Asthall Manor - The Mitford Sisters

The Mitford Sisters

David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (2nd creation), father of the Mitford sisters, inherited Asthall Manor on the death of his father in 1916 and in 1919 moved his family there from Batsford Park. The youngest of the Mitford sisters Deborah, later Duchess of Devonshire, was born at Asthall in 1920. Her sister Diana had an appendectomy on the spare-bedroom table. The Mitfords were great socialites, and Asthall hosted frequent hunting and shooting weekend parties, regular guests included Clementine Churchill, Frederick Lindemann and Walter Sickert. Nancy Mitford's fictional Alconleigh in The Pursuit of Love is based largely on Asthall, and family life there is described in Jessica Mitford's autobiographical Hons and Rebels. Redesdale had never planned to make Asthall Manor a permanent home, and in 1926 the family moved in to nearby Swinbrook House which Redesdale had had built on the site of a derelict farm.