Relhan Collection : 150 Hatchment of Honnetta, Dowager Viscountess Gormanston

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Honnetta was the wife of Lieutenant General Jeaffreson and daughter of Lieutenant General Robinson of Denston Hall, Suffolk.<b></b>The Dullingham estate was purchased by John Jeaffreson, a West India planter, in 1656, and descended to Lt.-Gen. Christopher Jeaffreson. Honnetta had married Anthony 11th Viscount Gormanston, by whom she had a son, Jenico, and then Christopher Jeaffreson, by whom she had a daughter, Henrietta (known as Harriet), who ‘caused this monument to be erected’. Honnetta was therefore presumably living in the family home at the time of her death in 1826, and the hatchment, with her arms and those of her husband, under a Viscount’s coronet, would have been processed at her funeral before being hung in the church where it is still displayed. There are also tablets ‘For Honnetta Viscountess Gormanston, daughter of John Robinson of Denston Hall Co Suffolk, esquire’ and many other Jeaffreson monuments in the church. Denston Hall, an C18 house containing Tudor features, was bought by Sir John Robinson in 1617 and stayed in the family until the early C19. Dullingham House was built for Christopher Jeaffreson and was re-faced and had wings added in C18, with much further work 1947-8. The hatchment now hangs in the bell tower and, most unusually, just below a smaller hatchment for her daughter Harriet Piggot, d. 1838, (née Henrietta Jeaffreson), who inherited Denston Hall. Other family memorials in the church include a magnificent reclining white marble figure for Major (or Lieutenant)? General Christopher Jeaffreson.</p><p>Bell 2013; Bingley and Cockerill 2006; Sanders WA in Summers 1985</p></p>