Barnwell Manor

The estate was granted to the Montagu family in 1540 by King Henry VIII, and they kept it until 1913, when it was sold by the 6th Duke of Buccleuch. In the interim period (1913–1938), Prince Philip's future Private Secretary Sir Brian McGrath (1925–2016) grew up at the manor until his parents bought their own house. The house may have been rented to a series of tenants. In 1938 Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the third son of King George V, bought the house and estate. The purchase price for the buildings and four tenanted farms was £37,500; in her memoirs, Princess Alice describes this amount as "the greater part of the money left to Prince Henry by the King." However, records of…

The house has four reception rooms, seven principal bedrooms, and six bathrooms. It is a 40-room Grade II eighteenth-century manor house, with origins dating to 1586. The estate now comprises 2500 acre farmed by the present Duke of Gloucester, and the ruined Barnwell Castle, built c.1266 by Berenger le Moyne, who sold it to Ramsey Abbey in 1276. The abbey held the castle until 1536, when it passed to the king. The Elizabethan manor house became the principal residence, and the living quarters and all internal buildings of the castle were demolished in 1704. The house is listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England.