There is a very fine marble monument to Viscount Curzon on the north wall of the chancel. He inherited Penn Manor in 1756 through his grandmother Sarah Penn while his elder brother inherited Kedleston in Derbyshire. He held the Penn estate, and so appointed the vicars of Penn, for 64 years. He was an MP for a family seat in Clitheroe in Lancashire and seems to have had a very successful career being created Baron Curzon of Penn in 1794 and Viscount in 1802. He married three times with all his wives predeceasing him. His hatchment is on the south wall of the south aisle. He was succeeded by his young grandson whose other grandfather was Admiral Earl Howe.
The monument is by Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841) who is deemed to have been the greatest English sculptor of his generation. One of his first commissions, in 1808, was to make four colossal busts for Greenwich Hospital of the four most famous admirals of the time, Duncan, Howe (Earl Howe’s forebear), Nelson and St Vincent.

The son of a carpenter near Sheffield, he was apprenticed to a wood carver and gilder but bought himself out to paint portraits until he could try his fortune in London. He was thus a man of little education and had no training as a sculptor. His manners were rough and his language strong but he had immense natural talent and by the 1820s he had a large and distinguished practice for statues, busts and church monuments. He had an astonishing ability to express in marble the softness of flesh, while at the same time retaining the sense of the bones beneath.

He was the only sculptor to have recorded (and each on several occasions) four successive reigning sovereigns, George III, George IV, William IV and the young Queen Victoria. His work can be seen everywhere, including in Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.  There is a fine mounted statue of George IV in Trafalgar Square.

The monument is in a design much favoured by Chantrey showing two weeping women in classical Greek costume looking down at a profile portrait of Viscount Curzon. Above the profile is a large decorative urn embossed with a shield bearing the Curzon coat of arms, differenced with a crescent to show a second son. Above the shield is a  viscount’s coronet surmounted by a popinjay and below the shield is motto below, ‘Let Curzon holde what Curzon helde’. There is a long inscription below the monument which describes his ancestry and his three marriages and their children. The accuracy of the profile can be tested against the portrait of Viscount Curzon in his peer’s robes, painted by Devis in 1818 and now in the ownership of Earl Howe.

See also No 43: Viscount Curzon 1729-1820

The Kedleston Estate

We have seen that Sir Nathaniel Curzon, Sarah Penn’s second son, inherited the baronetcy and both the Kedleston and Penn estates. He had two sons and when he died in 1758, Nathaniel the elder son inherited Kedleston and Assheton, his younger brother, the Penn estate with the proprietorship of Penn Church.

Nathaniel gave the young Robert Adam a free hand and the result is rather more impressive than Buckingham Palace. Ruthless methods were employed. The earlier Queen Anne house was pulled down and the entire village, leaving only the church, was moved half a mile away in order to obtain unobstructed views from the house. This branch of the family still lives at Kedleston and the two branches of the Curzon family are still very much in touch after nearly 300 years, as Earl Howe is a trustee of the Kedleston Estate on behalf of the sons of the late Lord Scarsdale.

Their most famous member was George Nathaniel Curzon who was Viceroy of India from 1899-1905, Leader of the House of Lords and Foreign Secretary, eventually becoming a Marquis, of whom it was said,

My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,
I am a most superior person.
My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim once a week.

See also Viscount Curzon 1729-1820

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.43,  May 2016
Photographs © courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS

The portrait of Assheton Curzon illustrating the previous article was as an old man of near 90, and he is also shown in profile on the fine marble wall monument by Sir Francis Chantry in the chancel of Holy Trinity.

There is also a portrait which was acquired by Earl Howe a few years ago which shows him as a young man, perhaps when he first got married to Esther Hanmer in 1756 and took over the Penn Estate. The portrait is by Thomas Hudson (1701-79), who painted George II and is described as the most successful London portraitist of the mid 1700s.
A wall monument in the chancel of Holy Trinity’s records that Assheton Curzon had to endure the early death of two wives.

He had one son by Esther Hanmer, Penn Assheton Curzon, who, through his mother, was eventually to inherit the Gopsall estate with probably the grandest country house in Leicestershire. Only one surviving portrait of Penn Assheton Curzon is known, as a very young boy. It is by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97) who was a very successful landscape and portrait painter known for his use of strong contrasts between light and dark in order to achieve a 3D effect.

He followed the well-trodden familial route via Westminster School and Brasenose College , Oxford, before becoming an MP in family held seats, holding successively Leominster, Clitheroe and Leicestershire from 1784.

He was a strong supporter of William Pitt the Younger who was Prime Minister for 20 years. Earl Howe pointed me to an acerbic description of him in contemporary correspondence as ‘an inactive Member in the House and, out of it, a perfect nuisance.’ ¹ but to be fair, there is no other evidence for this.

See also Viscount Curzon 1730-1820

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.44,  May 2016
Photographs© courtesy of Eddie Morton ARPS

We have seen that Penn Assheton Curzon, the eldest son of Assheton Curzon, was an MP for family held seats including Leicestershire. There seems to have been a fashion in the 18th-century for using the surnames of maternal forebears as first names for boys. Penn was his great grandmother’s surname and his grandmother was an Assheton. I have come across the same custom with my own 18th century forebears.

