Ightham Mote is a picturesque manor house in Kent: moated and half-timbered in places, with a forest of chimneypots and a crumbling stone bridge.
The history of this National Trust property is the story not of one family but of many: from the medieval Cawnes and Hautes through the post-Elizabethan Selbys to the Colyer-Fergussons, who lived here at the turn of the last century, and a rich American businessman called Charles Henry Robinson.
Nothing on the website — and little about that history — suggests that it might have a Jewish connection.
We at the Jewish Country Houses Project had been working with the National Trust on its Jewish stories for a few years when my collaborator, Marcus Roberts of JTrails, informed me that Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson — who purchased the house in 1889 and first opened it to the public — had a Jewish wife.
Mary Freda Cohen had been born into one of Victorian Britain’s leading Jewish families, closely related to both the Montefiores and the Rothschilds. Educated in Frankfurt and Cambridge, her father Arthur became a lawyer and liberal politician, eventually joining the Privy Council.
Sir Thomas Colyer Colyer Fergusson Image credit National Trust Ightham Mot
