Rivenhall Place

Built (principally) as seen today for Thomas Western (d.1706), an iron-founder and contractor to King Charles II’s navy who bought the estate in 1692, although the 18th-century stuccoed facade hides two wings built in the Elizabethan period. Thomas' grandson, Charles Western (1767-1844), was elevated to the peerage in 1833 as the 1st Baron Western of Rivenhall. In 1858, the estate was sold to the Rev. Sir John Page Wood (1796-1866), 2nd Bt., whose nine surviving children included both Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood V.C. and Mrs Katherine (Wood) O'Shea, the longtime mistress and eventual wife of the half-American "Uncrowned King of Ireland" Charles Stewart Parnell....