Lytton Mausoleum in Knebworth Park, including railings

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 01/06/2018

TL 22 SW 3/152

KNEBWORTH Knebworth Park Lytton Mausoleum in Knebworth Park, including railings

(Formerly listed under OLD KNEBWORTH LANE, Old Knebworth)

27.5.68

GV II Mausoleum, 1817, by J B Papworth. Commissioned by Mrs E Bulwer Lytton, for her mother Elizabeth Warburton-Lytton, herself and her family. A small, rectangular stone chapel with canted angles and slightly tapering walls. West and east walls have blank doors with architrave frames flanked by consoles and with segmental pediments. There are inscribed panels on the long elevations. Niches in the canted sides with stone vases. The roof rises to a central podium carrying a stone sarcophagus with shell acroteria. The monument is surrounded by contemporary iron railings. (Pevsner (1977).

The ashes of Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton (1869-1923) are held in a casket within the Mausoleum. In 1908 she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. Constance became one of the Union’s organisers. Despite her comfortable background she accepted a small salary as it freed her to take part in militant activities without compromising her family. Constance set up a small branch of the WSPU at Knebworth, but her main suffrage activity took place away from the Lytton family seat. In February 1909 she was arrested on a suffragette deputation to Parliament and sentenced to a month in Holloway. The following October Constance and other suffragettes were sent to Newcastle to disrupt Chancellor David Lloyd George’s visit. She was arrested for throwing stones at the Chancellor’s motorcade and was again sentenced to one month in prison in Newcastle. In line with the WSPU’s new policy, Constance went on hunger strike. The official response to this was to feed prisoners by force, but the prison doctor recognised Constance’s heart condition and instead released her.

Constance was convinced that her title had brought her special treatment, and to prove it disguised herself as a working-class seamstress, and adopted the pseudonym Jane Warton. She took part in a WSPU protest at Walton Gaol, Liverpool, and was arrested for stone-throwing. This time her medical examination was perfunctory and ‘Jane’ was forcibly fed multiple times and only released when her true identify was uncovered. This episode damaged her health and she took no further part in militant action, although she remained involved in the WSPU. She suffered a heart attack, then a stroke, teaching herself to write with her left hand to complete her book, ‘Prison and Prisoners’, in 1912.

This list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

Listing NGR: TL2316521137