Good Gentlewoman Blog posts – Friends of Lydiard Park

Published on: 22nd April 2021

In the summer of 1897, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire hosted a Fancy Dress Ball to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond...

Published on: 3rd April 2021

In 1752 Mary Meredith married Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers. Her parents must have been well pleased that their...

Published on: 24th February 2013

It has to be said that the St John men didn't make very good husbands, but that didn't stop them from trying! Frederick St...

Published on: 4th January 2013

According to librettist W.S. Gilbert - 'When constabulary duty's to be done, a policeman's lot is not a happy one.' The same...

Published on: 1st January 2013

Frederick St John's wife may have had a novel name and like that other Jane Eyre she too stood by her man through good times...

Published on: 30th December 2012

When the three St John Mildmay sisters married in the early nineteenth century, they each acquired a country residence...

Published on: 17th October 2012

Symbolist, sculptor and portrait painter George Frederic Watts is widely considered to be the greatest Victorian painter....

Published on: 15th September 2012

Returning to our screens this weekend, Downton Abbey portraits an establishment where gentry and servants co-exist in a...

Published on: 25th July 2012

Who would live in a house like this? Well apart from Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII and other assorted monarchs, during the...

Published on: 11th July 2012

When Charles I's coffin was opened during building work in St George's Chapel in 1813, Royal physician Sir Henry Halford...

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