Place Name
Pronounced Chumley. It is named after the 2nd or 3rd Earl of Cholmondeley (January 2, 1703 – June 10, 1770) styled Viscount Malpas. The 3rd Earl held various mid-ranking offices in court and government entirely facilitated by his father-in-law Horace Walpole, the youngest son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. Malpas was brought into Parliament and appointed master of the robes to George I, on whose death he “was turned out… and not in the softest manner, the day after the King [George II] came to the throne”. After that he ran through several posts but managed to build up a considerable amount of debt. When he died, Horace Walpole wrote that he was “a vain, empty man, shoved up too high by his father-in-law, Sir Robert Walpole, and fallen into contempt and obscurity by his own extravagance and insufficiency”. The Richmond Library Service explains: “Prior to the middle of the 18th century, the only walk by the river at Richmond was past the site of the Old Palace. It was called Cholmondeley Walk after the Earl of Cholmondeley who lived in a house on the site now occupied by Maids of Honour Row. In 1711 the Earl exchanged plots of land with Richard Hill who lived in Trumpeters’ House, thus giving Cholmondeley a parcel of land by the river and a strip which connected it to his house on The Green. The Earl died in 1724 and his son, the 3rd Earl, built Cholmondeley House on the riverside in 1740 after he had acquired more land… [It] is situated on land reclaimed from the river. In the 16th century and early 17th century, the river formed the western boundary of the privy chambers of Richmond Palace which was demolished during the Commonwealth period and by 1700 was waste land called, somewhat oddly, ‘The Fryers’. George Cholmondeley, 2nd Earl of Cholmondeley (around 1666 to 1733) was educated at Westminster School and Oxford. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1680, but in1686 he abandoned law and joined the Queen Consort’s Regiment of Horse. Two years later he espoused the cause of the Prince of Orange and joined the rebels in the north. He was in command of the 1st Troop of Horse Guards at the Battle of the Boyne and in 1691 was made a Groom of the Bedchamber. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1697 and held that rank until 1702. On 23 June 1711 he wrote to the Earl of Oxford: ‘I humbly beg leave to acquaint your Lordship, upon what you were pleased to say to me yesterday morning about Richmond, that this manor, with all lands belonging to it, hath several times been granted by the Crown, particularly in King Charles II’s reign… I have the honour to serve the Crown these thirty years, and am one of the oldest Lieut.-Generals in the Army though the Duke of Marlborough is pleased not to let me serve… I have great sums that are due to me from the Crown by arrears and otherwise in the late reign; and upon these considerations I did petition Her Majesty for this manor, where my family hath long been settled and I have spent great sums in buildings. However, if your Lordship is of the opinion it is not advisable for Her Majesty to make this grant, I shall submit to your great wisdom.’ If not then he certainly received the High Stewardship later for by 1726 the Richmond Rate Books contained the entry “Lord Cholmondeley for His Majesty’s Manor”. In 1715 George I created him Baron Newborough of Newborough (an Irish peerage) and in 1724 to 1725 he succeeded his brother, Hugh, as Earl of Cholmondeley. He was then appointed Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire, where Cholmondeley Castle was situated, and of most of North Wales. Also remembered as a minor poet he died at Whitehall on 7 May 1733 and was succeeded by his son, George whose wife Mary was the daughter of Robert Walpole and sister of Horace Walpole. The 2nd Earl’s only surviving memorial in Richmond is the name of the walk.”
