Penelope shares with us her fascinating Ayliffe family history, which is intertwined with Lydiard and the St.John family, and how a chance encounter in a telephone book revealed over four hundred years of genealogy and stories. Over to you, Penelope!
I discovered Lydiard Park after I made a surprising connection with the St. John family. An interest in my Ayliffe family history began as a child when my father used to tell me stories passed on from his grandfather that Ayliffe was originally spelt ‘d’ayliffe’, and we were French Huguenot aristocrats who had fled France and changed the name to prevent persecution and “we came from kings”. Intrigued by these stories I decided in 1980, to do my own research. In 1982 I discovered a Wiltshire Ayliffe in a telephone book who advised me to contact Anthony (Tony) Ayliffe Cole because he knew a great deal about the family. I had never met Tony before, but we discovered that we shared the same great, great, grandfather. Tony was a member of the Friends of Lydiard Tregoz for many years for whom he wrote a piece included in the Friends’ Report No. 12 entitled “The Ayliffe Family and Lydiard Tregoz”.
My branch of the family came to live in Wiltshire when King Henry VIII gave my ancestor, Sir John Ayliffe (Master of the Barber-Surgeon Company and Surgeon to the King), Grittenham Manor, which was part of the confiscated property of Malmesbury Abbey.
The East Window, St. Mary’s Church, by Abraham Van Linge
The Ayliffe connection with Lydiard Park occurred when Sir John’s great-grandson, Sir George Ayliffe (Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1633) married Anne St. John (daughter of Sir John St. John) at St. Mary’s Church in Battersea circa 1610 where the marriage is depicted in the east window. They lived at Grittenham Manor and were both buried in the vaults of Lydiard church, though I believe there is now no trace of the Ayliffe vault other than a very worn slab. In the church the Ayliffe coat of arms is quartered with that of the St. John family, and the Ayliffe arms are on the triptych beneath the figure of Anne.
Sir George and Anne’s eldest daughter, Anne, married Edward Hyde who later became Charles II’s Lord Chancellor and the first Earl of Clarendon. Anne was taken ill with smallpox when travelling from London to Wiltshire and died in 1632 aged 20 only six months after her marriage to Edward. Sir George’s daughter, Debora, married her cousin John St. John who fought and died for the Royalists in the Civil War in 1643.
Sir George’s great granddaughter, Judith Ayliffe (born in 1669) inherited the estates. She never married, and after her death Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, assumed charge of the estates. One of Judith’s lawful cousins, John Ayliffe, feeling he had a right to them, tried to retrieve them by fraudulent means and was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.
As for Grittenham Manor nothing remains, and the M4 motorway now passes across what was once the Ayliffe estates.
In 2006 I became a lifetime Friend of Lydiard Park as a reminder of my family’s illustrious past.
Thanks for a fascinating feature! Penelope’s in-depth family history report can be found in The Lydiard Archives.