in the autumn of 1720, ruining thousands of investors.
Page invested a substantial part of his fortune into further property, particularly in what was then north-west Kent. In 1723, he built a manor house in the Westcombe Park area, just north of Blackheath, but later preferred to live in a huge mansion at Wricklemarsh nearby. This was designed by architect John James, built for £90,000, and stood in a 250 acres (100 ha) park, once the property of Sir John Morden. A ground plan and cross-section through the mansion's rooms were included in Vitruvius Britannicus in 1739, and according to a contemporary description, Wricklemarsh was:
(The surrounding land later formed part of the Blackheath Park housing estate created by John Cator, after he purchased Wricklemarsh in 1783).
Page's fields of interest were said by the Dictionary of National Biography to include "scholarship and languages, engineering, construction, naval architecture and surveying, collecting and building". The Wricklemarsh mansion was lavishly furnished and housed Page's art collection, with paintings by Rubens, van Dyck, Claude, Poussin, Veronese, Salvator Rosa, Nicolaes Berchem, and a group of ten pictures by Adriaen van der Werff. Six Dutch East India wood chairs inlaid with the Page/Kenward arms in mother of pearl are in the Sir John Soane's Museum.
Page was the founder and patron of the dining club, the Free and Easy Society, for which a number of Qianlong Chinese armorial punch-bowls were made c.1755.[5]
Page's other property investments included the purchase of Battlesden Manor in Bedfordshire from Lord Bathurst in 1724.[6]
In 1733, for £19,000, Page bought the dilapidated Elizabethan manor house at Well Hall Place, Eltham, demolishing it to build a new mansion home, Page House (eventually demolished in 1931).
Page also supported the creation of a new charity in London called the Foundling Hospital. In its Royal Charter, issued in 1739, he is listed as one of the original governors.[7] The charity worked to save abandoned children off the streets of the capital.
Upon his death in 1775, Page's fortune was bequeathed to his great-nephew Sir Gregory Turner, 3rd Baronet of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire, who added 'Page' to his surname to become Sir Gregory Page-Turner, 3rd Baronet.[8] Page was interred in the family vault at St Alfege's Church, Greenwich.