Rachel Baynton – The Tragic Life of the Young Heiress of The Hall

Rachel Baynton is a name that is often lost in the pages of history, yet this unassuming young woman would make an impact in the timeline of The Hall amidst heartache, loss and an illegitimate beginning.

Rachel Baynton was born in 1695 to parents Thomas and Elizabeth Baynton of Little Chalfield. Thomas Baynton was the nephew of John Hall, a wealthy mill owner who would go on to build The Hall in 1610.

It was this significant connection with the wealthy mill owner that would plant the seeds of an adulterous union between John Hall and Elizabeth Baynton, revealing that Rachel was not the daughter of Thomas Baynton but was the illegitimate offspring of John Hall.

At John Hall's death in 1710, a special Act of Parliament was passed to secure The Hall to Rachel when she was 16 years old, making Rachel a very wealthy teenager and the first female owner of the estate. John Hall’s assets were valued at probate at £62,329. Half of this fortune was in manors and houses, with The Hall being the most valuable.

A year after Rachel had inherited her fortune, she married William Pierrepont, heir to the Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, who had extensive estates in Nottinghamshire.

The Pierreponts are recorded as being “a very civilised and intelligent family”, with William’s sister, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, being a strong advocate of smallpox inoculation.

William Pierrepont would go on to become the 1st Duke of Kingston, making Rachel the Countess of Kingston. The young couple would have two children together, Evelyn and Frances and The Hall was subsequently renamed Kingston House.

However, sorrow and pain would follow when William died of smallpox in 1713, aged only 21. Heartbroken and widowed with two young children, a grief-stricken Rachel would fall down a black hole of intense emotional pain.

In 1713, Rachel went on to become the mistress of Lord Lumley, having two children by him. However, Lord Lumley would cast her away whilst pregnant with a third child when he inherited estates from his father and became Lord Scarborough.

Rachel was left a proportion of her inheritance, which she competently administered by herself. Rachael would pass away in 1722 at the age of 27 – long rumoured to be from a broken heart and the loss and anguish she endured throughout her short and tragic life.