Tollemache family, Barons Tollemache

The Tollemache family was established in Suffolk from the 12th century and acquired Helmingham by marriage in the 15th century. The Harrington (Northamptonshire) estate came from the Stanhope family by marriage in the early 17th century. Sir Lionel Tollemache was created a baronet in 1611. Sir Lionel Tollemache, 3rd Bt, married in 1647 Elizabeth Murray (d. 1697), Countess of Dysart, and added her property in Surrey (Ham, Ham House and Petersham) to the Tollemache family estates. (She later married the Duke of Lauderdale.) Their eldest son succeeded his mother as 3rd Earl of Dysart and in 1680 married Grace, daughter and co-heir of Sir Thomas Wilbraham, 3rd Bt, of Woodhey (Cheshire), through whom extensive estates in north and south Cheshire passed to the Tollemache family.

On the death of the 6th Earl without issue in 1821 the family property was divided. The Cheshire, Northamptonshire and Suffolk estates, with part of the Surrey estate (Kingston Canbury), descended to his nephew, Admiral John Halliday (afterwards Tollemache), whose own family had some property in the West Indies. Other Surrey property (Ham and Petersham) devolved upon the 6th Earl's eldest sister Louisa, who was Countess of Dysart in her own right. In 1765 she had married John Manners of Grantham Grange (Lincolnshire), the illegitimate son of Lord William Manners (d. 1772, second son of the 2nd Duke of Rutland), and heir to his property in Leicestershire (Buckminster, Sewstern) and Lincolnshire (Hanby Hall). These estates passed to her descendants, the Tollemache Earls of Dysart.

The Cheshire estates were consolidated by exchange and purchase in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. About 1825 property at Alpraham, Alvanley and Tarporley was acquired from the 2nd Baron Alvanley. About 1840 John Tollemache (1805-90; succeeded his father Admiral Tollemache 1837; created Baron Tollemache 1876) purchased from the 1st Baron Mostyn the Beeston (Cheshire) estate, where he built Peckforton Castle between 1844 and 1850. In 1843 he sold his Surrey property to the 8th Earl of Dysart. Harrington (Northamptonshire) was sold in the 1860s, and there were sales of Suffolk property in the late 19th century.

Estates in 1883: Cheshire 28,651 acres, Suffolk 7,010 acres, Denbighshire 35 acres, Flintshire 30 acres, total 35,726 acres worth £43,345 a year.