Stetchworth - home of Sue's MP cousin and others

I drove the few miles to Stetchworth today. I know it as the former home - at Stetchworth Park - of Sue's distant cousin, Richard Jefferson Eaton, who was MP for this area nearly until his death in 1847.

We both have friends living in the village now and, of course, it is quite close to where we are ourselves.

Richard Jefferson Eaton (1806 - 1847) was from the old Eaton banking family of Newmarket. His great grandmother was born Ann Deave in 1710, at Woodditton. Sue also descends from the Deave family of Woodditton, hence the relationship.

We have a newspaper cutting from The Times of the 28th of November, 1839, when Richard Jefferson Eaton's marriage was announced. It reads as follows:

"Married.

On Tuesday, the 26th inst., at Epping Church, by the Rev. H.L. Neave, Richard J. Eaton, Esq., M.P., eldest son of Richard Eaton, Esq., of Stetchworth-park, Cambridgeshire, to Charlotte Elizabeth, second daughter of Henry John Conyers, of Copped-hall, Essex."

Here (above) is the cutting, courtesy of The Times on-line archives.

Sadly, Mr Eaton seems to have suffered from epilepsy as his death, on the 27th of July, 1847, was certified as being from 'epileptic fits.'

The death was announced in the papers as follows:

"Died.

27th inst., Richard Jefferson Eaton, Esq., of Stetchworth Park, Cambridgeshire, late M.P. for that county."

Members of the Eaton family are commemorated by memorials in St. Peter's Church and they remained in ownership of the Stetchworth Park estate until it was sold in the 1870s. The estate was bought by Francis Egerton, Earl of Ellesmere, in 1883, and most of it is still owned by the illustrious Egerton family.

Several eminent and well-known people live in Stetchworth today and I called at the homes of a world-renowned jockey, a distinguished magistrate, a duke, a marquis and a famed Newmarket area business man and benefactor who deserves a knighthood at least.

When I was in Strollers Way, I came across a young couple whom I assumed were either man and wife or brother and sister. It turned out that they were mother and son and the lady (pictured here as taken by the son, who now lives in Low Road, Burwell, and with an old boy wearing a rosette) is a grandmother. I found it difficult to believe. She's the youngest-looking grandmother I have seen in quite a while.

And I also met lots of 'ordinary' folk - many of them just like me who love our Cambridgeshire villages - and meeting them made for another wonderful and rewarding day.