Boyle Farm, Surrey, England

This Large and Very Elegant House

Over two hundred years ago, Hannah More, the writer and evangelist, visited Boyle Farm and immediately reached for her pen to tell her sister: "I was never so astonished as to see this large and very elegant house". This visit, as we shall see, she was pleased to repeat on several subsequent occasions.

The house she so admired had then only just reached completion after an extensive rebuilding lasting several years.

There had been a mansion house on this pleasant Thameside spot from at least the reign of James the first, but little, if anything, of it remains, and the present writer knows of no prints or illustrations to tell us just how it looked.

The wall running eastward from the north-east corner of the river front of the existing house, which now forms the wall of the rather dilapidated greenhouse, is possibly part of former buildings, for it exhibits two very unusual features, which tend to show that it probably antedates the rebuilding in the eighteenth century. Firstly, it is constructed in what is called "header bond", that is that all the bricks in each course are laid across the thickness of the wall, so that only their heads are showing. This bond is seldom used nowadays, except for decorative work involving curved walls. Secondly, it contains traces of was was obviously originally a fairly wide gateway, with a depressed uncusped arch, now completely bricked up. This, with the absence of windows, suggests that it may have been part of the former stable block.

Otherwise the mansion on which Miss More lavished her praises was then entirely new, and is basically the same house which exists today. Although some reconstruction of the upper storey and a complete refacing of the exterior in red brick, ensures that she would have difficulty in recognising it as such could she visit it now.

To effect a complete breach with the past, the new mansion was even baptised with a new name - "Boyle Farm". A piece of self-indulgence on the part of the then owner, a wealthy widow named the Hon. Charlotte Boyle Walsingham.

Before that it was called "Ford's Farm", or more usually just "Fords", and this is the name by which it is referred to in all the old title deeds and estate papers.

How then did this name "Fords" arise? Several suggestions have been advanced. Including one that it derived from a ford existing across the Thames close by. Nevertheless, there seems little doubt but that it is an eponymous adaptation from a family of the name of Ford by whom this and other property in the district was owned in Tudor times.

Among the court rolls of the manor of Imber or Ember, in which lordship the lands were then situated, it is recorded that on the 27 September 1611 William Leigh "alienated to Robert Hatton certain property in Thames Ditton, "formerly Fords and afterwards Moors". As was common at that time these lands were held partly by a money rent and partly by service in kind. The rent was £1 7s. 2½d. a year. The service was to supply labour for one day's work at harvest time, and by providing hay for the lord of the manor's horse whenever he rode to church.

From the same records the ownership of the land can be traced from William Leigh, or Lee as it was sometimes spelled, through Bernard More, or Moor, to an Edmund Ford. This Edmund Ford was almost certainly the son of the Erasmus Forde whose elaborate monument, with a brass plate dated 1553, can be seen in St. Nicholas' church.

Herein then lies the reason for the name which the property was to carry for the next two hundred years.

The estate as it was conveyed by Edmund Ford to Bernard More in 1556 was of considerable size, made up of plots extending into the parishes and manors of "Thamys Dytton, Long Dytton, Claygate, Weston, Imworth (Imber), Chessyndon, and Talworth"; and included a house, garden, orchard, 300 acres of land, 20 acres of meadow, 200 acres of pasture, 20 acres of wood, 4 wharves, and 10 shillings rent".

The Leigh family had intermarried with both the Fords and the Hattons, and throughout the Tudor period the names of all three families crop up as owners of pieces of land scattered around the parish of Thames Ditton.

The house in which the Leighs had lived was described as being "near unto the church". It was probably identical with that at one time called "the Priest's House", and almost certainly stood on a piece of land called "Charton Haw", which later deeds prove to have been on the western side of High Street, somewhat south of the church.

The land transferred to Robert Hatton in 1611, however, was definitely on the east of the road, but what house, if any, then existed on it is uncertain. However, a subsequent mansion, which became "Fords", soon appeared, and which his descendants continued to hold for the next one hundred and fifty years. In 1664 the house was the second largest in Thames Ditton, exceeded in size only by Ember Court.

The Hatton Family

The family to which Robert Hatton belonged was both affluent and widespread. One of his cousins was Sir Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth the first's lord chancellor. They claimed a lineage back to lyon, a Norman knight, a relation of the Conqueror himself, who obtained a grant of a manor called Hatton on the banks of the river Mersey, from which the family adopted its patronymic. In the following centuries they spread themselves out over the neighbouring counties of Cheshire and Shropshire.

In the reign of Henry the eighth a James Hatton had been rector of Long Ditton, but just how, if at all, he fitted into the family tree is uncertain.

However, an unquestionable connection appears soon after in the person of a Richard Hatton, who being a younger son with little expectation of inheriting the paternal hearth, forsook his Shrewsbury home, came south, and enrolled at Clifford's Inn to read law. Whilst there he met George Evelyn of Long Ditton, whose daughter he married, and settled down near his father-in-law. The Robert Hatton, who purchased Fords in 1611 was the son of this union.

For a number of generations members of the Hatton family followed the legal profession, becoming practising barristers and judges. From which, and from a series of judicious marriages, they derived great wealth. In fact, all of those who were associated with Fords were occupied with the law. They included a Robert, a Sir Richard, a Sir Robert, and a William.

Robert Hatton is first found as a student in the Middle Temple in 1606, in the chambers of his kinsman, Thomas Evelyn. Forty years later, after a long career, he had risen to be the Temple's treasurer. By then he had become a serjeant-at-law and in 1628 he had been elected as recorder of Kingston upon Thames. Kingston had the unique distinction of being the only borough in the kingdom the burgesses of which held the right themselves to appoint a recorder for the town, and not to have one imposed upon them by the crown. A power confirmed by a charter given by Charles the first. Two of Robert's sons were subsequently also honoured by being chosen to fulfil this office. An achievement unique in the borough's history.

Richard Hatton, Robert's father, had in 1573 purchased the manor of Waterville in Esher, which Robert later inherited. In the same year in which he became recorder he transferred it to Kingston Corporation, but whether the two events have any connection is hard to say.

Sometime after Robert had acquired Fords he was made a trustee under the will of George Evelyn of a piece of property at Chobham in Surrey, which by a strange quirk of coincidence was called the manor of Fords, named after a family of Ford who had lived there in the twelvth century. This striking similarity of name led one writer to assume that the Thames Ditton Fords was so called in deference to the Chobham one.

His maternal descent from the Evelyns made Robert a cousin of John Evelyn the famous diarist and arborealist, who twice mentions visiting him here. On 10 January 1642-3 he records: "I gave a visit to my cousin Hatton, of Ditton"; and on 10 October 1647: "To Hampton Court, where I had the honour to kiss his Majesty's hand, and gave him an account of several things I had in charge. I lay at my cousin, Serjeant Hatton' s at Thames Ditton, whence, on the 13th, I went to London".

In spite of the monarchist leanings of his cousin, Robert Hatton appears to have been treated well by the Roundheads. Under the Commonwealth he was progressively appointed a justice of the peace for Surrey, justice of assize for the counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and in 1655 a commissioner for the north of England.

He married Alice, the daughter of William Haynes of Chessington, from whom he inherited a large estate there, which supplied the family with considerable income until it was sold by his grandson in 1742. Alice presented him with thirteen little Hattons.

Robert Hatton died on 31 March 1661, and was buried with his parents at Long Ditton. The monument erected to his memory includes the inscription "QUI IN PERITIA LEGUM" - "skilled in law". Like many lawyers, both before and since, he seems not to have taken the good advice he probably often gave to others, and departed this life without making a will. However, probate was granted to his eldest son, Sir Richard Hatton, who then moved into Fords.

Sir Richard was also a member of the legal fraternity. His career proceeded very much along the same lines as his father's - student at Oxford, a member of the Middle Temple, called to the bar, justice of the peace, and recorder of Kingston.

He married a wealthy widow, daughter of a baronet, with whom he acquired a large estate in Essex, part of which was expropriated by the government for the extension and strengthening of Tilbury Fort, needed for the protection of London during the Anglo-Dutch wars, and for which he struggled for many years to get paid. He had been knighted by Charles the first at Oxford in 1645, soon after becoming a barrister, and at the Restoration he was appointed a gentleman pensioner to Charles the second.

Although the Hattons had by now become well established as one of the most important families in Thames Ditton, at the end of their lives they had always been interred at Long Ditton with their ancestors. Sir Richard, however, wishing to secure for them a place in the parish befitting their wealth and influence, as well in death as in life, had a chapel erected on the north side of St. Nicholas' church in 1676 especially to receive their remains. To remind lesser souls that this was the family necropolis of great people, over the entrance of it was prominently displayed the words "DORMITORIUM HATTONIANUM" (The sleeping place of the Hattons), and the coat of arms and crest of the family was emblazoned in stained glass in the window.

His action in having this chapel built was probably prompted by his own ill health and the suspicion that his life was drawing to its close, even though he was as yet only fifty-five years old. On the 13 December 1676 "being infirm of body but of sound and perfect memory", he made his will. The following week he resigned the position of recorder of Kingston, which was immediately offered to his brother, William.

Within two months he died, and his body was the first to be laid to rest in the mausoleum he had created. Shortly after to be followed by that of his sister, Mrs. Mary Windsor, who in her widowhood had lived with him for several years(34), and acted as a sort of universal godmother to the many Hatton offsprings.

Sir Richard's will reveals well the extent of the family's acquired wealth. As always at that time invested in property. Besides Fords, it included other lands and houses in Surrey - Thames Ditton, Long Ditton, Claygate, Tolworth, Malden, Kingston, and Chessington; a house in the Strand, and another in St. Paul's Churchyard, in London; as well as the manor of West Tilbury in Essex (On which the government still owed him money). Both these last two he had obtained by marriage to his wife, and illustrates well how the family's fortune had been succoured by such prudent connections.

Most of this property was left in trust for his wife, Lady Anne Hatton, for her life, and then in tail for his heirs. Lady Anne's widowhood lasted only two years. She died on 9 June 1679, and was laid to rest by the side of her husband in the Hatton chapel. The estate then passed to her eldest son, Robert.

Robert Hatton carried on in the family tradition. After Oxford, he read jurisprudence in the Middle Temple, but never seems to have practised. Instead he carried the role of country gentleman. Soon after his father's death he was raised to the knighthood, at the youthful age of twenty-seven, and in 1682 he was appointed to the important office of sherriff of Surrey.

Proud of his county status, he had the heralds of the college of arms draw up a family lineage showing descent from Wolfayth, lord of the manor of Hatton in the eleventh century. This roll on vellum nine and a half feet long and seventeen inches wide, beautifully laid out with all the heraldic shields vividly emblazoned in their hand-painted tinctures, is now preserved in the British Library. (See next page)

He was, however, a sickly man, and in 1680, not long after having entered into his inheritance, probably viewing the future with uncertainty, and to make certain of "continuing the family estates in the name and blood" of the Hattons, he transferred "All that mansion, messuage, or tenement, in which the said Robert Hatton then dwelled, with all edifices, buildings, barns, stables, yards, gardens, orchards, backsides, and appurtenances theretofore called or known by the name of Fords, in Thames Ditton", to trustees. For his own use during his lifetime, and if he died without issue, to go to his only brother, Richard, and to his heirs, and then to his uncle, William Hatton of East Molesey.

His "indisposition of bodie" continued, on 22 June he drew up his will, and in the following May he died. He too took his place in the family chapel.

He had married in 1675, Cecilia, the daughter of Francis Brewster of Wrentham Hall in Suffolk, but they had had no children. His only brother, Richard, had predeceased him some years earlier, without having been married.

