Because we were doing the light show at Kew Gardens on Thursday evening, we decided to do something that would get us into the Richmond area ahead of that. This was not something we researched in advance, though I do have Ham House in my London Google maps, because I had mapped all the National Trust sites at some point. So Wednesday night, I was checking my maps, and our friend K was racking her brain of things to do in the area, and we both came up with Ham House.
This was such a lucky find. It’s a Stuart era house, and because it wasn’t terribly busy, we got one of the volunteer guides to ourselves, and got a lot of the history of the family, which was fascinating. William Murray was a childhood friend of Charles I, who gave him the lease of the house. William stuck it out with the Stuarts, and ended up in exile with Charles II. It fell to his wife to save the house while he was gone.
They had no sons, so their eldest daughter Elizabeth inherited the house and the title of Countess of Dysart in her own right, as it was a Scottish title. She was an agent for the Royalists, and likely was also playing Cromwell at the same time. She was married twice (the first marriage continued the Dysart line to the present day) and her second marriage was to the Duke of Lauderdale, so they were one of the power couples of the day. Such an interesting family.
The house is lovely – they had the decorations with a theme of a frost fair in the 1640s. We had a great lunch in their tea shop, and really enjoyed wandering around the grounds. I’d love to see it in the growing season, but it had a quiet winter beauty about it.