Browse by Records Creators

Abbot family, Barons Colchester

This page summarises records created by this Family

The summary includes a brief description of the collection(s) (usually including the covering dates of the collection), the name of the archive where they are held, and reference information to help you find the collection.

Date: 1803-1864
History: Charles Abbot (1757-1829), 1st Baron Colchester, was the son of an Anglican clergyman, became a lawyer and MP, and was Speaker of the House of Commons 1802-17. He was responsible for several important Parliamentary measures including the establishment of the decennial census and the Record Commission. He purchased the Kidbrooke Park estate in Sussex in 1803 and employed Robert Mylne to remodel the house c.1805 and George Dance junior to rebuild the south front with a colonnade in 1814-15. Humphry Repton landscaped the park in 1803-06. Charles Abbot (1798-1867), 2nd Baron Colchester, who inherited the estate from his father in 1829, entered the navy in 1811 and retired as an Admiral, and also served briefly in Lord Derby’s administrations in the 1850s. He was President of the Royal Geographical Society, 1845-47. Reginald Charles Edward Abbot (1842-1919), 3rd Baron Colchester, had a notably successful academic career, becoming a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and a university examiner in the years before and just after inheriting the title and estate, but he seems to have retired from all these appointments by 1871. In 1874 he sold Kidbrooke Park and thereafter the family seem not to have had a significant landed estate. Lord Colchester was a barrister and served briefly as a Charity Commissioner, 1880-83 and as a member of the London School Board, 1891-94, but did not play a prominent part in public life. The title became extinct on his death as he had no issue.
Places:
  • Kidbrook, Sussex
Sources of authority: http://landedfamilies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/abbot-of-kidbrooke-park-barons.html
Name authority reference: GB/NNAF/F86122 (Former ISAAR ref: GB/NNAF/F1563 )
Collections
Number Description Held by Reference Further information
1
c1803-64: estate papers
The National Archives
PRO30/9