The inventory compiled for obtaining probate of his will provides a good insight to the furniture and household goods which might be found in an upper class residence at that time. It lists the following rooms: on the ground floor, a great parlour, little parlour, dressing room, study, and store, all containing miscellaneous items of furniture. In the hall was two tables and four old leather chairs or forms. Pictures hung along the passage and "upon the stare case". The pantry contained five tables, an old cupboard, and a hanging shelf. The other domestic quarters consisted of, kitchen, wash house, dairy, and buttery. On the upper storey was, the great chamber complete with ante chamber, the best chamber, the white chamber, the chamber over the study, the chamber over the kitchen, and the chamber over the pantry; all containing one feather bed and other furniture. The servants all slept in one chamber, in which there was nine feather or flock beds. The valuables included, a quantity of ready money, some silver plate, and dozens of knives and forks with silver handles (No mention of spoons). The farm yard included six bullocks, four hogs, thirty-five sheep, miscellaneous poultry, calves, and a load of hay. The stables had six horses complete with saddles, coach and harness, six other horses, ploughs, harness, and "other lumber out of doors".

Surprisingly this has some strange omissions which are hard to explain. Firstly, it calls Sir Robert's father just Richard Hatton and not Sir Richard; Secondly, William Hatton, Sir Richard's brother is not shown at all.

Under the terms of the deed of trusteeship and of Sir Robert's will the estate now passed to his uncle, William Hatton, who had his own mansion at East Molesey. However, the marriage jointure settlement agreed to before Sir Robert and Cecilia's wedding stipulated that in the event of her being left a widow she should be allowed to continue living in the house. Therefore, in November 1684 she concluded an agreement with William Hatton to enable her to enjoy the residence during her lifetime, but that the freehold of inheritance vested with William and his heirs.

Two years after her husband's death, being then still in her early thirties, Lady Cecilia married William Nuthall of Kingston, a long-standing friend of the family. Her married life was yet again to be short lived. She married for the third time a middle aged baronet and member of Parliament, Sir Harry Dutton Colt. During the Civil War Colt had been adjutant to Prince Rupert. He was living here in 1705, for he voted in the general election of march of that year, and again in October 1710, in respect of this property.

Lady Cecilia died in October 1712, and was probably also buried in the Hatton chapel. Unfortunately the parish burial register for Thames Ditton covering this period has been lost and it has not been possible to confirm this. The chapel has since been rebuilt as a vestry, but the funeral slabs with their inscriptions are though still to exist beneath the wooden flooring.

Meanwhile William Hatton, the owner of the freehold, had died in 1705 and had been buried in East Molesey churchyard. Under his will he left "my capital messuage wherein Dame Cecilia Hatton now dwelleth called or known by the name of Fords situate in Thames Ditton" to his great nephew, Hatton Tash junior grandson of his sister, Thomasin, widow of Sir George Tash.

The Tash Family

The Tash family lived in a large estate called Delafield Park at Iver, in Buckinghamshire, and although they were now to own Fords for the next sixty years or so, there appears no evidence to show that any of the family ever took up residence.

Hatton Tash was only fifteen years of age when he inherited Fords, He died in 1727, and it passed to his son George, and from him to his (George's) uncle and cousin, both of whom were called George. The fact that three people called George Tash owned the property has sometimes caused confusion, but their relationship can be ascertained from the family tree.

One reason why no member of the Tash family lived in the house was probably due to a clause in William Hatton's will, by which they were empowered to rent the property out, but stipulating that the full improved rent was to be obtained, and that the leases were not to exceed twenty-one years.

The story of Fords for the first half of the eighteenth century, therefore, becomes one of a series of tenants. Nevertheless, it includes some very interesting people.

Colonel Sidney Godolphin, M.P.

On the wall north of the chancel in Thames Ditton parish church is a large baroque marble tablet, surmounted by a carved bust, and with a lengthy inscription extolling the virtues of one Colonel Sidney Godolphin.

This Sidney Godolphin was the first lessee to occupy Fords under a Tash lease. A number of letters preserved in the British Library addressed to him "at his house in Thames Ditton near Kingston in Surrey" prove that he was living here by 1722.

On 3 July of that year he decided to insure the house with the Sun Fire Insurance Office in the sum of £400 for the building and £100 for the contents.

The Godolphins had been for centuries a landowning family with great influence in Cornwall. The name in the Cornish language signifies a white eagle, and this bird was always borne on the family's coat of arms. Colonel Godolphin was member of Parliament for one or other of the Duchy's constituencies for almost fifty years, and died father of the House.

He was born in 1651, the son of a judge of the Admiralty. After the landing of the duke of Monmouth at Lyme Regis in 1685 he was commissioned in a regiment formed by the earl of Bath to quell the rebellion, and later served with the duke of Marlborough on the Continent, rising to the rank of lieutenant- colonel. However, the rigours of a military career was not suited to his health. He resigned his commission, and sought less austere employment in this country. He was appointed to a number of official posts, including, governor of the Scilly Isles and of Grenwich Hospital, and auditor of the revenues in Wales. He was also created a justice of the peace for the counties of Cornwall, Denbigh, Shropshire, and Monmouth. In the last two of which he had acquired extensive property by virtue of his marriage to a wealthy heiress.

By the time he took up residence at Fords he was seventy- one, by the standards of the day quite an old man. Although still quite active in political life, the last years of existence were marred by pain and suffering from ill-health, probably due to a stone. He passed away in September 1732.

The lease of Fords was taken over by his youngest and "most dearly beloved daughter", Ellen, who was unmarried and had lived with him and nursed him through his sickness. The fire insurance taken out by her father was then endorsed with her name.

Ellen was now the mistress of the mansion. She was fortunate in that her cousin, Henrietta, was married to the duke of Newcastle, and lived in nearby Claremont. The two were on very good terms, and the duchess was often to be seen visiting at Fords, and Miss Godolphin at Claremont.

In 1735 the duchess wrote to her aunt: "I really hop'd long before this time to have seen you at Ditton - I have got a port of my own, which I have made great use of, & found great good from, it carry'd me the day before yesterday to Ditton, where I hop'd to hear some news of you and was told at the house, that you come next week - I am this minute going to Waybridge to dinner - If I am so unlucky as not to see you in June, I will make it up to you myself the first minute I can by waiting on you at Ditton. Claremont June ye 8th 1735"(60).

Ellen Godolphin died in 1754, and was most likely buried with her father in Thames Ditton church, but as has already been said, unfortunately the parish burial register for this period is missing.

William Baker, M.P.

The next tenant of Fords was another member of Parliament, a William Baker. He was born in 1705, the son of a London draper. He entered business as a merchant importing and exporting goods to the American colonies, at a time when rich pickings were to be made in this trade. He was described as "one of the foremost merchants trading with America, his interests extending over the whole length of the seaboard"; and as "the chief man in the Carolina trade". He also purchased large tracts of land in the colony.

His merchantile activities brought lucrative offices in the commercial world, including a governorship of the Hudson's Bay Company and a directorship (later chairman) of the East India Company.

From all of which he amassed a considerable fortune, and gained an entry into politics. He sat on the Corporation of the City of London, firstly as a councillor and then as alderman, for a total of almost forty years. For twenty-one years he was a member of Parliament.

Looking for a country retreat he came to Thames Ditton. Probably influenced by its proximity to Esher, where dwelled the brothers, Henry Pelham (Esher Place) and the duke of Newcastle (Claremont), respectively prime minister and secretary of state. Who between them had the control of political affairs and patronage tightly in their grasp; and with whom Baker was on friendly terms. They found him his seat in Parliament, and also considered bringing him into the government. In 1748 Newcastle wrote to Pelham: "Baker would certainly make the best commissioner of trade in all England". However, he was not appointed on that occasion, and when later he was offered a position he declined it. Which prompted the riposte from Pelham: "My friend Baker, though a very sensible fellow, is a coxcomb, and has been flattered by some people till he does not know where his arse hangs".

In 1757 Baker was in his fifties, his political advancement was frustrated, he turned his ambition in another direction. He fancied being a country squire in his own right, not the tenant of somebody else in a a rather old-fashioned house. Looking around for a somewhat grander mansion he found a manor at Bayford in Hertfordshire, which he purchased, had a brand new house built, and surrounded it with a large park. Thus suited he moved away from Fords and Thames Ditton.

To heighten his new status, and possibly as a belated reward for his support of the government, he was not long after raised to the knighthood, but by then he was far removed from this district and its history, and a new tenant was installed at Fords.

Mrs. Charlotte Digby

By the next year the lessee of Fords was an aristocratic widow by the name of the Hon. Mrs. Charlottee Digby.

Mrs. Digby was the daughter of Sir Stephen Fox, a Whig politician. Thus carrying on the association of this house with the Whig faction, which started with Col. Godolphin, continued with William Baker, and extended with many others yet to come.

Fox was reputed to be the richest commoner in the kingdom, and was seventeen times a lord of the treasury. He was the man who first suggested to Charles the second the building of Chelsea Hospital for retired soldiers. He had married for a second time when in his late seventies a girl of twenty-four, and they had four children, of whom Charlotte was the youngest. She was born when her father was eighty years old. She married the only surviving son of the fifth lord Digby, but had been widowed for several years when she moved to Thames Ditton. Two of her sons in turn inherited the title of baron Digby.

The freehold landlord of the estate was still George Tash of Buckinghamshire. In 1758, soon after Mrs. Digby had taken over the tenancy, he decided to reinsure the property against fire, the policy taken out by Sidney Godolphin having lapsed on the death of his daughter. Luckily for us this time he chose to use the Hand-in-Hand Insurance Society. Luckily, because they were one of the few societys who recorded full details of the insured property in their policy registers, and these have been conscientiously preserved and are now deposited in the Guildhall Library in London.

This record gives us the only known description of the house as it then stood. It tells us that it was "a House &c on the East side of the Road in the parish of Thames Ditton Com. Surry & now in the possession of the Hon. Mrs. Digby". The house itself was built of brick, two stories high, consisting of a centre block forty-two feet long by twenty-two feet wide, with two identical wings, each forty feet by twenty-one feet. But does not indicate the juxtaposition of the three parts - whether they were all in line, or whether they were H or U shaped. The outbuildings were; a barn, laundry, coalhouse, sheds, three separate sets of stables, and a coach-house; partly brick and partly timber. The complete dimensions of each of these are stipulated. The house was valued at £862, and the other buildings at a combined figure of £338. This sum is vastly in excess of the value at which it was assessed for Godolphin's policy issued only thirty-six years earlier. It can only be assumed, therefore, that in the meanwhile the house had been much enlarged, perhaps by the addition of the two wings mentioned.

In 1763 George Tash and Mrs. Digby came to an agreement for her to purchase the freehold of the house, together with various other pieces of land, freehold and copyhold, in Thames Ditton and East Molesey, for a total price of £7,000(68). It was still the second largest house in the parish, exceeded only by Ember Court, but as that was somewhat removed from the village itself, the owner of Fords was considered to be the local squire.

Mrs Digby, who was a wealthy woman, having inherited a considerable fortune from her father, commenced upon a process of enlarging and improving the estate, which heightened her standing in the community even further. Firstly, she purchased what is now known as "Thames Ditton Island" (then called "Ditton Hill") , and the two smaller islands nearby, which were copyhold of the manor and honour of Hampton Court. Secondly, she acquired a total of twenty-three acres in several pieces, including a field known as "Stones" which stood on the south side of Summer Road (then known as "Moulsey Lane"), and some land in a common field called "Beeston Field" (Otherwise "Basingfield").

At that time the road from Thames Ditton village to Kingston ran from the High Street by where the Fountain now stands, eastward in more or less a straight line, crossing the river Rythe and passing close to Long Ditton wharf, to the Portsmouth Road behind where the City Arms public house now is. And was known, as one might expect, as "Wharf Road" .

The garden of Fords stood adjacent to the northern side of this road, right up to the Rythe.

