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GRIMSTHORPE

Grimsthorpe Castle is a mile beyond Edenham. The park, the finest in the county, in which are herds of both fallow and red deer, is very large, and full of old oaks and hawthorns; the latter in winter are quite green with the amount of mistletoe which grows on them. The lake covers one hundred acres. The house is a vast building and contains a magnificent hall 110 feet long, with a double staircase at either end, and rising to the full height of the roof. In the state dining-room is the Gobelin tapestry which came to the Duke of Suffolk by his marriage with Mary, the widow of Louis XII. of France. Here, too, are several Coronation chairs, the perquisites of the Hereditary Grand Chamberlain. The Willoughby d’Eresby family have discharged this office ever since 1630 in virtue of descent from Alberic De Vere, Earl of Oxford, Grand Chamberlain to Henry I., but in 1779, on the death of the fourth Duke of Ancaster, the office was adjudged to be the right of both his sisters, from which time the Willoughby family have held it conjointly with the Earl of Carrington and the Marquis of Cholmondeley. Among the pictures are several Holbeins. The manor of Grimsthorpe was granted to William, the ninth Lord Willoughby, by Henry VIII. on his marriage with Mary de Salinas, a Spanish lady in attendance on Katharine of Aragon, and it was their daughter Katherine who became Duchess of Suffolk and afterwards married Richard Bertie.