Sunday, November 11, 2007

Beatrix at Essendon


Beatrix Potter (standing), Camfield Place, 1873

As a girl, Beatrix Potter used to visit her grandparents at Camfield Place, often staying there over the summer. It was at an estate adjoining Essendon Place (near Essendon, Hertfordshire, England), where earlier in the century my ancestors, Sarah Lawman King and her daughter, Mary Ann King Frost, worked as laundresses. Mary Ann’s husband, William was employed there as a bootman (a shoe and boot maker).

In the last century Camfield Place was the home of Dame Barbara Cartland, writer of numerous Harlequin novels and step-mother of Princess Diana.

The parish church in Essendon was damaged during WW I by a bomb dropped from a German zeppelin.

 

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