Part of the land purchased by Mrs. Digby was on the further side on this road, and was known as "The fifteen Acres". Thinking that it would be distinctly advantageous to throw this land into the curtilage of the house and make it part of the garden, with the additional benefit of moving the road further away from the house, she obtained from the crown a writ of Ad Quod Damnum, which obliged the sherriff of the county to hold an inquiry to ascertain if any harm would arise to anyone if she was allowed to divert the road to a new alignment.

On 11 January 1771, therefore, the sherriff of Surrey, Sir Richard Hotham, called together on the site twenty "honest and lawful men" from the district. They decided that no harm or prejudice would occur from such a diversion; and at the next general quarter sessions Mrs. Digby was granted permission to "completely and substantially make another Road or Highway - in her own Land and Soil - of the Breadth of Thirty Feet in the clear from Ditch to Ditch. Beginning "at the stable in the occupation of the Reverend Mr. Dry" across to "a certain Bridge in the King's Highway leading from Kingston to Esher opposite a Blacksmith's shop in the occupation of Thomas Window" . Which she, her heirs and assigns, were required hereafter to "well and sufficiently repair and maintain". This substituted road is, of course, the present St. Leonards Road, although this is a comparatively new name. It was originally called "Kingston Lane

Having thus extended the grounds adjacent to the house, the land at the eastern end, which had been the kitchen garden, was hived off, splitting the area into two more or less equal parts, and on the further portion another large mansion was built, which came to be called "Ditton House". This also stood facing the river, with lawns gently sloping down to the water's edge. Its site is now occupied by King's and Queen's Drives.

The Fox and Digby families were deeply involved in political affairs - Whig of course. One of Charlotte's brothers was created earl of Ilchester, and another was Lord Holland, secretary of state in the government of the duke of Newcastle. His residence, Holland House in Kensington was the recognised congregating place of the Whig cause, and the clan often forgathered at Fords as well.

Lord Holland's son became the celebrated statesman, Charles James Fox. In 1763, whilst yet a precocious fourteen-year-old on vacation from Eton, he reported in a letter to his father: "I went to Thames Ditton to see Mrs. Digby. Charles Digby was the only one of her sons there. Lord Digby I hear was married on Monday last, and will be at Thames Ditton next week with my lady"

Colonel Stephen Digby

Of Mrs. Digby's Six Sons the only one to be associated with Thames Ditton to any extent was the fifth - Stephen. A man of quiet debonaire charm, a strong character, who mixed in court circles and mingled with the great. Surprisingly no biography of his life has yet been published. As he is part of the history of our house, we will spare a little time briefly to relate some of it now.

He had been commissioned in the army, served for a time in Germany, and rose to the rank of colonel. On his return he engaged the attention of Queen Charlotte, wife of George the third, who appointed him to be her vice-chamberlain. Digby's forceful personality did much to bring a touch of life to the somewhat torpid atmosphere of dull George's court.

During the king's increasingly frequent bouts of "alienation of mind", he was the only person who could manage him. When the tormented royal brain rambled uncontrolably others were often helpless to pacify him, but Digby just took his arm, spoke soft but firm words of comfort, "and the patient allowed himself to be taken back quietly, like a child".

His fascination, too, charmed all female hearts. Fanny Burney, the novelist and diarist, who was herself one of the queen's ladies in waiting, fell like the rest. In August 1786 she notes in her diary: "At tea I found a new uniform. He was colonel Fairly"(The name she used to disguise his identity). "He is a man of most scrupulous good-breeding, diffident, gentle, and sentimental in his conversation, and assiduously attentive to his manners".

Nevertheless, the ladies could only look and sigh. The colonel was already married. On the first day of October 1771, Thames Ditton had stirred to the sound of joyful wedding bells as he went from Fords across the road to St. Nicholas' church to wed the lady of his choice - his cousin, Lady Lucy Fox Strangways (84). Two of their children were also presented at the font there to be baptised.

But his wife was of a very delicate constitution. Again we may turn to the pages of Miss Burney's diary: "10 January 1787. I met Mr. Fairly. His lady, to whom he is much attached, is suffering death by inches, from the most painful of all complaints, a cancer"

Her world of suffering ceased in the following August, and her body was taken to the little church where she had been married to be interred in a vault in the churchyard. Whereon were engraved the words:"SHE DEPARTED THIS LIFE AUGUST 16, 1787, AFTER A LONG AND PAINFUL ILLNESS, WHICH SHE BORE WITH INFINITE FORTITUDE AND CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. HER VIRTUES AND AMIABLE DISPOSITION ENDEARED HER TO ALL WHO KNEW HER, AND SHE HAS LEFT A SADLY-PLEASING NAME, A NAME STILL TO BE UTTERED WITH A SIGH".

The devoted Fanny says: "I read in the newspapers a paragraph that touched me very much for the amiable Mr. Fairly: it was the death of his wife. Mr. Fairly has devoted his whole time, strength, thoughts, and cares solely to her nursing and attending her during a long and most painful illness which she has sustained. They speak of her as being amiable, but so cold and reserved, that she was little known, and by no means in equal favour with her husband, who stands, upon the whole, the highest in esteem and regard of any individual of the household. I find every mouth open to praise and pity, love and honour him.

Love and honour him she certainly did. It was an open secret in the royal household that she was head over heels in love with him. In fact her attitude to his wife's death must have been tinged with mixed emotions. After a decent interval he would be eligible for marriage again. There would surely be a chance now for the faithful Fanny, even though she was thirty-five years old and a rather dowdy spinster.

He returned to the court "thin, haggard, worn", and grey, "with some of his front teeth vanished"(89); and took to visiting her appartment, when the two would read aloud to one another, poems, sermons, and other uplifting and edifying literature. Although she wrote that: "I believe Mr. Fairly to possess from nature high animal spirits, though now curbed by his fortune, and a fine vein of satire. He is, in mixed company, gay, shrewd and arch". But at their little secluded meetings "his spirits do not rise above cheerfulness; he delights in moral discourse, on grave and instructional subjects. I never observe him to lead but to themes of religion, literature, or moral life".

Fanny's was in the main a very dispirited life, she wallowed in a slough of depression, waiting on the ever demanding queen's every whim, her only anodyne being the meetings with "Mr. Fairly". Once when the court was holidaying at cheltenham, Digby visited her at her lodging: "I cannot give you our conversation", she wrote. "the birds that chirped, the meadows that bloomed, the hills that rose before us, the purity of the air we breathed --- made a union of faculties with our senses --- And here for near two hours we remained & they were two hours of such pure serenity, without and within, as I think I scarce ever remember to have spent".

But passion can be a great deceiver. In spite of his assiduous attention at their little tetes-a-tete, Digby's mind was really centred on rather more exotic material than the stolid bluestocking novelist. Rumours abounded that he was paying court to another maid of honour - the much younger, prettier, and more vivacious, if somewhat less learned, Miss Charlotte Gunning. And what is more she was reputed to be the possessor of a fortune of ten thousand pounds.

In December 1789, two years after the loss of his wife, The Times reported: "The Match between the Hon. Colonel Digby and Miss Gunning, takes place without delay". They were married in the next month.

Fanny was mortified. The love she thought was hers belonged to another. Now nothing was too bad to be said about the former paragon. He was now "a man of double dealing & selfish artifice. He has risked my whole Earthly peace, with defiance of all mental integrity. He has committed a breach of all moral ties, with every semblance of every virtue".

Especial spleen was reserved for the young lady who had weaned her shining knight away. She was lampooned under the pseudonym "Miss Fuzilier". So vituperative were some of the things which now began to creep into the famous diary, that when, after Fanny's death, her relations published it, they insisted that the public be allowed only to read a bowdlerised version of the events. "If you can cut out a volume of Digby", one of them advised, "it will be an improvement"(96). However, the original unexpurgated manuscript may still be read in the Berg Collection in New York Public Library.

Fanny Burney had to wait until she was forty-one before she - was finally married to the French emigree, General D'Arblay.

Stephen's mother, Charlotte Digby, still the owner of Fords, died in November 1778, and was laid to rest in Thames Ditton church.

Except for a number of bequests to servants, and some property to her eldest son, Lord Henry Digby, she left the whole of her estate to Stephen(98). However, it turned out that her bequests were somewhat over-liberal considering the state of her personal assets, which were said to be "greatly insufficient to answer pay and satisfy her debts funeral expenses and the legacies given by her". It was obvious that some property would have to be sold. Lord Digby, therefore, enterred into an agreement with his brother forgoing the whole of his share of the inheritance. This gesture not only allowed the various liabilities to be satisfied, but also permitted the Thames Ditton estate to be kept as a whole.

As we have already seen, Stephen Digby's commitments at this time lay in other fields. He had no requirement either for himself or his family to live at Fords, and again we find it being let out on lease.

The Earl of Hertford

Stephen Digby had little time to wait before discovering a tenant for the house. Once again it was a member of an aristocratic family, and one deeply involved in Whig politics - Francis Seymour Conway, earl (later marquis) of Hertford.

Hertford had been born in 1719, the son of Lord Conway. His appointments during a long career included - lord of the bedchamber, knoight of the garter, privy councillor, ambassador extraordinary to France, lord lieutenant of Ireland, and lord chamberlain of the household. However, by the time he came to retire at Fords he was in his sixtieth year. Which is probably why he was looking for a country retreat within easy reach of town. And found it here.

Once again the house became a centre for social and political gatherings. One of its most frequent habituees being Hertford's cousin, the now ageing versifier, wit, and purveyor of tittle-tattle - Horace Walpole.

Walpole's voluminous correspondence contains many references to visits here, which, like much of his socialising, seems to have been at least in part, for the sake of gathering intelligence to fill the missives which flowed daily from his pen at Strawberry Hill and were sent all over the kingdom. Disappointed he was, too, when none was forthcoming. In August 1780, for instance, he wrote to the countess of Upper Ossory: "My charming duchess", as he affectionately addressed her, "I dined at Ditton, and though Lord Beauchamp, a great news-monger, was there, I did not learn a tittle".

On occasions the house seems to have been overflowing with guests. On 25 July 1781: "Last night we went to Lady Hertford at Ditton. Soon after Lady North and her daughters arrived, and besides Lady Elizabeth and Lady Bel Conways, there were the brothers Hugh and George. All the jeunesse strolled about the gardens. We ancients, with the earl and Colonel Keene, retired from the dew into the drawing-room. Soon after the two youths and seven nymphs came in, and shut the door of the hall".

Lady Hertford died in 1782. Walpole confided to his old friend the countess of Upper Ossory: "I truly loved her, and she was invariably kind to me for forty years. She had been seized on the preceeding Sunday with a violent cough and spitting blood, and left Ditton on the Tuesday for fear of being confined in that damp spot, which has been her death. I was witness to so many virtues in her, that after my lord and her children, I believe, nobody regrets her so sincerely as I do. Her house was one of my few remaining habitudes".

After her death the earl lost all heart for Fords, gave up the tenancy, and moved away. Although his residence here was for but a short three years or so, Walpole's letters have ensured that it will be a long remembered one. He died on 14 June 1798.

Mrs. Charlotte Boyle Walsingham

After the departure of the earl of Hertford a new tenant was found. With whom the situation closely resembled that which had pertained twenty-five years earlier when Mrs. Digby had arrived. As then, the lessee was an affluent aristocratic widow. As then, the lady's name was Charlotte. As then, she was merited with the title "honourable". As then, after a short time in the tenancy she, too, persuaded the owner to allow her to purchase the freehold of the house.

This lady's name was Mrs. Charlotte Boyle Walsingham, the daughter of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1708-1759), author, member of Parliament, and diplomat. He represented this country in both Germany and Russia.

