The Family

The Hesketh’s have held manors around Rufford in Lancashire from at least the twelfth century and in the nineteenth century united with the Fermors who had been established at Easton Neston in Northamptonshire from the mid sixteenth century. Members of the family have held many offices of state, on a local and national level, as High Sheriffs, MPs and as peers (the Fermors were Earls of Pomfret between 1721 and 1867 and the Fermor-Hesketh’s, baronets since the eighteenth century, became Barons Hesketh in 1935). America, too, plays a significant role in the Fermor-Hesketh history, thanks to two marriages to American heiresses.