Drayton House, Kettering, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Simon of Drayton (died 1357), who several times represented the Shire in Parliament, obtained licences to crenellate and impark in 1328. In 1362 the manor passed by marriage to the Greenes; Henry Greene, executed in 1399, was considered by Leland to have built the house he saw in 1540. In 1467, on the death of the last Greene, Drayton passed to a son-in-law John Stafford (died 1473), later created Earl of Wiltshire. His son Edward, the second Earl (died 1499), who entertained Henry VII at Drayton in 1498, was probably responsible for the late medieval alterations to the house. A further major phase of additions dates from the time of Lewis, third Baron Mordaunt (died 1601). During the time of his great-grandson Henry, second Earl of Peterborough, courtier and Catholic convert, the garden pavilions were rebuilt. On his death Drayton passed to his daughter Mary (died 1705), who in 1701 divorced her husband Henry, Duke of Norfolk, and married her lover Sir John Germain (died 1718), a soldier who was probably the illegitimate half-brother of William III. During Germain's time at Drayton Henry Wise was planting there, while in 1718 Van Nost supplied parterre statuary. Germain made Drayton over to his second wife Lady Elizabeth (Betty) Berkeley (died 1769), who until her death preserved Drayton as her husband left it. She left it to her cousin Lord George Sackville (died 1785), who began to redecorate. In 1843 the property passed to Caroline Sackville, a niece of the previous owner, and her husband William Bruce Stopford, who brought in W A Nesfield to lay out a new parterre east of the House. Drayton remains in private hands in 1998.