Chicheley Hall’s connection to Great Linford

The front view of Chicheley Hall.

This year, 2025, Chicheley Hall celebrated its 300th anniversary, and in light of this, a summer fayre was organised in the grounds, providing me the ideal opportunity to visit the ancestral home of Frances Chester, the bride to be of Henry Uthwatt of Great Linford Manor. Chicheley Hall lies just 5 miles to the Northeast of Great Linford Manor Park, so it is easy to imagine that Frances and Henry would have moved in the same social circles, sparking a romance. They were married at Maids-Moreton on June 12th, 1750, but tragedy occurred just a few years later, when Henry was struck down in London by consumption, succumbing to the disease on December 22nd, 1757. He was aged just 29.

However, Henry had ensured that Frances would be well provided for; his will specified that she could live at Great Linford Manor as long as she lived, which turned out to be until 1800. Though Chicheley Hall is considerably grander in design than Great Linford Manor, when Frances gazed out of her new home’s windows, it must have felt a little like her childhood home, as the surroundings are reminiscent of Chicheley Hall. It too has a large spring-fed water feature in the garden, a Wilderness containing what appears to be a folly, and the parish church abuts the manor grounds. Additionally, Chicheley boasts an extraordinarily lavish stable block, which puts the similarly purposed twin pavilions at Great Linford to shame. One other significant difference is that Critchley Hall is still surrounded by farmland, as once would have been Great Linford Manor.

Like Great Linford, the present grand house was a replacement for an earlier building, of which little remains, except one Jacobean over-mantel with termini caryatids, and some panelling that had been relocated to the new house. Sir John Chester, who was Frances’s grandfather, inherited the Chicheley estate from his father, Anthony in 1698, but construction of the house did not commence until 1719. Sir John died in 1725, just as the interior was being finished, and was succeeded by his son, also called John, born in 1693. John was married in 1718 to Frances Bagot, and in 1728, Frances was born to the couple, joining a brother, Charles, who had been born in 1723. The house in which Frances was born has reportedly seen little in the way of alteration since its construction, so the modern visitor is likely seeing it much as Frances would have.

Stable block.

The water gardens, which have been described as a three-sided canal.

The Wilderness, Chicheley Hall.

Possible folly at Chicheley Hall.

Dovecote at Chicheley Hall.

The ground floor of Chicheley Hall was open to visitors on the day of my visit, which gave me the opportunity to look for any portraits that might remain of the Chesters. Over the grand staircase, which was made in Italy and transported over when the house was built, are three portraits, identified as John Chester and his two wives. This John Chester would be Frances’s grandfather, who had started the building of the house but died just before it was completed. Unfortunately, the portraits are not labelled, so we cannot be certain of the identity of the two women, but John’s wives were named Anne Wollaston and Frances Noel.

Portrait, thought to be either Anne Wollaston or Frances Noel, both wives of John Chester.

I was unable to obtain a good vantage to photograph the other two portraits over the staircase, but they can be viewed elsewhere online, here and here.
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A portrait of Frances Uthwatt, nee Chester, is proving elusive, but there were once many more family pictures at Chicheley Hall. The Genealogical memoirs of the extinct family of Chester, published in 1878, contains the following description, purported to be portraits of Frances's parents, John Chester and Frances Bagot.

There are portraits of Sir John and his wife at Chicheley Hall. They are both of three-quarter length, and were evidently taken soon after their marriage. Sir John has a handsome oval face with an aquiline nose, dark-blue eyes, and dark hair drawn back from the forehead, and worn in a pigtail. His coat and breeches of yellow satin are fastened with gold cord, and are set off by a blue-silk scarf over the right shoulder. His collar and cuffs are of point-lace, and a sword hangs at his left side from a belt of red and gold. The portrait of his wife Lady Chester justifies the tradition of her beauty. She has large blue eyes, with well-pencilled dark eye-brows, a straight nose, and small mouth. Her luxuriant fair hair is parted from the forehead, and falls in a large curl over the left shoulder. She is dressed in simple white satin, trimmed with blue and cut low at the neck and sleeves.

These are not the only portraits known to have been at Chicheley Hall. A feature on the house published in Country Life magazine in 1936, provides a photograph of several additional portraits hung in one of the bedrooms. This particular issue of Country Life has been made available on the Archive.org website. Perhaps one of these is a portrait of Frances, though none appear to match descriptions of her.

During my visit, I was also able to photograph several of the rooms within the house.

The grand staircase, imported from Italy.

You can read more about the life of Frances Uthwatt, nee Chester, here.