Ham House

Yesterday I went to Ham House. The gardens were beautiful. Cherry Tree garden used to be filled with Cherry trees when Elizabeth Murray grew up, but now the garden has been recreated like plans that people found in the house. The Cherry Tree garden and many others would be for showing off but there was also gardens for food and vegetables and for medicinal uses. Elizabeth would make all the medicines in her own still. They used a trick to keep their plants healthy by putting patches were there were only flowers to keep the pests away from the other plants. This is because they did not have pestisides.

The house was covered in luxurious and expensive items for example : dolphin chairs, many tapestries draping the walls, many vases from china, and they even had a very expensive lacquer table, the table would have been very expensive because it had about 300 layers of lacquer on it and each layer would take a day to dry, so it would take a year to make.

Elizabeth Murray (maitland) lived at Ham house, in her own right she was the Countess of Dysart and through marriage the Duchess of Lauderdale. She was very tenacious and in 1653 she joined the secret Royalist organisation, called the  Sealed Knot. In 1660, when Charles II resumed the throne, he rewarded Elizabeth with an annual pension of £800. The reason for this is because she helped him regain power. Her enemies accused her of witchcraft because of her political influence. The Duchess of Lauderdale died, at the age of 72, on 5 June 1698 at Ham House. She is buried with other members of the Dysart family in a vault under the chancel of Petershan parish church.

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