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Edward Adolphus Seymour (February 24, 1775 – August 15, 1855) was the 11th Duke of Somerset who leased Wimbledon Park from the 3rd Earl Spencer. The Spencers, wealthy Warwickshire farmers, acquired the Manor of Wimbledon in the early 18thCentury. They had the 1,200 acre park landscaped by Capability Brown, but by the time it passed to the third Earl, the estate was heavily mortgaged. So in 1834 much of the freehold land was sold and Wimbledon Park was leased to the Duke of Somerset. The Duke (who changed the family name to St Maur) was a gifted mathematician and served as president of the Linnean Society of London from 1834 to 1837 and as president of the Royal Institution from 1826 to 1842. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1837, he was made a Knight of the Garter by King William IV. Following the death of his first wife in 1827 Somerset married Margaret Shaw-Stewart. The newly weds used Wimbledon Park as a summer retreat and in 1837 invited Queen Victoria to a garden party to celebrate her accession to the throne. Richard Milward in Wimbledon Past tells the story of how, “Victoria drove there from London with her uncle the Duke of Sussex, and when they got near the house, local people unharnessed the horses and pulled her to the front porch”. One of the guests, a Mrs Stevenson, wife of the US Ambassador, in her autobiography called it “the affair of the season”. The Queen apparently arrived at 6pm and “promenaded the grounds where the company had assembled on rich carpets, with sofas and chairs”. Entertainment was to be found in the Tyrolean minstrels, Russian dancers, Alpine singers and Highland pipers. Then, the Duke and Duchess led the Queen into dinner in a “very beautiful marquee, its roof supported by twelve columns, the interior lined with crimson stripes.” This was to be a glittering highlight for the house, however. Following the death of the third Earl Spencer in 1845, the estate was sold to John Augustus Beaumont for £85,000 and much of the area developed using the names of many of the area’s well-t0-do former residents for street names as a marketing point.
