Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England Paperback – January 22, 2007
by Sharon Marcus
Queer Places:
West Drayton Manor House, Church Rd, West Drayton UB7 7PT, cross 5 Beaudesert Mews, West Drayton UB7 7PE, UK
Toft Hall, Knutsford WA16 9PD, UK
6 Cheyne Walk, London SW3 5QZ, UK
St Martin’s Church, Church Rd, West Drayton UB7 7PT, United Kingdom
Minna Edith Elizabeth de Burgh Leycester (1845 - April 5, 1908) was a member of the landed gentry who became the wife of Rafe Oswald Leycester of Toft Hall, Cheshire.
Edith was the daughter of Hubert de Burgh of West Drayton Park, Middlesex, and Marianne Tollemache, daughter of Admiral John Richard Delap Tollemache. Her father, Hubert, was the heir to the De Burgh estates, which had been purchased by his grandfather, Fysh De Burgh, in the late 18th century. Minna had a brother, Francis, who served in the 11th Hussars and became lord of the manors upon their father's death in 1872. Following the death of Francis without issue in 1874, the De Burgh estates were passed jointly to his two sisters: Minna and her sister, Eva Elizabeth. Eva Elizabeth De Burgh, died unmarried in 1939.
On November 2, 1867, she married her cousin, Rafe Oswald Leycester (1844–1929), the eldest son of Ralph Gerard Leycester.
Following their marriage, she became the mistress of Toft Hall in Knutsford, Cheshire, an ancestral seat of the Leycester family. The couple had no children; after Rafe Oswald Leycester's death in 1929, the estate passed to his nephew.
Historical records confirm Edith De Burgh Leycester moved in circles involving contemporary reformers and patrons—she is noted in some sources as a patron and philanthropist alongside the Cowper-Temples.
In 1872, when the Hon. Margaret Leicester Warren was twenty-five, she began to write incessantly about her distant cousin, Edith Leycester, in entries that reveled in the experience of succumbing to another woman’s glamour.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the family estates were gradually sold off, primarily for building purposes. The family's long-standing connection to West Drayton and Hillingdon concluded with the death of Minna’s sister, Eva Elizabeth De Burgh.
Eva Elizabeth De Burgh (c. 1852 – February 4, 1939) was a member of the De Burgh family and the final owner of Drayton Hall.
Eva was the daughter of Hubert de Burgh, who held the De Burgh estates that had been in the family's possession since the late 18th century. She had a brother, Francis, who served in the 11th Hussars and became lord of the manors following their father’s death in 1872.
Upon the death of her brother Francis in 1874 without issue, the family estates—including the manor of West Drayton—were devised jointly to his two sisters, Eva Elizabeth and her sister, Minna Edith Elizabeth de Burgh. Eventually, Eva Elizabeth became the sole owner of Drayton Hall.
Eva died unmarried on February 4, 1939, at the age of 87. She was buried on February 8, 1939, in the vault of St Martin’s Church. Her death marked the conclusion of the 152-year connection between the De Burgh family and West Drayton.
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Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England Paperback – January 22, 2007 by Sharon Marcus |
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