Description: The entrance to Knebworth Park and the manor itself is in Hertfordshire, where the family come from. (Additional information kindly supplied by Ron Watkinson).
On 17th February 1490, their grandson, Sir Robert Lytton, purchased Knebworth from Sir Thomas Bourchier for £800. Sir Robert Fought with Henry VII at Bosworth and became under Treasure to the Household and a close Confidant.
In about 1500, Sir Robert began to build on to the fifteenth-century gatehouse a new four-sided house enclosing a central courtyard. Successive generations up to the present have moulded the house to their own highly individual requirements, building, demolishing, redecorating but, fortunately, never entirely obliterating the taste of a predecessor.
The house was described by Sir Henry Chauncy in 1700 as 'a large pile of brick with a fair large quadrangle in the middle of it, seated upon a dry hill, in a fair large park, stocked with the best deer in the country, excellent timber and well wooded and from thence you may behold a most lovely prospect to the East'.
It remained virtully unaltered until the nineteenth century; as late as 1805, the author of Excursion from Camerton to London and thence into Herts, was sufficiently impressed by Knebworth to place it after Haddon Hall as 'the most perfect specimen of the hospitable habitations of our ancestors which I have seen in the country'. Taken from http://www.camelotintl.com/heritage/historichouses/south_east/knebworth/index.html
This image is one of a collection by the famous local antiquarian, Thomas Bateman, of Middleton by Youlgreave. (1821-1861). Bateman organized his collection by inserting them into a 4 volume copy of Lysons Magna Britannia, Derbyshire, creating a fascinating and unique illustrated record of the county. The purchase of the collection for Derbyshire Libraries was made possible by the generous bequest of Miss Frances Webb of Whaley Bridge, well known local historian, who died in December 2006.