From her father she inherited a love of literature and of art. Williams wrote to her from St. Petersburg, advising her: "Whenever you read any poetry you like, be sure to get the finest passages by heart. But you must read with care, or you had better not read it at all. For it is with reading, as with eating. It is not the quantity of what we eat or read, but what we digest, that does good".

Her relationship with her mother was sometimes less cordial. When she was just fourteen, for instance, and of poor health, she suffered a severe illness brought about by a harsh beating her mother had given her simply for reading Fielding's novel, Tom Jones. Which provoked Henry Fox, first Lord Holland (the brother of Mrs. Charlotte Digby, the former owner of Fords) to report the matter to her father, and urged him to take the girl away from her mother and educate her himself on the Continent: "To whip a girl of fourteen for anything is wrong and indecent: for what they called her fault, ill-natur'd and unjust: in her circumstances of health and constitution, creul and inhuman".

No wonder as soon as she could she tried to get herself married. When only eighteen years old she threw herself at the impecunious son of the earl of Buckinghamshire. Which, when reported to her father, brought him scurrying back from Russia to prohibit the wedding, unless the young hopeful could produce evidence of having £1,000 a year to support her. Which he could not do. Her mother at first offered the couple a sum of money, but later forbade them to meet. Charlotte, however, was self-willed and although overtly manifested complete capitulation to her parents' desire, covertly carried on a romantic correspondence with her lover. When Sir Charles found out his fury waxed fervent. Charlotte finally succumbed to her filial duty and the affair was brought to an end. The young nobleman, a few months later, married another lady, and eventually succeeded to his father's title and fortune.

Sir Charles, obviously feeling that he would suffer no peace until his daughter was safely settled in the wedded state, looked around for what he considered an ideal match. Sometime later he announced to the world that she was affianced to a new suitor, and that she liked him very much. Nevertheless, this seems to have been rather an exaggeration, for apparently she hardly knew the chosen one at all, even by sight. Charlotte was not the girl to have a husband foisted upon her, even by her own father, and the marriage never took place.

During the latter years of his life Sir Charles Williams suffered from an extremely painful illness, and eventually died by his own hand in November 1759. He left the whole of his estate in trust for his two daughters, but his malady had deteriorated so far that he was totally unaware of what was going on around him, that his elder daughter had died, and what is more that Charlotte had at last been married. She was now his sole heiress, and a very rich woman.

The husband of her choice was the Hon. Robert Boyle Walsingham, son of the earl of Shannon, who was two years her senior. He was then a captain in the navy, and had been a member of Parliament for two years. He had been born just Robert Boyle, but had assumed the additional surname on inheriting a share of an estate which had formerly belonged to a kinswoman, Lady Osborn, whose maiden name had been Walsingham.

Soon after the marriage the couple were granted the use of a suite of rooms on the south side of Clock Court in Hampton Court Palace, and afterwards transferred to a similar apartment at Windsor.

In 1780 Boyle Walsingham, now a commodore, was placed in charge of a squadron on its way to reinforce a fleet commanded by Admiral Rodney in the West Indies. Flying his flag in the "Thunderer", a man of war with 74 guns and a crew of six hundred men. In October, just off Jamaica, they sailed into a most violent hurricane, and the ship went down with all hands.

Mrs. Boyle Walsingham, now a rich widow, sought a house where she could live in suitable style with her two children. Whilst occupying the rooms at Hampton Court she undoubtedly would have looked across the Thames to Fords, and may well have visited Mrs. Digby there. The Williams, Fox, and Digby families were all very close. Sir Charles Williams, when he was in Germany, had procured for Mrs. Digby a fine set of dinner ware from the famous Dresden china factory, which probably often graced the table at Fords.

Now that Lord Hertford had given up the tenancy the opportunity arose for her to take the house over. Its delightful ambience, the perfect setting, the views across the river to the magnifcent avenues of Hampton Court Park, would all have appealed to Mrs. Boyle Walsingham's strong artistic emotions.

Her children were: a daughter, like herself named Charlotte, of whom we shall have a great deal to say later; and a son, Richard, who became a lieutenant in the Guards. A very personable youth, he was described by the prince of Wales, later George the fourth, who was his contemporary, as having "more wit and talents, and as much good sense and good nature" as any man he had ever known. Walpole told one of his friends: "He is a very pleasing young man; a fine figure, his face like hers(his mother's), with something of his grandfather Sir Charles Williams, without his vanity; very sensible, and uncommonly well bred". Mary Hamilton, the novelist, echoed this with: "a handsome, lively, well-bred & I beleive sensible young man". But then rather spoils it by going on:
"I have heard that he is dissipated & extravagant, but how few, how very few young men are otherwise". (What a modern ring this last sentence has!).

Dissipated he must have been, and it soon began to take its toll. In 1785, when he was but twenty-five, his mother was writing to Mrs. Delany: "Alas my time and thoughts have all been devoted to endeavours for the recovery of my son's health, on whose fine person and constitution 'fell dissipation has already done the work of time'. He has in my opinion, every sympton of a consumption, spitting blood, night sweats, &c."

After a short time, however, a schism appeared between mother and son, both were so alike - heady and self-willed - and she disowned him. Hannah More wrote to Walpole: "I grieve for the poor sick son of our too rigorous and inexorable friend. O why will she harden herself to the two most irresistible of all claims, a child, and sick!". He lingered in this state for another three years and died at Bristol in October 1788. According to the prince of Wales:"If he had not died early (he) would have been one of the most considerable men that England had ever produced".

In March 1783, after having lived in the house for a year, and having decided she liked it, Mrs. Boyle Walsingham persuaded Stephen Digby to sell her the freehold of the estate.

In the deed of transfer it was described as: "the Capital Mansion called Fords, with pleasure grounds, orchards, garden, field, lawns, shrubberies, greenhouse, farmyards, barns, stables, etc. and Boathouse Close, and various parcels of land". Included in the purchase were the islands in the river, and several other pieces of land in Thames Ditton and East Molesey which were copyhold of the manor of Molesey Prior.

Stephen Digby retained a number of other properties in Thames Ditton, which, in 1785 he transferred to his elder brother, Thomas, dean of Durham. He died in 1800, and was buried in Thames Ditton churchyard by the side of his beloved first wife

Boyle Farm

With a new owner came a new broom, ready to bring sweeping changes to the house. Mrs. Boyle Walsingham set about turning the place into a modern mansion, appropriate to her standing as one of the wealthiest women in Britain.

She had the old house demolished, and rebuilt on a grander and more up-to-date style. In December 1783, she renewed the old fire insurance taken out originally by George Tash nearly thirty years earlier. Which again gives us details of the house, and shows us just how it was at that time. It was still in three parts; a centre portion, three storeys high, sixty-nine feet by thirty- two feet, with a part twenty-four feet long protruding out from it by eight inches. The two wings were each thirty-eight feet by twenty- six feet. All built of brick, and valued at Two thousand, six hundred pounds. Most of the outbuildings, but not all, had also been rebuilt, and they were valued at four hundred pounds

In 1786 Mrs. Boyle Walsingham decided to improve the house even further, and to drop the name "Fords", by which it had been known for generations. Henceforth it was to be called after herself - "BOYLE FARM". On 5 March she notes in her diary; "I laid the first stone of my new house - Boyle Farm". This statement has previously been taken to infer that the house was reconstructed in its entirity in that year, but as we can see from the fire insurance policies it had been mostly built nearly three years earlier. What was new in 1786 was only a fairly small addition and the change of name.

When the additions were complete the insurance was amended yet again, and from these records it is possible to see that it was only the centre block which was altered. It had been thirty-two feet deep, this was now extended by another twenty-four feet on the northern side, more or less to line up with the two wings. And an additional floor was put over part of it, increasing the height of that to four storeys. This is basically the house we see today, except that the curved bay which forms such a delightful feature of the river front must have been added later, as it is not mentioned on the policy.

A stable block, forty feet by twenty feet, with lofts and rooms over, which is mentioned on all three insurance policies, still remained as possibly the last remnants of the old Hatton house. It is this which, as already mentioned, can still be traced as the wall extending from the river front of the house, and which afterwards became the conservatory.

There are in existence at least two separate prints of the house. One depicting the south, or entrance front; the other drawn from across the river and showing the north side

As can be seen from the prints on the preceeding page, the architecture of the house was mainly plain, square, and restrained. Horace Walpole, the high priest of elaborate neo-Gothicism, found the conception very ordinary, and wrote: "Mrs. Walsingham is making her house at Ditton, now baptised Boyle Farm, very orthodox". Even so some concession was made to the Strawberry Hill taste by the adoption of a crenellated parapet which surrounded the top of the house, and, except for the extremely tall gables of the two wings, completely hid the roofs, which must have been either flat or very shallow.

Such a consummate medley of styles, even including a portico in the classical mode, surely never arose from the drawing board of a professional architect. Was it the child of the ever fertile brain of Mrs. Walsingham herself? And was the embattled parapet a surrender not to Walpole but to the strictures of Moses? - "When thou buildest a new house, thou shalt make a battlement for the roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence".

If the house was dull outside, internally it really displayed the Boyle Walsingham artistic bent with a vengeance. The creations of mother and daughter filled every room. The walls were rich with exhibitions of their art. As indeed were those of their town house in Stratford Place, Marylebone. Fanny Burney had this to say of them: "They appear to me surprisingly well executed, and the subjects are admirably chosen and selected. They are chiefly copies from old pictures, or from Sir Joshua Reynolds. She has also copied Gainsborough's sweet Shepherd's Boy; and there are originals, by herself, of Capt. Dalsingham, and her son, and Miss Boyle. These are all in oils. There are also some heads in Crayon, and several small figures in Plaster of paris by Miss Boyle, who inherits her mother's genius and fondness for painting".

Mrs. Boyle Walsingham had herself sat for her portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds on at least three occasions, and the artist became good friends with her and her husband. He is known to have visited her here at Boyle Farm.

The daughter, Charlotte Boyle (She refused even as a girl to use the additional surname adopted by her father. Proof that like her mother she was a child of spirit), was all round considered to have a talent for artistic interpretation. Even whilst only fourteen years old she was highly praised by Mary hamilton, the novelist, who called her:"the most accomplished young person I have ever met with. She is mistress of Music & Painting, models in a surprising manner, knows perfectly Modern & Ancient History, French, Italian, Geography, Mathematics, Astronomy, the English Classics, is learning Spanish and Latin, &c. &c.".

Walpole compared her to his cousin, Mrs. Delany, one of the best-known sculptresses of the eighteenth century, and wrote to the earl of Stratford: "Miss Boyle, who has real genius, has carved three tablets in marble with boys, designed by herself. These sculptures are for a chimney-piece, and she is painting panels in grotesque for the library, with pilasters of glass in black and gold".

He repeated the same theme to Hannah More: "Miss Boyle has decorated their house most charmingly; she has not only designed, but carved in marble, three beautiful bas-reliefs, with boys, for a chimney-piece, besides painting elegant panels for the library, and forming, I do not know how, pilasters of black and gold beneath glass; in short, we are so improved in taste, that, if it would be decent, I would like to live fifty or sixty years more, just to see how matters go on".

Miss More herself, when writing the piece which is quoted on the first page of this work, went on to say that the house was:"already completely furnished; all the purple and gold pilasters of the magnificent library, the chimney pieces, sculpture as well as paintings, both designed and executed by Miss Boyle. The doors are adorned with rich paintings, copied from the Vatican; the panels, pictures emblematic of the arts and sciences, from Herculaneum, all done by that young lady in the short space of a year".

Horace Walpole surely have been gladdened could he have but known that not just fifty or sixty years after he had written, but two hundred years on, these self-same glass panels, twenty-eight in all, including one signed "C. BOYLE NOVEMBER 2D 1786", with other painted designs, can still be seen and admired and are well cared for. In 1962 they underwent a complete restoration and regilding

The library is perhaps the most magnificent room in the house. Of grand proportions, with a great bow and large windows, and a fine prospect overlooking the lawn down to the river and across to Hampton Court Park and the Pavilion. Once used as a ward, called "The Ward of the Good Shepherd", it is now used by the patients as a lounge.

