THE PORTSMOUTH CONNECTION

Stories and Lives of Devon Villages and an Aristocratic Estate
By Jonathan Crofts
Foreword by Julian Fellowes

Over the porch of a thatched Devon farmhouse, a crest and a letter P hint at the history of a quiet West Country village. The chronicle of Chawleigh and its close neighbour Eggesford reveals a tangle of connections between a scandalous nineteenth century lunacy trial, a countess with literary and activist ambitions, a great Devonshire estate, and the capricious fortunes of wealthy local families and benevolent earls.
A curious set of circumstances circles back from Eveline, the Fifth Countess of Portsmouth, daughter of the Carnarvon family of Highclere Castle, to the Fellowes family and the much-loved TV and film hit Downton Abbey.
Tales of rural and farming life intermingle with the lives of the rich and famous of their day, country gentlemen, motor enthusiasts, writers and politicians, whose influence stretched from London and Hampshire, Scotland and Ireland, to deepest Devon.
The eventual demise of the vast estate coincided with the transformation of society around the First World War, forever changing life in England for rich and poor alike.
The family finally left Devon in the 1930s, leaving their properties and businesses to flourish under new owners. Despite upheavals and tribulations, the Portsmouth name persists today from village to village, in churches, country houses, railway stations, pubs and road names.