Sutton Place

by Deryn Lake Book 1 in the Sutton Place Trilogy series.

First published 1983

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4.2(1,771)

In 1051, Queen Edith of Wessex is imagined laying a curse on the ground where her husband Edward the Confessor hunts. Centuries later Henry VIII grants the Surrey estate to the courtier Richard Weston, who builds Sutton Place, but the prosperity of the new house is shadowed when his son Francis Weston becomes one of the men accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn and is executed in 1536.

Lake links the Tudor tragedy to an invented supernatural history surrounding the manor, including the astrologer Dr Zachary and the sense that later owners inherit more than property. The narrative ranges beyond the Weston family into later centuries, allowing the house and its legends to connect courtiers, press magnates and modern wealth. The first volume establishes Sutton Place itself as the continuing protagonist of the trilogy: an extraordinary building marked by ambition, memory and recurrent misfortune.