Revesby Estate

Revesby Estate in Lincolnshire, England, has a wealth of history spanning back to the Viking invasion and the Roman conquerors. Evidence of the Romans still remains on the Estate in the form of two large burial mounds.

After the Romans came the Norman Conquest which resulted in the land around Revesby village being given to the Cistercian monks of Rivea. In 1143 a monastery was built on the site Revesby Abbey. The monk's influence on the local area came to a swift end with the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Not much is known AbOUT the way the Estate was run before 1715, just one Estate Cottage precedes this date. In 1715 the Estate was purchased by Joseph Banks, at which time it covered 11000 acres and cost £14000. The Banks family had the Estate for four generations spanning 106 years. In this time the family created the present parkland and three woodland plantations.

The most influential owner was the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (4th Joseph Banks of Revesby) who accompanied and financed Captain James Cook on his epic round the world voyage between 1768 and 1771. Sir Joseph Banks brought many species of plants (and kangaroos) back to the Estate. He also worked very closely with Dutch experts to improve agricultural land in the county. He was a keen botanist and carried out extensive tree plantings. One of the woods he created that is still on the Estate is a miniature Kew Gardens with many interesting species of trees and plants.

In 1820 the Estate passed through the Banks family and into the Stanhope's. James Banks Stanhope inherited the Estate in 1842 (he was Secretary of State for War at the time) and started by building a grand mansion house, the third dwelling to be called Revesby Abbey. The reservoir was created in 1860 to supply water to the local town of Boston. In the late 1800s he built many houses, which the Estate still owns today. Stanhope also built the church in Revesby and the church at Wilksby. According to records the church at Wilksby cost only £99.00.

The last Stanhope was the Honourable Richard Stanhope who was killed on the Somme in 1916. With his death, after 96 years in the Stanhope family, the Estate went to his widow Lady Beryl, who remarried and had two children. Her son, Humphrey T Gilbert, won a D.F.C. in the Battle of Britain but was accidentally killed in a Spitfire in 1942. This resulted in his sister, Mrs Ann D Lee, inheriting the Estate in 1958. Mrs A Lee and her husband, Commander C. Lee, then built the current Revesby Park House in 1963, where Mrs Lee lived until her death in 2006. Mrs Lee was a special lady who was greatly respected in the local community; demonstrated by the number of people that attended her funeral. Mrs Lee loved to spin the wool of her rare breed sheep. The Estate has now been handed down to her son, Mr Gavin Wiggins-Davies and his family. The Wiggins-Davies family consist of Gavin, his wife Stania and their two sons Alexander and Peter. The family run the Estate