ld of the Wicken and Grafton Park estates (fn. 168) and thereafter Wicken Park became one of the family's two principal seats for the next seventy years.
The 2nd Lord Penrhyn died in 1907 and was buried at Wicken, where he was a generous benefactor to the church and parish. (fn. 169) He was succeeded by his eldest son Edward (1864- 1927), who married Blanche Georgiana, a daughter of the 3rd Lord Southampton. (fn. 170) Three of their sons were killed in the first year of the Great War. (fn. 171) The Dowager Lady Penrhyn remained at Wicken Park until her own death in November 1944; the following year the 4th Lord Penrhyn sold the estate (of 3,042 a.) to the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol, acting as trustee of the H.M. Wills Charity for Chronic and Incurable Sufferers, for £92,169. The Society subsequently sold the cottages and some of the farms on the estate, but at the time of writing still owned about 1,800 acres of tenanted farmland at Wicken, together with the mansion, which from 1945 was let as a school. (fn. 172)
The Manor House.
The capital messuage belonging to the manor of Wick Dive (and later the unified estate) stood to the southwest of Wick Dive churchyard. (fn. 173) Included in an extent of the manor in 1272, (fn. 174) the house was said to contain merely a hall, chamber, kitchen and barn in 1427. (fn. 175) It was still known as the Manor House in 1670, when it was let with a farm of about 440 a.; (fn. 176) nine years later, when a new lease of the same holding was granted, the house was called the Porter's Lodge. (fn. 177) This change confirms Baker's belief that the rest of the buildings were demolished during Lord Sunderland's time and only the gatehouse left standing, (fn. 178) to become the nucleus of the modern Manor Farm. The present house, which has 19th- and 20th-century additions, is built of coursed squared limestone with a plain-tile roof, of two storeys and attics, three bays wide. A panel contains the arms of the Spencer family. Never more than occasionally occupied by the Spencers, the manor was superseded as the principal residence on the estate by a new mansion in the park built by Charles Hosier after his purchase of Wicken in 1716. (fn. 179)
The Manor of Wick Hamon to 1587.
In 1086 Maino held three virgates in Wick which in King Edward's time Siward held freely. (fn. 180) In Henry I's reign Mainfelin held two hides at Wick of the fee of Wolverton (fn. 181) and in 1166-7 the sheriff accounted for half a mark from Hamon, son of Mainfelin, from Wick. (fn. 182) Hamon son of Hamon son of Mainfelin held land in Wick in 1185. He was then aged 20; his father had died in May that year and his mother Maud was aged 46. (fn. 183) Wick had briefly come into the king's hands and in 1185 the sheriff accounted for 40s. from the manor. (fn. 184) Hamon was involved in litigation over land in Wick in 1194. (fn. 185) His son William was returned as lord of Wick in 1208, 1235 and 1242, (fn. 186) and in 1213 was acquitted from the service of castle guard at Northampton (by which he held his barony of Wolverton) for the previous year. (fn. 187) William died early in 1248 leaving his brother Alan as heir. (fn. 188) Alan died later the same year, leaving his son John as heir, when the manor was held in dower by Hawise, William's widow. (fn. 189) In 1265 Sir John son of Alan was found to have demised to Michael Tony a fourth part of a knight's fee in Wick, worth £8 a year, for two years. (fn. 190) John held Wick Hamon, as the manor had by then become known, in chief in 1276. (fn. 191) He was dead by 1284, when Ralph de Ardern and Isabel his wife held the manor for the fourth part of a knight's fee, in right of her dower as John's widow. (fn. 192) John and Isabel's son and heir was also named John. He in turn had a son of the same name, who in 1290 was granted licence to reinclose the park at Wicken. (fn. 193)
In 1312, when John de Wolverton (the surname the family had adopted by that date) was allowed to settle the manor of Padbury (Bucks.) on his son John and his first wife, it was found that among the lan