New Exhibition - 'The Ladies of Hatfield House'
01 February 2012
The exhibition will bring together information, letters and artefacts from the historic collections held at Hatfield House. Included in the exhibition will be some of the well-known characters such as Lady Emily Mary Hill, the 1st Marchioness of Salisbury, who liked to gamble, hunt and met her end in the 1835 fire that engulfed the West Wing. Also some of her less flamboyant but equally important forebears, such as Elizabeth Keat, who brought up her children at Hatfield after her husband, the 6th Earl, went to live with his mistress at Quickswood.
As Lord Salisbury puts it "strong-minded women run like a thread through the family's history and, if pressed to identify one reason for our intermittent influence in the world of politics and especially our continuing survival, our ability to marry formidable wives is by far the most convincing explanation. It is a knack that the great Lord Burghley himself twice demonstrated in the 16th century, as had his father, once; while Robert Cecil, the builder of Hatfield, mourned his own wife's early death until his own excruciating end in 1612. It is perhaps superfluous to note that the knack has not been lost in the 20th century." (Lord Salisbury Hatfield House: The First 400 Years, p.13)
Visitors will require a House ticket in order to view the exhibition.
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