All ages of England

Elton Hall, Huntingdonshire, part II The seat of Sir William and Lady Proby In the second of two articles on this remarkable country house, John Goodall looks at the history and changing face of the buildings from the Middle Ages to the 19th century

- John Goodall

SOMETIME between 1535 and 1543, the tireless traveller and antiquary John Leland visited Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, the ancestral seat of the house of York. He was chiefly interested in the royal associations of the place with its great castle and collegiate church. Unexpectedly, however, he also recorded the burial here of one Richard Sapcote, whom he describes as ‘the setter up of his family in Huntingdonshire’, and the date of his death—1477—presumably read from a lost inscription. Having left the town, but ‘within a mile’ of it, the first landmark he noted across the River Nene in Huntingdonshire was the Sapcotes’ house of ‘Ailton’ or Elton.

Leland’s account is frustratingly laconic, but it authoritatively identifies Sapcote as a figure of significance. It also serves as a reminder that his family seat at Elton developed in the immediate shadow of a hugely celebrated and important group of—largely—vanished buildings. By extension, Sapcote’s choice of burial place in Fotheringhay, rather than at Elton, strongly implies a connection to the Yorkist dynasty. All this is helpful because details of his life are sparse and, in some details, contested.