Charlton Manor

Charlton Manor is an English manor and ancient demesne over 1,000 years old in the county of Hertfordshire in England, approximately 45 minutes north of London, and adjacent to the market town of Hitchin with which it has ancient historical connections. Charlton Manor is recorded in the Hertfordshire County Archives.

Over time the ownership of Charlton Manor, a landed estate, and the title of Lord of the Manor of Charlton, has changed numerous times since coming into being before 1066 and the Norman Conquest. It passed through the hands of Earl Harold Godwinson (who became King Harold II on 6 January 1066 after the death of Edward the Confessor), William the Conqueror (King William I, Duke of Normandy), and various Priors and heads of the Knights Templar before they were disbanded. This was followed by ownership by the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitallers) before they were in turn disbanded causing ownership to pass to King Henry VIII as part of the Dissolution of the monasteries. From then Charlton Manor and the Lordship of Charlton descended with Hitchin Priory under the initial ownership of Ralph Radcliffe.^[1]

Over the following four centuries the lordship of the Manor of Charlton passed as part of Hitchin Priory through various members of the Radcliffe and Delmé-Radcliffe family. In 1925 Sir Ralph Delmé-Radcliffe was noted as Lord of the Manor in the Manorial Documents Register of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts in London. When he died in 1963 the Lordship passed to his daughter Anne who subsequently sold Hitchin Priory. The Lordship was then passed by Anne to Peter Havart-Simkin, a British citizen currently residing in California in the United States, who now holds this ancient title.^[2][3][4]