Miss Boyle's talents were also displayed in other ways. For instance, she used her art for the entertainment of the guests with a puppet show, devised and produced entirely by the young lady herself. Walpole, in playful mood, warned the ladies: "Mrs. Walsingham may think what she will, but if she and Miss Boyle make Boyle Farm so delightful, as they are capable of doing, they will live to repent of it. The wise men will come from the east, and all the foolish men and women in Europe to visit it, and Miss Boyle will have made a puppet-show, that for once she did not intend".

Not long after moving to Thames Ditton, Mrs. Boyle Walsingham and her daughter had an unforgetable experience. Which proves just how lawless the roads were like in this district in those pre-policed days. On their way home, and not very far from it either, their carriage was stopped by a highwayman, who held a pistol to the girl's breast, and threatened to pull the trigger if they did not make haste to hand over their valuables. Walpole reported the incident to Henry Seymour Conway, Lord Hertford's brother: "One is never safe by day or night. Mrs. Walsingham, who has bought your brother's late house at Ditton, was robbed a few days ago in the high road, within a mile of her house, at seven in the evening".

Mrs. Boyle Walsingham was a great socialite. She entertained on a lavish scale. Even before taking over Boyle Farm her town house was noted for its balls and coversaziones. It must be said, however, that she had a reputation that she "took care to invite no company to her house whom she disposed to disdain". For "she has the character of being only civil to people of birth, fame, or wealth, and extremely insolent to all others".

Nonetheless, the list of guests who flocked to Boyle Farm contains such famous names as: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, Mrs. David Garrick, Fanny Burney, Hannah More, and Mary Hamilton. Each of whom have written about their visits here. There must have been many more, equally as well-known, who did not.

Perhaps the best account of a stay in the house, demonstrating the gentle easy way of life which the well-off spent in a country mansion in the late eighteenth century, comes befittingly from the pen of Mary Hamilton, one of the most popular novelists of the age, although very little read these days. It is rather lengthy, with a welter of detail, some parts of it deserve to be quoted here.

"I accompanied Mrs. Walsingham & her daughter to Thames Ditton. Mrs. W. is very much pleased with this place; I do not wonder at it after having been at the Castle, with all the restraint which naturally attends such a situation; here she is sole mistress, & everything around her being her own property, it interests & amuses her. Mrs. W. showed me the house & we walked in the Garden till near ten, at that hour we sup, Miss Boyle goes to bed; Mrs. Walsingham was very lively, we talked, & did not retire till 12, when she politely conducted me to my room".

"On Sunday I got up at 6; as soon as I was dressed I went into the garden. The morning was heavenly, I was joined by my hostess, we walked till 9, when the bell rings for breakfast, at 10 we separated & met again at 11 to go to Church, which is very near the house. It is a very pretty Country Church & we had a very decent Well behaved congregation; the Clergyman's appearance was suited to it, an amiable looking old Man with Silver locks, he read the prayers devoutly, & gave us a good Sermon, the style unaffected & not above the comprehension of his country parishioners. The little Band of Vocal performers quite excelled in singing the Psalms, & they sang an Anthem in a manner far superior to what I have ever heard in a village Church".

"The Dinner hour is 3 o'clock & the hours are strictly kept; we separated 5 till 6 when we drank tea under some Trees upon the Terrace which has the Thames running under it".

"At 7 we got into Mrs. Walsingham's boat & were rowed for near two hours; nothing could have been more delightful; the Evening was serene, and you know how many beautiful Objects there are on the Banks of this River. When we returned, the fineness of the weather tempted us to walk & Mrs. W. took me round that part of the grounds which may be styled 'Ferme Ornee' ".

"I got up before 7, sat in the garden and read. Mrs. W. and Miss Boyle joined me at ½ past 8. Miss Boyle read the Psalms and chapters, she reads a chapter in the Old and one in the New Testament. At 6 o'clock Mrs. W. and Miss Boyle and I went in the phaeton to Oatlands, the Duke of Newcastle's, about 7 miles from Thames Ditton".

On another visit: "After Dinner we went to the Medallion Seat, where we had our coffee & sat till tea time, we also drank tea there, the passing objects such as pleasure boats, Barges, etc. on the river & the Carriages on the opposite shore made an agreeable variety. This villa is on the Surrey side immediately opposite Hampton Court Palace, 2 of the Pavilions are the principal object, the Palace is hid behind the trees, the Terrace of the Palace Garden is so high that with a telescope from this seat one can easily distinguish who are walking there, if one is acquainted with them".

"Mrs. Walsingham is a widow, & daughter of the celebrated Sir Charles Hanbury Williams & Lady Frances Coningsby, she has a great portion of her father's wit, is more informed than most women & is very highly accomplished, she is esteemed by the judges to be the first lady Painter".

"Sunday I got up soon after 6, went into the garden, Miss Boyle joined me, she shewed me her birds, & the nests she has found; Mrs. W. joined us at 11, we went to Church. At 1 we had an elegant little repast brought, of fruit, cakes, & Ice water; at 3 Mrs. W's Maid attended me & dressed my hair, as I did not take my own Maid, at 4 o'clock 1 joined them in the Garden, Mrs. Garrick was arrived, but Alas! no Mr. Walpole, he had sent his excuse, being ill - we saw ye Prince of Wales on ye opposite shore, who went to pay a visit to the beautiful Lady Waldegraves who lodge in the summer in the Pavilion".

So much of Boyle Farm and its life as seen through the eyes of a resident guest.

Sometimes the mansion and grounds burst into animation as Mrs. Boyle Walsingham put on one of her celebrated receptions. In June 1788, Walpole was a guest at a ball here, which, expecting warm spring weather, was to be held on the lawn sloping down to the Thames in front of the house: "Which", he says,"would have been very pretty, for she had stuck coloured lamps in the hair of all her trees and bushes, if the east wind had not danced a reel all the time by the side of the river".

Another account of the same jollity, which is virtually a catalogue of the nobility attending, was writtne by Mrs. Boscawen, widow of the admiral known as "Old Dreadnought". "I am going this evening to Mrs. Walsingham's ball at Thames Ditton, alias Boyle's Farm(sic). I shall meet there Lord Falmouth, Mrs. and Miss Price, Lady de Clifford and daughter. Many more London ladies and gentlemen I would have said but that the Prince of Wales gives a ball tonight also". And afterwards: "I have to relate that Mrs. Walsingham's ball was charming, abounding with dancing men and with great ladies, as the Duchess of Buccleuch and her daughter, Lady Weymouth and hers, Lady Mornington and hers, Lady Clarendon and hers; tho the Prince got away from her the Marlboros, Manchesters, Ladies Salisbury and Sefton, and I suupose many oters".

This June ball was apparently an annual event, for in the following year it was described in The Times as "The splendid and costly ball". Costly it must have been, for they went on to say: an unlimited order, we hear, was given to the purveyor for supper, wine, confectionery, music, decorations, illumination, and everything expensive was procured, insomuch that the bills amounted to a small fortune: they were all, however, punctilliously paid the next morning so nice a sense has that lady of the propriety of discharging debts".

However, before the next June ball could take place Mrs. Boyle Walsingham, after "a long and painful illness", had died. She was fifty-one years old.

In her will she expressed the desire "to be buried in a decent but private manner in the Parish Church of Thames Ditton". This was done and a monument was erected on the wall of the south aisle to her memory.

Thus ended an era of great moment in the history of this house. Within eight years it had been re-built, re-named, and brought to the forefront of Society. All accomplished by a woman of great drive. Of whom one of her own friends said: "Mrs. Walsingham must be admired for her talents, & if she had made more allowances for those who had not so strong a mind &c. as herself, she would be more loved. She is keen & sometimes severe & wants a certain softness, without which no female can appear truly amiable. She has a very large fortune in her own power. I have been told 5 or £6000 pr. annum, besides money, she has everyting in style, lives like a person of fashion; she is a good economist, & though she lives expensively, yet not extravagantly"

Miss Charlotte Boyle

Except for a bequest of "one years wages to any of my servants who shall at the time of my death have lived twelve years in my service", the whole of Mrs. Boyle Walsingham's estate was left to her "dear daughter and only child' Charlotte Boyle".

This young lady, she was then in her twenty-first year, now found herself the mistress of a fortune estimated at £200,000 and the second most wealthy heiress in the country.

She was a spirited girl but, as we have seen, her mother was somewhat imperious, and kept her offspring on a rather tight rein. To which she had submitted dutifully. It was not surprising, therefore, that once the bridle was released the emancipated filly, bounding with life and vitality, burst forth in full-blooded high spirits.

That such vast opulence should be bestowed on one person, and that person at once both young and female, should evoke feelings of envy in other less fortunate breasts, is not to be wondered at. Mrs. Damer, the sculptress, wrote to Mary Berry: "Would to God that half that which has been lavished on her, and seems now jumbling, jolting and filtering away, in rides, drives, balls, and a round of idle, empty amusements, had been bestowed on my poor cousin".

Other people, however, viewed her "rides, drives, and balls", in a different light. Mrs. Damer's cousin, Horace Walpole, for instance, wrote: "Miss Boyle is intoxicated with her release, and laughs and talks and gallops and drives and dances from night to morning, and from one end of the isle to t'other - yet to the last moment of her mother's life never relaxed one moment in attention; and since with all her torrent of spirits, has done nothing to be blamed, and behaves with great regard and propriety to all her mother's old friends".

Nevertheless, her mother's old friends were worried that she would now be pestered by suitors, solely after her money. Just how many noble bloods did, in fact, hurl themselves at her feet hoping to become masters of her fortune is not recorded. Walpole was lulled: "I do hear of no preference she shows; and she has the sense to admit no female to live with her (who would soon recommend a male) I hope she will not fling away her self and her liberty and her felicity on one of our sex, without knowing whether he deserves it or not".

On 3 April 1791 he declared to Miss Berry: "Miss Boyle, who has not let herself be snapped up by lovers of her fortune, is going to Italy for a year with Lord and Lady Malden".

However, he was mistaken. She never undertook such a journey. Instead, just one month later, he was telling the same lady: "Miss Boyle, I heard last night had consented to marry Lord Henry Fitzgerald. I think they have chosen well"

Lord Henry Fitzgerald

Being the younger son of an extensive family Lord Henry Fitzgerald had little to hope for in the way of inheritance. Nevertheless, he had all the right upper crust connections. He was the son of the first duke of Leinster, and of royal descent, being the grandson of the duke of Richmond, who was himself the grandson of Charles the second's liaison with the French Louise de Keroualle. Like Charlotte Digby, who was as we have seen occupier of the house when it was Fords, he was descended from the earls of Kildare, and the coats of arms of both families have the same supporters - a pair of monkeys. Recalling an instance, back in the fourteenth century, when in a blazing castle one of these creatures saved the life of the child who was to become the first earl, by cradling the little boy in its arms.

He was nine years senior to Charlotte, and had led a much more exciting and romantic life. After an education at Eton, he had joined the army, saw action in the West Indies, and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, all whilst still in his early twenties(164). On returning to this country he quit the service and joined the social round, both in London and in Dublin. Making a particular shine in the role of amateur thespian.

Acting was then all the rage among the beau-monde. After all, with plenty of time and few duties or responsibilities they had to find something to do to occupy their minds.

Fitzgerald's father had turned part of his mansion in County Kildare in Ireland into a theatre, in which he, his mother, and other relatives and friends displayed their dramatic skills. Then in London his cousin, the duke of Richmond, opened a private theatre at his town house just off Whitehall. Here the young, and even the not so young, all aspiring David Garricks and Sarah Siddons, gave vent to their theatrical yearnings.

