Houghton House - 0370 333 1181

Houghton House is a ruined mansion house in the parish of Maulden, Bedfordshire. It is a Grade I listed building.Being set above the surrounding countryside, it commands excellent views, and can be visited during daylight hours. It is an English Heritage property which is free to visit.The house was built in approximately 1615 for the writer, translator, and literary patron Mary Sidney Herbert, Dowager Countess of Pembroke (born 27 October 1561), but she died of smallpox on 25 September 1621, not long after its completion. A Jacobean style frieze on the western side of the house incorporated devices from Mary's ancestral Sidney and Dudley families.After the Countess' death, the house passed to Thomas Bruce, 1st Earl of Elgin, in 1624. In the churchyard of Maulden Church is the Ailesbury Mausoleum, built by Thomas Bruce, 1st Earl of Elgin in memory of his 2nd wife Diana Cecil. The Bruce family owned the house until Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury, a strong supporter of the Stuarts, retired to exile overseas in 1696 on account of his loyalty to King James II.Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury, never returned to Houghton and thus sold the house to John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, in 1738, whose principal seat was Woburn Abbey, about seven miles from Houghton. The 4th Duke was predeceased by his sons (the 4th Duke's son and heir, Francis Russell, Marquess of Tavistock, died when he fell from a horse whilst hunting) and therefore the house and the dukedom passed to his grandson, Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford.

Tags: Historical Place