Built in 1539, for the wool merchant and Mayor of Northampton,
Lawrence Washington (1500-1583), and his wife
Ann Pargiter (1504-1564), the great-x5 grandparents of the 1st President of the United States,
George Washington of
Mount Vernon, Virginia. Sitting on an estate of over a thousand acres which included the Rectory of Stuchbury, the President's great-great-grandfather,
Lawrence, was born in the manor in 1602. Three years after the President's line settled in Virginia in 1656, Sulgrave was sold out of their family. In 1911,
Theodore Roosevelt suggested it serve as a permanent memorial to commemorate 100-years of peace between Britain and the States since the conclusion of the War of 1812-14. In 1914, Sulgrave was purchased via subscription for $42,500 although all restoration work was delayed until the conclusion of World War I....
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This house is best associated with...
Lawrence Washington
Wool Merchant & Mayor of Northampton, of Sulgrave Manor
1500-1583
Robert Washington
of Sulgrave & Brington, Northamptonshire
1544-1622
Lawrence Washington
of the Manors of Sulgrave & Wicken, Northamptonshire
1565-1616
Rev. Lawrence Washington
Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, & Rector of Purleigh & Little Braxted, Essex
1602-1652
In 1601, the Manor of Sulgrave was comprised of over a thousand acres and included the living of the neighboring Rectory of Stuchbury. By 1610, the Mayor's grandson, also called
Lawrence Washington, had sold off all of the land (with his father's consent) except for 7-acres and the manor house itself to his first cousin, Lawrence Makepeace, of the Inner Temple, London. In 1659, three years after his cousins had settled in Virginia, Makepeace sold the manor out of the family to Edward Plant who in 1673 sold it to the Rev. Moses Hodges in whose family it would remain until 1840. Having been leased to a series of farmers, by 1911 it was dilapidated and only half of the original house was left standing.
In 1920, Sir Reginald Blomfield rebuilt the derelict house and added the west portion which had been lost towards the end of the 18th Century. In 1926,
Alexander and
Virginia Weddell modelled the west wing of
Virginia House on the front facade of Sulgrave which was built with stones salvaged from the 16th Century
Warwick Priory in the neighboring county of Warwickshire. Despite Sulgrave's status as a, "mecca for American visitors" by the 1990s underfunding threatened its existence. An endowment from the estate of
Paul Mellon (only son of U.S. Secretary
Andrew W. Mellon of Pittsburgh) and other donations from British charities have ensured its survival for the foreseeable future.
