It was dissolved in 1540 and granted to Sir Humphrey Foster, who immediately conveyed it to John Beaumont (fl.
[1] On the death of his eventual successor in 1796 the estate passed to his cousin Thomas March, who adopted the surname Phillipps in lieu of his patronymic.
His biographer Edmund Sheridan Purcell says his father had been "anxious to see him married and settled lest his religious fervour should induce him to make vows of celibacy, which he often spoke of as the highest life, and follow up by entering the cloister or ranks of the secular clergy"[4] The old priory buildings having fallen into ruins, he set about building a new house to a design in a "Tudor" style by the London architect William Railton.
[5] In 1842 Phillipps built another chapel, to Pugin's designs, about a mile from the house and set up a cross, 17 feet (5.2 m) tall, on a rock he named the Calvary.
Between the chapel and the cross was a series of fourteen shrines, each containing a representation of a scene from Christ's passion.
Following the death of two of its heads in quick succession, the family needed to reduce its expenditure and so in 1885 moved out of Garendon into Grace Dieu Manor.