sier died in 1750, aged about 90. (fn. 160)
Thomas Prowse died in 1767 (fn. 161) and in 1772 his widow Elizabeth demised the Wicken estate to her daughter-in-law, also named Elizabeth, the widow of George Prowse (who also died in 1767), so long as she remained his widow. (fn. 162) At her death in 1780, the elder Mrs. Prowse confirmed the conveyance of Wicken to Elizabeth and also left Grafton Park to her daughter Mary, in both cases for their lives only. (fn. 163)
The younger Elizabeth Prowse (born in 1733), who was the daughter of Thomas Sharp, prebendary of Durham, and the sister of Granville Sharp, the philanthropist and antislavery compaigner, never remarried. On her death in 1810 the Wicken estate, under the terms of her mother-in-law's will, passed to her younger daughter and coheiress Elizabeth and her husband Sir John Mordaunt Bt. of Walton (Warws.), who had acquired Grafton Park in 1802, after the death of Mary Rogers, the other daughter and coheiress. (fn. 164)
After 1810 Wicken once again became a detached portion of an estate centred elsewhere and the mansion and park were let, first to Lord Charles FitzRoy, the second son of the 3rd duke of Grafton, who lived there until his death in 1829. (fn. 165) He was followed by the Hon. Arthur Hill-Trevor (1798-1862), whose mother Charlotte was a daughter of another Lord Charles FitzRoy, a younger brother of the 3rd duke, created Lord Southampton in 1780. HillTrevor succeeeded his father as 3rd Viscount Dungannon in 1837 and gave up Wicken the following year. (fn. 166) The next tenant was Col. Edward Gordon Douglas-Pennant (1800-86), a younger brother of the 17th earl of Morton, who retired from the Army in 1847. After the death in 1842 of his first wife, a daughter and coheiress of George Hay Dawkins-Pennant of Penrhyn Castle (Caerns.), he married in 1846 Maria Louisa, a daughter of the 5th duke of Grafton. He was created Lord Penrhyn of Llandegai in 1866. (fn. 167) In 1877, after forty years as a tenant, Penrhyn purchased from Sir Charles Mordaunt the freehold 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 Spenc