Fox-Strangways family, Earls of Ilchester

Sir Stephen Fox (1627-1716), courtier and politician, acquired properties in Wiltshire (Farley etc.), Somerset (Redlynch), Middlesex (Chiswick) and elsewhere. His eldest surviving son, Stephen (1704-76), married in 1735 Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Strangways Horner of Mells (Somerset) by Susannah, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Strangways of Melbury Sampford (Dorset) and was created Earl of Ilchester in 1756.

The Strangways family had extensive properties in Dorset, Somerset and other counties by the late 15th century. In 1547 Sir Giles Strangways married Joan Wadham, through whom in the early 17th century a moiety of the Wadham estates in Devon, Dorset and Somerset came to the Strangways family. The Devon properties, however, along with the Wiltshire estates, were reduced by sales in the early 19th century.

In 1874 the 5th Earl of Ilchester acquired the reversion of the Holland House estate in Kensington (Middlesex), together with family papers of the Barons Holland (descended from a younger brother of the 1st Earl), from the widow (d. 1889) of the 4th Lord Holland.

Estates in 1883: 15,981 acres in Dorset; 13,169 acres in Somerset; 2,133 acres in Wiltshire; 1,566 acres in Devon; worth a total of £42,452 a year.