Tower and Town, November 2024 (view the full edition)The Russian HouseMany country estates that had 'The King's Highway' passing through them charged a toll and installed tollgates. There are, or were, several named gates around Savernake Forest including Forest Hill Gate, Hatt Gate, Prince of Wales Gate, Puttall Lodge Gate and Postern Hill Gate. It is usually assumed that these were indeed tollgates but maybe not all. The most intriguingly named gate is on London Road, the Voronzoff Gate. The spelling should however have been 'Vorontsov'! Count Semyon Vorontsov (1744-1832) was a Russian diplomat from St Petersburg at the court of Catherine the Great. His wife, Ekatrina Seniavina, was the court pianist and composer and they had a son Mikhail and daughter also called Ekatrina. Sadly their mother, aged just 23, died soon after the birth of her daughter and the following year, the Count, aged 41 and Russian Ambassador, moved permanently to England with his children. Although, it is rumoured, the Count never learned to speak English, the children became very Anglicized, Ekatrina changing her name to Catherine. Mikhail later returned to Russia and had a long and illustrious career in the army being awarded the title of Prince and rank of Field Marshal. Catherine was of course raised in aristocratic circles and married George Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke whose family seat is Wilton House near Salisbury. In 1804 Earl George and his new Countess Catherine had a daughter Mary who married - perhaps you've guessed - a warden of Savernake, the Marquess of Ailesbury, George Brudenell Bruce, and of course they lived at Tottenham House. No more mystery therefore about the name of the Voronzoff Gate: a minor misspelling of Marchioness Mary's Russian ancestors. The house however, though relatively small, is too fine for a tollgate, and nor is it aligned with or close to the highway but it is at the end of a now extinct, private drive into the Savernake estate. Also there was a better-sited tollgate on London Road a little nearer Marlborough. However, as Countess Catherine outlived her husband George by 29 years, and her daughter lived at Tottenham House, it is possible the eponymous 'tollgate' was not such at all, but the dower house of the dowager countess. Peter Noble |