Holme Pierrepont church

Holme Pierrepont church

THE Church of St. Edmund, Holme Pierrepont, although extremely picturesque, is so fully restored as to have lost a good deal of its antiquarian interest. Its tombs, however, are of very considerable importance and consequence.

The Pierrepont family, which had a great deal to do with Nottingham’s story from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, seems to take its origin from George Pierrepont, who was Knighted by Edward VI. He prospered exceedingly and accumulated great wealth, and his son was created Baron Pierrepont and Viscount Newark of Holme Pierrepont, and by the time of the Civil War the family was advanced to the Earldom of Kingston.

They erected the magnificent mansion known as Pierrepont house on the south side of Stoney-street in Nottingham, whose site is now occupied by a large block of warehouses, No. 7, Stoney-street. An extraordinary story is told of the second Earl.

He became enraptured by the beauty of Miss Chudleigh, who, in addition to receiving his advances and encouraging those of the Duke of Kingston, married a certain Captain Harvey. After a few years she got tired of Captain Harvey, and finding all the witnesses of the wedding were dead, she destroyed the register of her marriage, and in 1679 married the Earl of Kingston. She led him a dreadful life, and after his death seized upon certain family properties and succeeded in estranging her friends.

News of her bigamous marriage leaked out, and she took refuge in France, where she died. Her true character came out just before her end. She had spent the greater part of her life tormenting and worrying the wretched Earl, her husband, and her final wish was that her coffin should be chained to his in the vault of Hoime Pierrepont Church, a wish which, needless to say, was never carried out.