Kingston Russell House
The present house dates from the late 17th century but in 1730 was clad in a white Georgian stone facade.
The house is on land which was granted to the Russell family (previously thought not ancestors of the Russell Dukes of Bedford),[1] by an early king, probably John, King of England (reigned 1199–1216) at the end of his reign, or his son Henry III of England.
Kingston Russell manor is now part of Long Bredy parish, but earlier appears to have had its own church.
It goes on to say that if Little Bredy is indeed the borough of Brydian then "It was ... important as guarding the one gap in the downs which connects south-east with south-west Dorset.
[7] In the capacity of Household Knight he acted as part of the backbone of the king's army, as a temporary castellan, sheriff, diplomat[8] and general trouble-shooter.
He undertook an important diplomatic assignment in 1220 to recover Princess Joan, infant sister of Henry III, from the court of Hugh X of Lusignan to whom she had been betrothed and by whom then rejected.
John Russell was granted as a further royal mark of gratitude the marriage of one of the heiresses of James de Newmarch, feudal baron of North Cadbury, who had died in 1216 without male heir, leaving 2 infant heiresses, whose marriages became the property of the king by feudal custom.
The Newmarch lands were thus split in half, one moiety consisting of nearly 17 knight's fees,[9] in Gloucestershire (including Dyrham), Somerset, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Berkshire going to the Russells,[10] with the second half, including the caput of North Cadbury, being confirmed to Bottrell by Henry III in 1218, per the Close Rolls.
He married Katherine de Aula, heiress of Yaverland, Isle of Wight (and possibly later Jane Peverell).
On 12 July 1284 William was granted by King Edward I (1272–1307) a market and free warren as the following entry in the Charter Rolls records:[12] Grant to William son of Ralph Russel, and his heirs, of a weekly market on Thursday at his manor of Kyngeston Russel, co. Dorset, and of a yearly fair there on the vigil, the feast and the morrow of St. Matthew (i.e. 21st.
September) ; grant also of free warren in the demesne lands of the said manor.William died before his son and heir Theobald (1301–1340) had reached his majority of 21, and the infant Theobald was granted in wardship to Ralph III de Gorges, 1st Baron Gorges (d.1224) of Knighton, Isle of Wight and Wraxall, Somerset.
Baron Gorges, found himself without his own male heir, with only three sisters as heiresses to his ancient and noble line.
By his first wife Isabel Childrey he had two daughters who on the death of his son Thomas in 1432 from his second marriage to Joan Dauntsey, became his co-heiresses.
1301) in North Cadbury, Somerset, England, and died (1340) was a direct ancestor of John Russell the first Earl of Bedford.
In 1877, the famous American historian, John Lothrop Motley, author of 'The Rise of the Dutch Republic', died at Kingston Russell.
By the turn of the twentieth century however, the house was in a dilapidated condition and the estate was sold in 1913 to George Gribble.
The chapel of St James then came to the Mellers of Little Bredy who sold the tithes and part of the glebe to the Michels.
