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Only two families have owned Hutton in the Forest across roughly seven hundred years — a continuity almost as remarkable as Sizergh's. The second of those two families has, in the process, changed its own name at least four times.
The first known historical reference to Hutton dates to 1292, when King Edward I visited Thomas de Hoton, Crown Forester of Inglewood — at the time the second largest royal forest in England. The de Hoton family held the estate as hereditary foresters until 1605, when Lancelot de Hoton sold it to Richard Fletcher, a successful merchant from Cockermouth whose family had once entertained Mary Queen of Scots.
Richard Fletcher began converting the old border pele tower into a proper country house. His son Henry built the Gallery — and was killed at the Battle of Rowton Heath in 1645, fighting for Charles I in the Civil War. A century later, in 1745, the house was occupied by supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite rising — Hutton's darkest recorded hour, by the family's own account.
The Vane name entered the family through Henry Vane, who inherited after a dispute over Sir Henry Fletcher's will in 1712. The wider Vane family carries its own significant history — Sir Henry Vane the Elder served as a principal Secretary of State to Charles I, while his son, Sir Henry Vane the Younger, governed the Massachusetts Bay Colony before returning to England as a leading parliamentarian during the Civil Wars, and was ultimately executed at Tower Hill in 1662, deemed "too dangerous to let live" despite having played no part in Charles I's execution. In 1931, the estate passed to a distant cousin, William Vane, who was created 1st Lord Inglewood — and today's Lord Inglewood, his grandson, lives at Hutton still.
Hutton in the Forest’s family history can be woven into a bespoke heritage day.