The Richmond House Theatre, as it was known, excelled for the high standard of the talents displayed there. "I do not think there is a private theatre like Richmond House", wrote one critic, "for not to speak of the excellence of every individual performer, I never saw anything ludicrous on that stage, and I believe that there are very few private performances that can boast so much".

In the spring of 1787 they staged a play called "False Appearances, which was an adaptation of a French piece "Les Dehors
Trompeurs", and Henry Fitzgerald was invited to join the cast, and given the role of "the marquis". He was an instant success, and soon became the company's star performer. The earl of Ailesbury confided to his diary: "Lord Henry Fitzgerald's acting was incomparable". John Kemble, reversing his usual function, was one of the audience, "and professed himself delighted with the performance, and desired to transplant the play to Drury Lane".

In the following autumn the play was "The Wonder", a popular comedy by Susanna Centlivre, widow of Joseph Centlivre, the king's chief cook, who lies buried in East Molesey churchyard. Henry played the main character, "Don Felix", a gay Spanish nobleman. Having previously concentrated on tragic roles, this was his first attempt at comedy. And in a part which stretches the acting ability between extremes of tenderness and jealousy.

The critics raved. The Times said of his performance: "Of Felix, every eulogium that can be paid to good acting, is, of right, a tribute due to Lord Henry Fitzgerald. his figure, voice, and manner united in communicating a true representative of a polished gentleman. His agitations were expressed with nature, discriminated with skill, and the passion of jealousy was never more naturally portrayed".

The role of Don Felix had been made famous by Garrick, who played the part sixty-five times in twenty years. But Henry's performance was considered comparable even to England's greatest thespian himself.

One lady, who sat in the front row of the pit in order not to miss any part of the act, writes: "Everybody that has seen Garrick thought Henry equal to him, some parts beyond him; but Henry looked much more the character of Don Felix, as he has one great advantage over Garrick, that of having a remarkably pretty figure and looking more like a gentleman, which I understand was not the case with Garrick". Although this assertion may be thought to be prejudiced - the writer was his sister.

However, it was to some extent echoed by Walpole: "Lord Henry", he said, "is a prodigy, a perfection - all passion, nature and ease; you never saw so genuine a lover. Garrick was a monkey to him in Don Felix; then he is so much a man of fashion, and is so genteel. In short, when people of quality can act, they must act their own parts so much better than others can mimic them". His portrait in this role was engraved in mezzotint by J. Park.

There was considerable competition among the various theatre groups set up by the titled nobility to put on the best plays and the most popular actors. Stars such as Lord Henry had become were eagerly sought after and often poached from other companies. In November 1790 we read that he had left the duke of Richmond's theatre and had opted for that of the duchess of Marlborough. The Richmond House Theatre burned down less than two years later.

Such a man as Lord Henry, handsome, dashing, and debonaire, was bound to set the female hearts afflutter. His sister, Lady Sophia Fitzgerald, boasted: "as for the ladies they left the theatre in love of him". Which, again, the staid Horace Walpole re-echoed: "He has raised a thousand passions", he says.

No wonder that of all the suitors for Charlotte Boyle's hand and fortune it was Lord Henry Fitzgerald who won the race. He had the charm - she had the money.

Arrangements for the marriage went ahead. The jointure for the control of her estate was arranged, as was usual, by the senior members of the two families, and on 4 August 1791 the two were united by special licence inside Charlotte's London house, by the bishop of Peterborough. The witnesses were the duke of Richmond and the earl of Essex.

They settled down to life at Boyle Farm, and within a week were paid a visit by their old friend Walpole: "I went to Boyle Farm this morning", he writes, "to visit Lord Henry Fitzgerald and his bride, and carried in my coach an old Lady Clifton, her aunt".

Again the house became a centre of social life. But now it was chiefly the Fitzgerald relatives who enlivened it. "The Good Family", as they were pleased to entitle themselves, were very prodigious and very close. The old duke and duchess of Leinster had had twenty children, and at her husband's death, the duchess had engaged a dour penniless Scotsman as tutor to the younger sons, and then petrified the family by announcing that she intended to marry him. Which she did and increased her progeny by yet another three. Her fertile career of childbearing altogether spanned thirty years, it apparently did her no harm - she lived to her eighty-third year.

The duchess loved Boyle Farm and its situation, and stayed here with her son and daughter-in-law for long periods playing with her grandchildren as they came along. She was described as: "a peculiarly lovable woman to whom all her family were devoted and her good looks were undisputable". She was visited here by her her sister, Lady Sarah Napier, whose husband was far away fighting in Flanders. She writes: "I passed a day with my sister Leinster at Boyle Farm, which is now the seat of luxury, & beauty, & ingenuity; it would have taken me a week to see all the fine things in the house. The grounds are enlarged and improved by the growing of trees, & the pavilions opposite are improved by the addition of trees and buildings; otherwise the natural beauty of Thames Ditton can never alter. My dear sister & her girls enjoyed it so much this hot summer. It was a delight for me to see them there"

Another guest on that occasion was Charles James Fox, the statesman and nephew of Mrs. Charlotte Digby, who as we have already seen had visited the house over thirty years before when he was yet a boy of fourteen. Lady sarah describes how he: "like me was all enchantment with the place & we were trying to find old spots & old trees of our acquaintance" .

A regular visitor also was Lord Henry's step sister, Cecilia, to whom he lent the house for her honeymoon after her marriage to Charles Lock of Norbury Park near Leatherhead, in 1795. Of non-family guests, we know that Thomas Coutts, the banker, and his family stayed here(183). Perhaps it was through such visits that his daughter came to like the district and when subsequently she married the politician, Sir Francis Burdett, they made their home for a while at nearby Ember Court.

Of all the Fitzgerald family, perhaps it was Lord Henry's sister Sophia who was closest to him. It was she who had been so eulogistic of his acting ability. She never married, and devoted herself to the service of the family. She settled in a house called "The Rushett" in Thorkhill Road just to be near her brother, and in 1799 purchased "The Lodge" in Watts Road to be even closer. The lease of "The Rushett", described as "lately in the occupation of Lady Sophia Fitzgerald", was then put of the rnarket(186). The house still exists although it is now known as "Old Manor House".

Lady Sophia continued to occupy "The Lodge" until her death in 1845, when she was buried in Thames Ditton church yard. Here she befriended and brought up two of her orphaned nieces.

She was considered the ugly ducking of the Fitzgeralds, most of whom were thought to be rather good looking. Described as "a small, fat, fair woman, very plain, but with a sweet countenance, fond of reading, work, gardening, excellent health as she grew up, an immense walker, used to walk four or five miles every day, very affectionate and sensitive" . But another of her brothers, Edward, always maintained that "there was more good in her little finger than all of the family put together".

In 1798 Charlotte Fitzgerald, Lord Henry's wife, met Fanny Burney, whom she had not seen since she was the fourteen-year-old Miss Boyle when, as we have seen, Fanny had a great friendship with her mother. However, a certain coolness seems to have developed between the two. Mrs Boyle Walsingham had written to Fanny from Boyle Farm on 18 September 1786: "I was very glad to receive a letter from you, but rather frightened at the formality of it, pray write to me in a more friendly & familiar style, to remind me of the pleasant days I have enjoyed in your society here, which tho' I am afraid (from your situation) can never return, I shall never cease to regret". Just what this situation was it is not clear, and although she went on to say "If any lucky accident should bring you within reach of this place, I hope you will give me the pleasure of seeing you", apparently Fanny had never visited Boyle Farm again.

Nevertheless, after all this time Fanny met again with the daughter, and has this to say of her: "She adores her husband, Lord Henry, who was her decided choice, & with whom she has lived in uninterrupted harmony since their union. She has several little children, & brings them up, and nurses & teaches them all herself. She is one of the fondest of mothers as well as wives".

Although Henry and Charlotte loved Boyle Farm, they were also enraptured with Italy, where they usually spent the winter. "The beauty of the Italian scenery made an irresistible appeal to Lady Henry's artistic sense; and she passed long hours painting the views and visiting the palaces, churches, and operas. Lord Henry, too, had a dilettante love of the arts, though his forte lay in acting rather than in the fine arts".

Henry was also fond of walking. Of the Lake of Guarda he says:"One mountain of an immense height stands almost single upon its border, and on its top I could see a small church and a cluster of little houses, embosomed in evergreen wood. To this mountain my ambition climbed. Rugged and weary was the path; and as I stopped to breathe, I felt the lake with all its beauties become under the dominion of my eye, and by degrees I could look down upon this scene, as upon a map. At the top I found a surface about the size of my field at Boyle Farm, laid out with gardens, and to each garden a house. These were twelve in number, and they were not only retired from the world, but half-way up to Heaven".

It was in Italy that the Fitzgerald's first child, a son whom they named after his father, was born. Lady Holland reported: "At Verona we found Lord and Lady Fitzgerald; she was suddenly brought to bed there".

Six years later, back in England, the same lady wrote in her diary: "1799. 3 July. On Wednesday went to Boyle Farm to stay the day for the christening of Lord Henry's youngest son. Lord Holland is his godfather, he is christened Edward". Unfortunately this lad died when he was only eleven years old. Altogether twelve children were produced in steady rotation, of whom eight were born in Thames Ditton, and were taken across the road to be baptized in the font at the church of St. Nicholas.

In 1798 a great sadness settled upon the family and Boyle Farm. The Fitzgeralds were deeply involved in Irish politics. Their ancestors had settled in County Kildare in the twelfth century, and had come to dominate the country like princes. But unlike most of the autocratic overlords in that island, had mixed and intermarried with the locals, had adopted their language and traditions, and had been accepted as true Irishmen. (Perhaps if more others had done likewise that poor unhappy country would not be seeing the divisive troubles which so beset it today). Henry Fitzgerald's aunt, Lady Sarah Bunbury, wrote with much sorrow: "lt is not possible to live in this country without perpetually feeling distress on account of the greatest number of its inhabitants which are poor - the most part without exaggeration have a bare existence".

The pre-eminence of the family in Irish affairs is manifested by the fact that when Lord Henry's father had been made duke of Leinster he was the first duke ever created in the Irish peerage. But although he lived almost like an uncrowned king in his mansions at Carton in the province of Leinster and Lildare House (now the Parliament House) in Dublin, yet he was the leader of the Irish Patriotic Party, and he and his family spoke out at the conditions of the poor peasantry and the iniquities of the administration.

This love of the Emerald Isle was embedded in all the Fitzgeralds. Lord henry had been elected a member of Parliament for the City of Dublin even before his marriage and his settling down at Boyle Farm. But it was his youngest brother, Edward, whose fanaticism, whose heorism, and whose eventual death for the cause of Irish freedom, has, even in a country noted for its martyrs, earned for him the reputation of Erin's greatest patriot.

The story of Lord Edward's exploits, of his marriage to the beautiful Lady Pamela (supposedly the daughter of the duke of Orleans and Madame de Genlis), of his attempt to raise an Irish insurrection, of his death in prison after being wounded by an English soldier, and of Pamela's exile, her death in Paris, and the subsequent re-interment of her remains in Thames Ditton churchyard, has been told detail by detail many times(198). It is not, therefore, intended to repeat it here, except to say that Lord Henry, who idolised his brother, was in the cell when Lord Edward, crying "Dear Ireland, I die for you", breathed his last.

