The Mildmay Family
by James Saynor
by James Saynor
The Mildmays were landowners of great influence in the village across the past two centuries. They were not technically the “lords of the manor”, as Shoreham had formally been part of the manor of Otford, but many residents regarded them as such. They built the school and the Post Office, introduced mains drainage, replaced many worn-out cottages, and gave the village its cricket ground and Recreation Ground.
The family rose from stallholders in Chelmsford to eminent figures during the time of Elizabeth I. The male line came to an end in the 18th century, but Sir Henry St John, who married the heiress Jane Mildmay, adopted his wife’s family name. Henry’s sixth son, Humphrey St John-Mildmay, then had the good fortune to marry Anne Eugenia Baring, daughter of Alexander Baring, a head of the banking empire. The extensive Shoreham estate, handed down across four centuries from the Buckland and Polhill families, was bought by Anne’s father as a marriage portion, thereby putting her husband Humphrey in charge of it after their wedding in 1823. A “Tudorbethan” mansion, Shoreham Place, was built for them.
Anne died in 1839, and Humphrey’s second wife Marianne brought yet more land into the marriage and into Mildmay control. Holdings at Sepham, Oxbourne Farm, Timberden and Colgates were added to those at Filston, Preston and Castle Farm. Humphrey’s second son, Henry, inherited in 1866 and took charge of many of the village improvements of late Victorian times. Henry bought an estate at Flete in Devon where his wife grew up and this was to be the Mildmays’ main country home for much of each year.
Compensation of £5,500 came Henry’s way when a mains sewer was built along the Darent Valley in 1881, but in the following decade disaster struck as Barings Bank, in which Henry was a partner, nearly went under. Many of the Mildmay holdings had to be sold and Shoreham Place was sublet to the lawyer and politician, Sir Henry James. (Sir Henry’s friend, the Prince of Wales, joined shooting parties at the house.)
Henry Mildmay’s eldest son Francis, a Devon MP, presided over the family’s financial recovery and reoccupation of the big house. He served in both the Boer War and the First World War, became a Privy Councillor and was raised to the peerage in 1922 as the first Lord Mildmay of Flete. Between the wars, Shoreham Place remained a Downton Abbey-style hub of lavish country living, with the servants speaking well of the Mildmays and the family doing their best to stop the kind of new housing that encircled Otford and Eynsford. Francis, known in the village as Frank, was a railway company director and fast trains from London would make a special stop at Shoreham if he was on board. |
The second Lord Mildmay, Anthony, made his name as an amateur jockey and came close to winning the Grand National. He drowned swimming in the sea in 1950, aged 41, just three years after inheriting the family title, which died with him. He had allowed his Shoreham tenants to buy their properties at knockdown prices and Shoreham Church was full to overflowing for his memorial service: villagers knew it was the end of an era. Shoreham Place fell into decay and was demolished in 1959 to make way for a housing estate of the same name.
Read the full story of the Mildmays in Historical Society Publication No 29, “The Mildmay Family and Shoreham”