Milton Hall

[2] The gardens and pleasure grounds of Milton Park are about 3 miles (5 km) from Peterborough city centre, off the A47 road, and are about 35 acres (14 ha) to the south of the house.

John Fitzwilliam, the second Earl, succeeded in 1719 and the following year completed an extension to the stable block and continued the work his father had started on enlarging the park and altering the gardens to the south of the Hall to include the walled enclosures which still survive.

In 1750, after abortive projects commissioned by his grandfather and father from Talman, Gibbs, and Brettingham for modernising the Hall, the third Earl engaged Lord Rockingham's architect Henry Flitcroft to begin the process, and a new south front was added.

In 1782, however, the fourth Earl succeeded to Wentworth Woodhouse on the death of his uncle the second Lord Rockingham, and this became his principal seat, the family moving to Milton only in the winter for the hunting.

The younger was Elizabeth Anne Marie Gabrielle FitzAlan-Howard (26 January 1934 – 20 March 1997) who married firstly in 1952, Sir Vivyan Edward Naylor-Leyland, 3rd Baronet (1924 – 2 September 1987).

Their son and heir, Sir Philip Vivyan Naylor-Leyland, 4th Baronet (born 9 August 1953) succeeded his father in 1987, and his grandmother and mother to the stewardship of the FitzWilliam estates.

[7] In 1917 when the hall housed an auxiliary hospital, Daphne du Maurier made the first of several visits to Milton at the age of ten along with her mother and two sisters.

[8] It is clear from correspondence in later life between du Maurier and the 10th Earl that the happiness and freedom experienced during these childhood visits made an impact on the future writer which she never forgot.

During the Falklands War, on 30 April 1982, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis stayed overnight at Milton following an engagement in Sir Stephen's Bedfordshire constituency.