The family was grief-stricken, and when Fanny Burney saw Charlotte six months later she was still wearing double mourning. The old duchess of Leinster, now in her sixty- ninth year, came to stay at Boyle Farm again. Here she recovered her old composure, and from here in the following summer she wrote: "I am quite well again in health and enjoying as much comfort as I can ever hope to do again in this world. We are out of doors all day long with all the sweet children about us. The place, the Flowers, the Birds, are all enchanting and have a wonderful effect, a blessing from Heaven not to be overlooked. George Selwyn said of her: "She was beautiful in her person, and was no less beloved in her youth than respected in old age"

Lady De Ros

Lord Henry's wife, Charlotte, having no personal connection with Ireland, did not always fully share her husband's family's concern with its fate. After Lord Edward's death she would not allow his widow to stay at Boyle Farm. For which Charles Lock (who had married Lord Henry's half sister, and had spent his honeymoon at Boyle Farm) wrote: "Assure Lady Henry that I pity her sincerely for being drawn into a fatal connection with such a nest of Jacobins".

An Act of Attainder had been passed which branded Lord Edward guilty of treason, and Charlotte had a certain project in mind, which would almost certainly be blighted if she in any way provoked the government estabishment.

The Boyle Walsinghams were, through Charlotte's mother, descended from the barons de Ros (Pronounced and sometimes spelled de Roos) the oldest and premier barony in the kingdom, having been created in 1264. This also gave them descent from Mary Tudor, sister of Henry the eighth, and from Ann Plantagenet, sister of Edward the fourth. The barony had been in abeyance since 1687, when George, second duke of Buckingham and twentieth baron de Ros, had died. It was, however, a peerage which could descend in the female line.

Although nobody had claimed the title for over a century and a quarter, Charlotte considered it was hers by right, and in 1802 we find her seeking support from her influential friends, and in the following year she petioned the king praying that, as the nearest living relative of the last baron, the abeyance be terminated in her favour. This entreaty the king - passed to the house of Lords, who in turn referred it to their Committee of Privileges. This action stimulated three other descendants, who thought they too had a claim equally legitimate to the title, also to submit like requests.

The Committee of Privileges, under the chairmanship of lord Walsingham, now had the thorny task of trying to determine between the claims and counter claims of the rival apellants, an undertaking which cost them many meetings, many hours of deliberation, and the digestion of many thousands of words submitted in evidence. it was not until 1806, three years later, that the committee finally reported back to the full House. Their recommendation was that, as they could not find that any one of the claimants had a greater right than any other, the barony should continue in abeyance. A view with which, on the 9 May 1806, the rest of their lordships concurred.

Nevertheless, Charlotte was nothing if not determined. She had influential friends in influential places. A month later she persuaded the prime minister, Lord Grenville, to write a personal letter to George the third asking: "Whether your Majesty would be graciously pleased to determine the abeyance of the Barony of moos in favour of Lady Henry Fitzgerald, which, if your Majesty had no objection to it, Lord Grenville would venture to recommend". To which the king replied from Windsor Castle: "Lady Henry Fitzgerald having been at so much expense and trouble in regard to the Barony of Roos, and having brought forward the case so clearly, the king considers it very fair to grant the abeyance in her favour, as recommended by Lord Grenville". She was now in her own right the twenty-first Baroness de Ros, and henceforth stood in precedence above her husband. In the same year the family name was changed to Fitzgerald-de Ros.

Another indication that the family had been forgiven by the establishment for its deviation, was evidenced by Lord Henry's appointment in 1806 as postmaster-general in Ireland. A sinecure to government friends without them having any work to do to earn.

Princess and Commoner - A Romantic Interlude

Around the year 1810 we find Lord Henry Fitzgerald constantly to be seen in the company of the Princess of Wales - something indeed to set the tongues awagging. Caroline Amelia of Brunswick had engaged in a loveless marriage with her cousin, George, Prince of Vales, in 1795. Undertaken on his side purely because the government agreed to pay off his debts, amounting to some £650,000, if he did so. In the hope that she might produce an heir to the throne. Which, in fact she did, exactly nine months later, in the shape of the unfortunate Princess Charlotte.

Frequently when the princess was out driving with her ladies they met on the road, as if by accident, and Caroline would stop the carriage and invite him to enter. Lord Henry, all apologies, would say:"You are too good, madam - I am quite distressed to be in such an unfit dress to appear before your Royal Highness". To which she would reply: "Ah yes, my dear Lord Henry, we know you are all over shock - but never mind, let us make happy whilst we can"Then, with the king's increasing bouts of madness, the Prince of Wales was appointed regent, most of the courtiers who had frequented the princess's apartments forsook them for fear of incurring the royal displeasure - "swept away by the besom of expediency". Lord Henry, however, was not frightened into abandoning her. Far from it. The two were much to be seen in one another's company. Often at the theatre, where he was frequently the only male in her box.

Lady de Ros, who ultimately controlled the family's purse strings, determined to pull down the curtain on the act. she forced her husband to write a letter stating: "From motives of friendship towards her, he conceived it his duty to relinquish the honour of being so frequently in her Royal highness's society". The princess was devastated. "How could he have written such a cold blooded worldly epistle?"After this she feigned to hate him for what had happened, although he continued to be included in her company. But all around her knew that the spark of love still burned within her breast. she confided to Sir William Gell, the traveller and archaeologist, in her thick guttral German accents: "'pon my honour, I do hate Lord Henry, my dear; to tell God's truth, I cannot bear dat man". To which Gell replied, sotto voce so that only those close at hand heard: "The Lord forgive you for lying"

He was still included in her guest list up to 1814, when she was forced to live abroad. In 1820, when her husband became king, she ventured to return, only to have even more indignation heaped upon her. She died the following year.

Lord Henry returned to the less exciting life at Boyle Farm. Perhaps the incident is best summed up in the words of one courtier: "Ah! it was a great pity that he (Lord Henry) did not endeavour to continue the Princess's friend; she had such confidence in his opinion, that he might have given her good advice, and been of infinite service to her Royal Highness; but his lady wife interfered, and prevented his continuing to be intimate with the Princess, and then, perhaps, Lord Henry himself took fright, and was glad to retire before he burnt his fingers by taking and part in her Royal Highness's affairs"

The Dandies Fete

Suddenly, in June 1827, Boyle Farm burst into national prominence. Reported in the newspapers, discussed in salons, spoken of at dinner parties, mentioned in letters, enterred into diaries. And all because five young bloods, "aristocratical haymakers" as one noted writer called them, decide to hold a fete! But what a fete! This fete was to be the grandest, the most lavish, the most exclusive fete, that ever was. That's how it was planned, that's how it turned out. "The Dandies Fete", or "The Great Carousel", was talked about and written about for years.

The five aristocratic dandies who devised the carnival were Lord Alvanley, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Robert Grosvenor, and Henry William do Ros. All noted as wild and pleasure-loving youths, born to affluence, privilege, and leisure; who imagined that as the Almighty in his infinite wisdom had endowed them all with riches it was their bounden duty to make sure that they enjoyed it to the utmost. They planned the idea, each chipped in to the tune of £500, and persuaded Henry's parents to allow them the use of Boyle Farm to put it into execution. And what more ideal spot could possibly be conceived for such a festival?

John Cam Hobhouse (later Lord Broughton) wrote: "The beauty of the scene, of the weather, and the excellent management, were such as I never knew before. There were 450 guests present, and I heard no complaint of any deficiency or fault of any kind".

The Times reported: "The Fete at Boyle Farm, on Saturday last went off with extraordinary eclat. Four hundred and fifty persons sat down to an excellent dinner without any confusion; nay, so attentive were the hosts to the physical wants of their guests, that there was a hot supper ready during the whole of the night for those in whom the pleasures of the eye and ear could not subdue the more simple appetites of hunger and thirst. The gardens were beautifully illuminated, and the fireworks on an island in the Thames had a fine effect. The phantasmagoria was conducted with great skill and success. But the principal charm was the brilliant appearance of a temporary room, where 24 of the lovliest ladies in London enchanted every eye by the elegant fancy of their dress, and the harmonious grace of their motion in a quadrille costumee. Two gondolas, containing the principal singers, embarked on the Thames, whence the strains fell upon the ear with delicious effect, softened by distance. But no pleasure is without some allay; a group of male singers, who were instructed to wander about the grounds as itinerant minstrels, neglected this elegant portion of their duties, for the grosser amusements of gormandizing and drinking. They did worse: they disgusted everybody by excessive insolence and vulgarity which, no doubt, were partly attributable to their too great devotion to the substantial delights of the table, We must not forget that some Venetian Barcarolles, conducted by Velluti, before dinner, had an enchanting effect. This elegant entertainment will be long remembered by all who witnessed it".

The scene was vividly recalled by one of the guests, Tom Moore, the Irish poet, who wrote in his diary: "Day rather threatening for the fete. Was with Lord Essex at two, and started about half an hour afterwards in his barouche and four. Nothing but carriages and four all along the road to Boyle Farm, which Lady de Roos has lent for the occasion to Henry. But few come when we arrived; the arrangements very tasteful and beautiful. The pavilion for quadrilles on the bank of the river, with steps descending to the water, quite oriental, like what one sees in Daniel's pictures. Towards five the elite of the gay world assembled, the women all looking their best, and scarce an ugly face among them. About half-past five sat down to dinner; four hundred and fifty under a tent on the lawn, and fifty to the royal table in the conservatory. The Tyrolese musicians sang during dinner, and after dinner there were gondolas on the river, with Caradori, De Begnis, Velluti, &c. singing barcarolles, and rowing off occasionally so as to let their voices die away and return again. After these succeeded a party in dominoes: Madame Vestris, Fanny Ayton, &c., who rowed about in the same manner and sung "Oh come to me when daylight sets", &c. &c. The evening was most delicious, and as soon as it grew dark the groves were all lighted up with coloured lamps in various devices. A little lake near a grotto looked particularly pretty, the shrubs all around being illuminated, and the lights reflected in the water. Six and twenty of the prettiest girls of the fashionable world, the Foresters, Brudnells, De Rooses, Mary Fox, Miss Russell, &c., were dressed as rosieres, and opened the quadrille in the pavilion. Resolved to go while the enjoyment of it was fresh in my mind, so started with Lord Essex about half-past ten, the fireworks on the Thames being the only thing I lost".

Moore also penned a lengthy poem, which he entitled "The Summer Fete", and which he dedicated to Caroline Norton, who was present at the fete. She was, he says, one of its "most distinguished ornaments". It is, however, such a long and boring rhyme to modern taste that one is soon lost to tedium with it, and it is not proposed to repeat it here.

John Wilson Croker, the secretary to the Admiralty, who lived at West Molesey, wrote to Lord Hertford (grandson of the Lord Hertford who had occupied the house fifty years before): "The great 'Carousal' of the year has been the fete at Boyle Farm on Saturday last. lt would fill three letters to give you any account of this entertainment, and of all the impertinences which proceeded and accompanied it. It was exclusive to the last degree. I will not make you stare with all the fables which are repeated; roads watered with eau de Cologne; 500 pair of white satin shoes from Paris to counteract the damp of the green turf. More gallons of Roman punch tham Meux's great brewing vats would hold. Fireworks ordered on this scale - the Vauxhall man was asked what was the greatest expense he could go to, and then ordered to double it; and so I need hardly add that I was not invited; but it really, and without exaggeration, was a most splendid fete".

That such a man, a member of the government, was not invited (perhaps he was considered too pompous) reveals just how exclusive it really must have been. A colossal pronouncement of the power of wealth. One wonders, however, what the villagers, the impoverished majority of Thames Ditton folk, thought about it all. They were undoubtedly overwhelmed by the magnificent coaches and caparisoned horses of nearly five hundred guests jamming their little streets; the hundreds of pounds vanishing upwards in firework smoke; and stories of the mountains of food and bottles of drink consumed by the indulged nobility. Whilst they strived to maintain their struggling families on a few shillings a week. How they must have craved for just one or two crumbs from the rich man's table.

The gap between the two classes is admirably demonstrated by the fact that just one month before this lavish junket took place the Thames Ditton vestry had passed a resolution allowing the workhouse master just four shillings and sixpence a week to maintain each of the poor inmates within his care, and in that was included his own remuneration.