In 1787, he married Lady Sophia Charlotte Howe, the eldest daughter of the First Lord of the Admiralty, later Admiral of the Fleet, Richard Viscount Howe. Their eldest son, George Augustus, was born in 1788, but died in his teens, and their second son, rather oddly named Leicester as a compliment to his constituents, was born in 1792, but he died at only 3 months old. They had one daughter, Marianne. Only one child, the third son, lived on into old age to become Earl Howe. He was christened Richard William Penn, although she called him Penn.

Penn Assheton Curzon died in 1797 when still only 40 years old. In 1773, he had inherited through his mother, Esther Hanmer, his uncle Charles Jennens’ Gopsall estate with probably the grandest country house in Leicestershire and his obituary describes him as of Gopsall Park, but nonetheless he was buried in Penn. There was a family vault to which the entrance was by steps down from the centre of the chancel, but it must have been full because a new vault was dug for him under the east end of the chancel which had been extended 60 years earlier. The vault was under where the altar now stands, and the entrance, now bricked up, was outside the east window. The Vicar in 1802, the Rev. John Middleton, was there when the vault was dug and recorded, ‘In digging the Vault, on one of the Foundation Stones the Date of the year 1177 was legible, by which we may conjecture that the Church or rather the Chancel was built….in that year.²

Arabic numerals were not yet in use in Europe in 1177 so the inscription would have been in Latin numerals, MCLXXVII, but the Vicar was an educated man, tutor to ‘several young gentlemen‘, kept meticulous entries in the parish register and would not have thought it worthy of reporting. It is apparently unusual to find a foundation date, but he is a very credible witness.

Some 30 years ago I went into the extended vault with Earl Howe. It was only 4 or 5 feet high with a daunting collection of about a dozen decaying coffins, many with coronets. Bones had fallen out of some of the coffins. The inscriptions on metal plates were corroded but had apparently been recorded some 20 years earlier by the Vicar. We didn’t find the foundation date because in retrospect we were looking in the new section of the vault and should have been looking at the back where it was walled off from the original vault.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.45,  September 2016
Photographs © courtesy of Eddie Morton ARPS

A previous article focussed on the large marble monument to Viscount Curzon (1730-1820) by Sir Francis Chantrey. This next monument to his daughter-in-law is also by Chantrey although much smaller. It was described by a contemporary as ‘chaste and elegant’.

Sophia Charlotte Howe was the eldest of three daughters of Admiral Earl Howe. He had no sons and she was allowed to inherit his earlier barony and so became Baroness Howe in her own right.   She married Viscount Curzon’s eldest son Penn Assheton Curzon in 1787 and there are two portraits of her in Penn House by J.W. Walker.

She had two sons and two daughters of whom three died early, aged 3 months, 16 and 29.   Only one son lived on into old age and he became Earl Howe. He was named Richard William Penn and she called him Penn.

A few years ago a small leather-covered notebook was given to me with Memorandums for my dear Penn scratched faintly on the cover. It had been kept by Baroness Howe between 1798 when her husband died, until 1813 when Penn, by then her only surviving son, left her guardianship.   She described it as ‘a kind of journal of every transaction of any moment in which I had been engaged’ on account of the properties of her two young sons.

There are several interesting references to properties in Penn, Penn Street and Holmer Green where she seems to have bought any significant properties which came on the market. Property was a good investment with inheritance tax at only 2½%. Those easily identifiable were:

French School – In 1801, £6,900 for the ‘large building now let to Government for a French School situated at Tylers’ Green in the Parish of Penn’ and she noted that ‘I bought it solely for the accommodation in future of my son.’

Beacon Hill – In 1807, £1,450 for ‘an Estate & Wood situated on the Beacon Hill at Penn’. This was a house and 27 acres where Thatchers Field now stands.   I have a map of the estate with field names.

Pauls Hill – In 1808, £635 for several cottages etc at Penn Church. These must be the cottages in Pauls Hill.

Tylers Green – In 1809, £350 for four cottages & a Blacksmith’s shop at Tylers’ Green. This could be at French Meadow on Elm Road.

The last full entry is a poignant one, ‘Mr Steele signed the Deed in Chancery taking from me the care of both my dear Penn’s Person & his Property.’

She married again in 1812 to Jonathan Wathen Phipps, oculist to George III.  In 1814 he changed his name to Waller and inherited his maternal grand-father’s estates. He was knighted in 1832 and became Sir Jonathan Wathen Waller. The semi-circular stained glass window in the chancel comes from that marriage, and  may have come from their house or chapel.   The window commemorates the battle of Agincourt 1415, where the Duc d’Orleans was captured by Richard Waller. It includes small panels of 16th century Flemish glass and the Howe crest.

Baroness Sophia Charlotte Howe died in 1835 and is buried with Viscount Curzon at Penn.

Transcribed from The Bucks Gazette and Bedford Chronicle Saturday December 12^th, 1835

“The remains of the late Baroness Howe, Lady of Sir Wathen Waller, will be removed for interment this day, from Pope’s Villa, Twickenham, to the family mausoleum at Penn, near Beaconsfield. Her ladyship’s demise was very sudden, as express was sent off to her son, Earl Howe, at Gopsal Hall, in Leicestershire, but three hours before he arrived the Baroness had breathed her last. Her Ladyship was in her 73^rd year. Earl Howe and his three eldest sons remain at Penn House to attend the funeral.”

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter, No.3, April 2008
Photographs © courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS and Micheal G Hardy (Stained Glass panel)