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EDEN PARK Contd....

In the 1920 Monks Orchard sale, the farm called Eden Park farm was situated at the end of Stanhope Grove with a frontage of 700 feet on Upper Elmers End Rd.  This was the farmhouse, garden and homestead listed in the 1820 Burrell sale of Eden farm as number 102 on the sale map.  The mansion was not called Eden Park until about 1838 when it was shown thus in the 1838 tithe map although the 1820 sales map shows the farm’s parkland as Eden Park.

The education of the fourteen children was the responsibility of Mrs Eden who left a detailed diary of their upbringing.  In it she says that eleven of the children had smallpox during their wanderings also whooping cough, measles and scarlet fever.  Mrs Eden became known as Haughty Nell and her nursery was described as the Brattery, the Light Infantry and a little Parisians.  Of the children, we know most about George and Emily.  George became the Second Lord Auckland on the death of his father in 1814.  By 1840, the name AUCKLAND was used for the New Zealand City because George had been friend and mentor of the Governor.

Emily’s correspondence with her sister Eleanor started when she was 17 and later included her friends, Theresa Villiers and especially Pamela Fitzgerald Campbell, leaving a priceless record of the social life of the time.  Her great niece Violet Dickinson, granddaughter of Emily’s brother Robert, edited her letters.  Emily was keen Whig politician, clever, amusing, critical and a loyal friend to her brothers and sisters.

Letters were written from Eden farm until she left in 1818 to set up house with George and Fanny in Grosvenor Street.  Later she wrote from Park Lodge, Greenwich, their home outside London and then from the Admiralty when George was promoted.  She wrote from Langley Farm when visiting her sister Louisa Colville and from Eastcombe, Greenwich, the home of her eldest sister Eleanor, who was known as Lady Bucks.

George and his two sisters had to give up their own homes at Grosvenor St and Greenwich when he was promoted to the Admiralty but they rented a small villa at Ham Common to give the sisters some privacy.  Then, upon return from India in 1842, they resettled at Eden Lodge in Kensington Gore.  Emily also had a cottage at Broadstairs where she spent most of her time after George’s death.

Visits further field were made to her youngest brother Bob at Eyam and Hertingfordbury, to Lord and Lady Bath at Longleat and to The Grange in Hampshire belonging to Alexander Baring, also Bowood, Stackpole, Woburn and Chatsworth.  Her sister Sarah with her husband Lord Godolphin lived at Bigods, Essex.  Emily’s astute observation of social class is shown in her two novels, “The semi-detached couple” and “The semi-detached house “where she shows herself to be a second Jane Austen.

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