The Fitzgerald-De Ros Family

In the year after the momentous fete the health of Lord Henry Fitzgerald, now in his sixties, began to fail and he died at Boyle Farm on 8 July 1829. The obituary in The Times described him as "Endowed with a good understanding, united to principles of the highest honour, his manners were most engaging. To his other excellent qualities of a cheerful mind, he added the character of a perfect gentleman. He was surrounded by an affectionate family and numerous friends, who were sure to find under his roof, the most cordial reception, and all that was hospitable and convivial. Long will his loss be felt by those who knew how truly deserving he was of the estimation in which he was held".

He was buried in Paddington church, not far from the family's town house, in the same grave in which two of his children had previously been laid.

His wife, the baroness de Ros, lived for another eighteen months, dying at her London house on 9 January 1831, and was laid to rest beside her late husband.

Just before he died Lord Henry had made out his will, it was very short. Except for some small bequests to his personal men-servants, he left the whole of his property to his wife.

At the baroness's death the de Ros title devolved on her eldest son, Henry William, the dandy and co-founder of the fete, who became the twenty-first baron. Nevertheless, it seems his mother was not wholeheartedly enamoured with his life-style, and decided he should not have control of the estate, and waste it away. Instead (except for a couple of houses in the village which she gave to her favourite son, William) she left it to trustees, for them to sell off and to distribute the profits amongst all the seven surviving children, share and share alike.

The new baron, as we have already shown, was one of that band of playboys, rich, titled, and leisured, who indulged their lives in cards, horses, pugilism, hard drinking, duelling, gambling, in fact anything which might enliven their wastrel, boring lives. Even one of his own friends called them: "unspeakably odious - with nothing remarkable about them but their insolence".

He spent much of his time lounging around the pleasure centres of Europe. Where he was found in 1830 at Naples by his cousin, Henry Fox-Strangways, who summed up his character: "Saw much of H. de Ros, he has no feelings whatsoever; all sensation is so dead that I suppose he has not feeling enough to feel animal pleasure. Edward Cheney was much bit by his civil manner and sarcastic conversation, but I discovered that all friendship with him must be hollow".

Yet, that he had deep unfathomed emotions, is evinced by his reaction to the death of one of his younger brothers in 1826. "I have never seen grief so strong and concentrated as his , wrote his friend Grenville, "it has exhausted his body and overwhelmed his mind, and though I knew him to have been much attached to his brother, I did not believe him capable of feelings so acute".

When in England most of his time was spent at the gaming tables. He belonged to several fashionable clubs, but his favourite milieu was Graham's, where whist was played every morning, and extremely large sums of money were wagered, and won and lost. In 1836 an unpleasant rumour began to circulate that a well-known peer had been spotted several times cheating. lt was not long before people started to put a name to this noble gamester - de Ros, and some clubmen refused to play with him.

In order to bring the matter to a head, a number of the leading members of Graham's, who were all convinced that they had seen him cheat, met to decide what to do about it. Most of them liked the peer and tried to prevent a scandal, but they also wanted to preserve the good name of the club. They attempted to warn him off with oblique cautions, to no effect. In the end, seeing their endeavours miscarry, four of them wrote him a letter, in which they directly accused him of cheating. Thereby forcing him to bring a charge of libel 'against his accusers - and the scandal broke.

The suit was brought before the King's Bench Division, and several witnesses swore that they had seen him swindle many times, by using a deck of cards, several of which had been marked with a thumb-nail scratch, and by cutting the pack whenever he dealt in such a way as to ascertain that he always received a good hand. The evidence against him was overwhelming and his action for libel collapsed. This verdict was equivalent to saying that he was guilty of swindling his fellow members. He immediately set sail for the Continent, when he settled down until the excitement subsided. Lady Hardy, the wife of Sir Thomas Hardy, the admiral, met him in Paris, and notes in her diary: "He was, of course, completely sent to Coventry by his family and none of his former friends took any notice of him".

He returned to this country, and settled down in a villa at St. John's Wood. His dissipated life now began to take its toll, his strength undermined, dropsy set in, and he departed this world on 29 March 1839. With the end in sight he became a changed man. Charles Greville, the diarist, perhaps his best friend, wrote in his memoirs: "Poor De Ros expired last night soon after twelve, after a confinement of two or three months from the time he returned to England. His end was enviably tranquil, and he bore his protracted suffering with astonishing fortitude and composure. Nothing ruffled his temper or disturbed his serenity - he was uniformly patient, mild, indulgent - overflowing with affection and kindness to all around him - with a spirit and resolution that never flagged till with a few hours of his dissolution, when nature gave way and he sank into a tranquil unconsciousness in which life gently ebbed away. Whatever may have been the error of his life, he closed the scene with a philosophical dignity not unworthy of a sage". He had never married.

The title now devolved upon his eldest surviving brother, William Lennox Lascelles Fitzgerald-de Ros. Whereas Henry had been a wastrel, William was quite a different character. He had been born at Boyle Farm in 1797, and joined the army as a young man. At the age of twenty-seven he married his cousin, Georgiana Lennox, daughter of the duke of Richmond. His mother gave them the use of the house later known as "Boyle Cottage" in Church Lane, where they settled down to domestic life, and from where Lady Holland reported: "W. De Ros's marriage has turned out happily. He is become gardener, carpenter, mechanic, boatman, fisherman; in short always occupied & consequently always happy. Five children & much love: in short, it is a beau ideal of real happiness". How could two brothers be so different After his accesion to the title he moved to a grander house called "Chomleys", which stood alongside the Thames by Ferry Road in Long Ditton.

His promotion in the army was rapid, especially after becoming aide-de-camp to the duke of Wellington. He also wrote several books on military matters, thirteen of which are listed in the index to the British Library. He died as a general and lieutenant-governor of the Tower of London, in 1874, within a few months of his golden wedding day. But by that time his association with Thames Ditton had long been broken.

Lord St. Leonards

As has already been stated, the baroness de Ros had decreed that Boyle Farm, along with all her other real estate, should be sold and the proceeds divided amongst the surviving of her children. The names Fitzgerald and de Ros thereafter disappear from the mansion's history.

For a time before the property was finally sold by the trustees it appears to have been leased to a tenant called Wilkinson. Although this cannot have been for very long, and he leaves nothing to the history of the house.

In 1832 a large part of the farmlands, those meadows lying between Summer Road (then known as Moulsey Lane) and the Thames, was offered for sale by auction, and in 1839 the rest of the estate, including the house, kitchen garden, islands in the river, and other lands, was sold to Sir Edward Burtenshaw Sugden, who had been living in Boyle Farm, but before this apparently only as a tenant.

Sir Edward Sugden, later Lord St. Leonards, was a truly remarkable man. Born the son of a London barber. by his own diligent efforts and brilliant intellect he mastered the intricasies of the law, became a barrister, member of Parliament, Solicitor-general, and eventually lord-chancellor and a baron.

Not only was he a man of very humble origin, but what is more, in politics he was a Tory. Thus the long association of the house with aristocratical Whiggery, which had lasted since Sidney Godolphin first came here about 1720, was brought to an abrupt conclusion. It is one of the idiosyncracies of early nineteenth century politics that whilst the scions of extremely wealthy noble families espoused the cause of liberalism and reform, some of their most vehement and vociferous opponents were to be found amongst the ranks of the newly enfranchised.

Not long after entering Parliament Sugden's talents were spotted by the duke of Wellington, who appointed him solicitor- general. An office which traditionally carries a knighthood. He was now moving upwards. However, his plebian roots did cause some complications with the establishment when, in 1834, Sir Robert Peel became prime minister and offered him the higher position of lord-chancellor of Ireland, and off he went to Brin's Isle.

He had married in 1808 a lady named Winifred Knapp, but it was soon noised around that the four eldest children of the union had been born before the two had sought the blessing of Mother Church, and the children were, in fact, not christened until two days after their parents wedding had taken place. Such loose behaviour, although inclined to be overlooked in those of higher rank (consider, for instance, the vice-ridden morals of the royals at that time), was nevertheless not condoned in mortals of lower class.

Charles Greville, the clerk to the privy council, decribed Lady Sugden as: "an excellent woman, charitable, and kind hearted". But the displays his class prejudice by going on: "I fancy she has moved without obstruction in his natural circle of society". The upper circles, in which Sugden and his wife now expected to move, were not quite ready to welcome them with open arms, in spite of his high office.

Lady Haddington, the wife of the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, a lady who as the daughter of the earl of Macclesfield was herself entirely out of the top bracket, would normally invite the wife of the new lord-chancellor to receptions at Dublin Castle. But when she was apprised of the couple's early history worked herself up into a right tizzy. Should Lady Sugden be accepted into Irish court society or not?

In this quandry Lady Haddington wrote to the queen for advice. Her reply was that she should certainly do as she should think fit, but that Lady Sugden would definitely not be received at court in London. (Such prudishness from a queen who cheerfully welcomed into her home no less that ten by-blows sired by her own husband). With this clear indication of royal protocol the lady-lieutenant declared the chancellor's wife persona non grata at the castle, and refused to meet her.

In the face of such a rebuff to his good lady, Sir Edward, in high dudgeon, wrote to Peel resigning the lord-chancellorship, less than three months from first receiving the appointment. Even had he not resigned, his term of office would not have lasted much longer - within another month Peel's government was defeated.

Six years later the Tories returned to power, with Sir Robert Peel as prime minister again. Sugden was persuaded to have another try at the same office, and he left for Ireland once more. This time he must have received guarantees that the problems of his previous endeavours had been sorted out, for he stayed in the post for the next five years, and made quite a name for himself as a legal administrator.

In February 1852, the party to which he owed his promotion and achievement was once again returned to power, with the earl of Derby as premier. Sugden was this time appointed lord-chancellor of Great Britain, and raised to the peerage, as Lord St. Leonards. Taking his title from St. Leonards Forest, which surrounded the country seat which he had purchased near Slaugham in Sussex.

His tenure of the woolsack was, however, to be shortlived. In December Lord Derby's administration fell, and he was out of office. Nevertheless, he had succeeded within a year of obtaining a number of measures amending and improving the law with regard to wills, trusts, lunacy, and chancery and common law proceedures.

Lord Derby became prime minister again in 1858, and once more offered St. Leonards the lord-chancellorship. Which he declined. One of his colleagues went so far as to suggest that he did so, not because he did not want the office, but that he did not expect to be taken at his word, and just wanted to be pressed to accept it. "If so he was disappointed", he says. "His cross- grained temper had made him a disagreeable colleague". In that case the premier must have been relieved when he realised he would not have to include him in his cabinet.

He was now seventy-seven years old, but there was no flagging of his mental or physical powers, and he continued to play an active role in the deliberations of the house of Lords and the privy council. But he never again held high office.

It seems he now contemplated putting Boyle Farm on the market, and presumably retiring to his Sussex home. For we find Thomas Love Peacock, the author, who lived at Shepperton, writing to his friend Lord Broughton, advising him that the estate was for sale. If he wanted it the price was understood to be £13,000. Peacock described it as: "one of the prettiest situations on the Thames, facing the iron railings which give open views of Hampton Court Home Park". However, Lord Broughton would hardly have required reminding of Boyle Farm's situation and beauties. He would undoubtedly have retained vivid memories of twenty-five years earlier when, as plain Mr. Hobhouse, he was one of that gay band who froliced here at the famous Dandies Fete, and from whose recollections of that notable event we have quoted already.

For one reason or another this sale never took place, and Lord St. Leonards continued to occupy the house. Here he entertained his legal and political colleagues, and took an increasing interest in the village of Thames Ditton.

Fire

Beauty of Surrey

Noblesse Oblige

Mr. Uppercrust