The Maddens of Hilton Park
By Sarah Powell
The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Ireland fostered an intellectual climate that encouraged the development and spread of new ideas, notably those of the scientific movement that had been taking root in Europe. Among the many enlightened progressives of the age was "Premium" Madden, one of the earliest members of the Royal Dublin Society, and a man who exerted a remarkable influence on Ireland's development.
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Alastair Bruce of Crionaich: Reflections on the Monarchy
By Sarah Powell
Alastair Bruce of Crionaich could be called a ceremonialist and constitutionalist, but he spends most of his working time as a TV documentary film-maker, a commentator and an author. His book Keepers of the Kingdom appears this month in its second edition, to coincide with the start of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Here he talks to Sarah Powell about the history of jubilee celebrations in Britain, and reflects on the role of the monarchy and how this has evolved over the past half century while remaining remarkably constant.
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The Needhams of Needham
By Francis Needham
During the 12th-century, Roger (or William) Fitzwilliam de Stanton of Stanton in Cheshire, according to Burke's Peerage, married the heiress of the Manor of High Needham, which was in a remote and elevated part of the Derbyshire Pennines over-looking the River Dove, and the family adopted the name of de Needham.
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Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), 'Father of Aernautics'
Sir George Cayley, the inventor of the aeroplane and much else besides, was born in Scarborough on 27 December 1773, in a house named 'Paradise'. His grandfather, Sir George Cayley, the fourth baronet, lived until he was eighty-four. Thomas, Sir George's son, did not inherit until he was sixty-two and died eighteen months later. So in 1792 'our George', as we say in Yorkshire, became Sir George Cayley, sixth baronet. He was nineteen, extremely well educated and rich.
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A History of the Barony of Cowdenknowes
The Anglo-Scottish border runs from Berwick-on-Tweed in the east to the Solway Firth. Until the eighteenth century this was an area of virtually continuous strife which only began to decline in the seventeenth century with the Union of the Crowns in 1603. By the sixteenth century the border was divided into six administrative districts, three on the Scottish side and three on the English side. Each district of March, as it was known, was administered by a Warden whose function was to defend the border during wartime and to maintain law and order during peacetime.
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Spotlight on Hugh Peskett - The Case of the Annandale Earldom
By Sarah Powell
One of Hugh's more unusual cases saw him turn back the clock some 200 years to tackle a longstanding genealogical puzzle surrounding a claim to the Earldom of Annandale and Hartfell, a Scottish title dating back to the seventeenth century.
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Emily Hobhouse
By Elria Wessels
Emily Hobhouse was born on the 9th of April, 1860 and raised in the tiny village of St. Ive near Liskeard in East Cornwall. In the summer of 1900 she set up the South African Women and Children’s Distress fund on the broad basis of pure and simple benevolence towards those deprived of hearth and home by the war.
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Researching the Innes of Coxton Family
by Vanessa Wagstaff
Family history did not attract me until I was in my early twenties. I was deeply involved in studying and creating art, but for some years it had been drifting in the background. My mother had often showed me our entry in Debrett's Peerage, under the family name of Innes of Coxton. By the time I was 23 or so, I was old enough to feel that to be listed in published book was rather a perk for a family where most of us had long since lost any vestige of land or gentry in our ordinary way of life.
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The O'Neills of Ulster - A Turbulent History
By Sarah Powell
"...the reed-fringed and bird-haunted silences of that vast lake, Lough Neagh" belie Ulster's, and Ireland's turbulent history. On the north-east shore, the ruins of Shanes Castle, home of the O'Neill family for hundreds of years, provide some inkling.
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Earl of Sandwich® - Promoting a Noble Habit
By Sarah Powell
A thick slice of rather chewy cold mutton or beef parcelled between two slabs of what we, today, would consider rather stale bread does not sound particularly appetising. But it was undoubtedly nourishing, saved time compared with formal dining and enabled the 4th Earl of Sandwich when First Lord of the Admiralty to concentrate on running the British navy and playing the card tables. His humble, eighteenth-century "snacking" habit was seen as so unusual among the wealthy of the time, and became so typical of the earl's informal, time-pressed lifestyle, that the family's name was to be linked with it inextricably.
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The Barony of Blackhall
by Robert Brown Gillespie of Blackhall
Around 1140 Walter FitzAlan (see BP&B MORAY, E), one of the post-Norman Conquest magnates in Britain, though himself of Breton origins, was made hereditary Great Steward of Scotland by David I, receiving the lands of Kerkert and Strathgryffe, later to be called Renfrewshire, from the king.
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The Knight of Glin
By Sarah Powell
Tales of heroic knights riding into battle, courtly romance and adventure abound in mediaeval Arthurian legend and chansons de geste, inspired by and embroidering a European history of holy wars, regional feuds, family allegiance and popular ideals of chivalry. For the Fitzgeralds of Glin, one of Ireland’s great landed gentry families, a captivating castle home in a 500-acre wooded demesne serves as a constant reminder of some 900 years of history, shaped by the exploits of Norman adventurers and the creation of a great Irish lordship in the province of South Munster.
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Spens of Lathallan
By Sarah Powell
A few miles north of Earlsferry in the Fife peninsula, on land now owned by the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, lies the old site of Lathallan House, once the ancestral home of the feudal barons of Lathallan (from the gaelic Aithalland meaning "pleasant slope of land"). Half the world away, in Romsey, Victoria, Australia, lives Jean Spens, 23rd feudal baron of Lathallan.
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Robert Adam - An architect and his family
By Jan Towers
More than 200 years have elapsed since Robert Adam took a piece of charcoal in his talented hand, yet his name still commands worldwide recognition and the "Adam style" enjoys regular revivals. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that he transformed the architectural style of Britain and America to such an extent that, when we think of Georgian architecture, often we have in our mind’s eye an Adam house. But where did Robert spring from? How did he get his ideas? In short, who was he?
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James Bruce
By Duncan Bruce
James Bruce, the eighth Earl of Elgin, was one of the two most prominent people in the history of Canada.
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Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860)
From 'The Scottish 100: Portraits of History's Most Influential Scots' by Duncan Bruce
Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, was the only person to command the navies of four different countries, and is credited with helping all four of them to gain their independence. Some of his exploits on the sea have never been matched. He survived disgrace and ended his life with honors. He is one of the most interesting personalities ever produced by Scotland, and one of the greatest sailors ever.
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Castles, or Ice Palaces?  The Eighth Marquess of Ailsa is equally at home in both.
By Valerie Cairney
Born within the stately walls of Culzean Castle one of Scotland’s most beautiful buildings, the Eighth Marquess of Ailsa, Lord Ailsa, Chief of Clan Kennedy, spent the first two years of his privileged life growing up there. Unfortunately the corridors of Culzean did not ring with the toddler’s childish laughter for long.
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