Holme Pierrepont
Built by William Pierrepont, it retains its red brick Tudor front with battlementing and dates from 1510. The Pierrepont family were the Earls and Dukes of Kingston in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1806 the house was inherited by a nephew, Earl Manvers. The Manvers built Thoresby Hall, another Salvin house, between 1864 and 1875 and moved there on its completion. Holme Pierrepont then became a lesser house.
In 1969 Mrs Brackenbury, a descendant of the 3rd Earl Manvers, purchased the property with her husband and so it still remained within the family.
Writing in the 1950s, Sir Nicholas Pevsner comments: ' ... here is a case where a mansion of the proudest is still completely inhabited and used as it was when the era of Disraeli conceived it’.
The Pierreponts are said to be of Norman extraction, and the name suggests such an origin but the first to be fully documented was Sir Henry Pierrepont, who, at the end of the 13th century, married an heiress, Annora de Manvers of Holme near Nottingham. This property was to be their descendants’ principal seat for several centuries and became known as Holme Pierrepont, and though the name of Manvers disappeared it was resurrected in the 19th century.
The son of Robert and Annora, another Robert, became Governor of Newark Castle, and the family connection with that town was also perpetuated later when, in 1627, the then head of the family, Robert Pierrepont, was created Lord Pierrepont, Viscount Newark and later Earl of Kingston. It was the 1st Earl of Kingston who acquired the estate of Thoresby which hitherto had passed through the hands of many different families.
The Pierreponts can be seen in marble and alabaster in the church at Holme Pierrepont, but the great house there, which is still standing and occupied by a descendant of the family, ceased to be the principal seat of the Pierreponts after the acquisition of Thoresby. William Talman, the architect of Chatsworth, was brought in to design the first Thoresby Hall.
The Pierreponts provide interesting genealogical links with the other families of the Dukeries as will be seen from the tree. The first of these links was Sir Henry Pierrepont’s marriage with Frances Cavendish, one of Bess of Hardwick’s daughters. They were the parents of the 1st Earl of Kingston.
Lord Kingston was an ardent Royalist in the Civil War though earlier he had sat on the fence and declared that he would rather be torn in two than take sides in the conflict. In due course loyalty won and he joined the Royalists but he was later taken prisoner by Lord Willoughby who put the Earl in a small boat bound for Kingston-on- Hull - the only town in Yorkshire which was not for the King, an irony surpassed only by the unfortunate man being literally cut in half by a Royalist cannon ball fired at the boat as it sailed up the Humber.
The 2nd Earl of Kingston was also a Royalist and adhered to Charles I, accompanying him to Oxford. Two years after succeeding to his father’s titles, he was himself created Marquess of Dorchester. Scholarly and eccentric, he was a man of violent temper and much addicted to duels.
Dorchester was called to the Bar and also studied medicine. He took the latter subject very seriously and when he died a bachelor in 1680, he left his fine medical library to the Royal College of Physicians. The marquessate became extinct, but the earldom was inherited by three great-nephews in turn, the third of whom became the 5th Earl of Kingston. He was Evelyn Pierrepont. Queen Anne re-granted him the extinct marquessate of Dorchester and on the succession of George I he was made a Privy Councillor and raised to the rank of Duke of Kingston. His daughter, Lady Mary Pierrepont, made her mark in the fields of both medicine and literature. She eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu, a diplomat, and spent some time in Turkey where she observed a primitive form of inoculation among the natives. This she tried on her own child saving him from smallpox. In spite of being hounded and ridiculed by the Church, the medical profession and her neighbours, Lady Mary, like Dr. Jenner, fought to introduce smallpox immunisation into England against prejudice and ignorance.
Lady Mary’s brother never lived to inherit and the dukedom went to the 1st Duke’s grandson, Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston. This Duke went through a ceremony of marriage with Elizabeth Chudleigh who had been secretly married to the Hon. Augustus Hervey, a naval lieutenant. The marriage was a disaster and when Hervey found that he would soon become Earl of Bristol, he decided to get rid of his wife, and sued for divorce. Elizabeth denied that the marriage had taken place and a court ruled that she was technically a spinster. She had, for some time, been the mistress of the Duke of Kingston who then married her, died and left her all his property for life. The dukedom became extinct, but there was an ultimate heir to the Duke’s fortune - his nephew Charles Meadows who instituted proceedings for bigamy against the Duchess. As she was by now legally Countess of Bristol, she was tried by the House of Lords and found guilty. Meadows succeeded to the Kingston estates immediately and adopted the name and arms of Pierrepont. In 1796, he was created Baron Pierrepont and Viscount Newark. It would have been pleasant to have had the earldom of Kingston re-created for him, but some years before, the King family had been made Earls of Kingston in the peerage of Ireland. Meadows, now Pierrepont, went back for his title to the marriage centuries before which brought the Pierreponts their first permanent family home - the marriage with Annora de Manvers. The new Viscount Newark was, in 1807, created Earl Manvers. This title, became extinct in 1955 on the death of the 6th and last Earl Manvers, though the family still lives in the house, which now belongs to the National Coal Board.
In 1845 Lady Mary, daughter of Earl and Countess Manvers married at Thoresby to Mr. Egerton, second son of Wilbraham Egerton of Tatton Park. The honeymoon was spent at Firbeck Hall, the home of the Gally Knights.
Charles Herbert Pierrepont, Earl Manvers, Viscount Newark, Baron Pierrepont,(son of Charles Meadows) was born in the Rangers Lodge, Richmond park on 11 August, 1773. He married Mary Letitia, daughter of Anthony Hardolph Eyre. They had 2 sons and 3 daughters.
He succeeded to the titles and estates of his father in June, 1816. He joined the Royal Navy and represented Nottinghamshire as M.P. from 1801 to 1816. He was patron of 14 livings. He died in October, 1860 aged 82, at Thoresby.
The Dukeries and Sherwood Forest