Aerial
photography and recent investigations show Bronze Age activity in
Ingestre with two Round
Barrows and a Ring Ditch to the west and a complex of cropmarks
including an enclosure and two concentric ring ditches to the east in
the river valley. It has been suggested that the name Ingestre comes
from the Ings or flat meadows, by the River Trent.
Domesday, in 1086 records Robert of Stafford having 3 hides at Ingestre
valued at
15s. It had previously been held by Godwin and Wilgrip, freemen, and
was
held by Hugh in 1086. There was land for 4 ploughs, 9 villagers and 2
smallholders with 2 ploughs; 6 acres of meadow; one part of a mill
valued at 10d; and woodland 1 league long by 3 furlongs wide. Ingestre
is the only instance in
Staffordshire where a part of a mill is listed.
The manor of Ingestre then passed to the
De Mutton family, whose heiress carried it in marriage, in the reign of
Edward III, to Sir John Chetwynd, whose descendants became Barons
Talbot,
and in the year 1784, John Chetwynd Talbot, who had succeeded his uncle
(William, Earl Talbot) in the barony, was created Viscount Ingestre,
county
of Stafford, and Earl Talbot, of Hensol, county of Glamorgan. [W.White, (1851)
"History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire"Sheffield quoted
by Genuki.]
Ingestre Hall was built in 1613 by Sir Walter
Chetwynd on the site of an earlier manor house which he completely
pulled down. Sir Walter's grandson, another Walter, was known as the
Antiquarian as he was well read, a historian and a mathematician. He
was MP for Stafford and was also a patron of architecture,
commissioning the rebuilding of Ingestre
Church in 1673. In 1678 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society,
alongwith
Sir Christopher Wren.
At the death of
Viscount Ingestre in 1767 without male issue, Ingestre passed to his
daughter, Catherine, who married John, a younger son of Lord Chancellor
Talbot - 1st Lord Talbot of Hensol. ( 3 miles south of Llantrisant in
Glamorgan) On Catherine's death in 1785, Ingestre passed to her son,
John Chetwynd Talbot, 3rd Lord Talbot of Hensol, who was created Earl
Talbot and Viscount Ingestre. Lady Ingestre, wife of John Chetwynd
Talbot, who died in 1793, was painted by Joshua
Reynolds in 1789.
Thereafter the history of Ingestre was
linked to that of the Chetwynd Talbot family.
In 1856, the 3rd Earl Talbot, an Admiral and Lord in Waiting
to Queen Victoria, succeeded his distant cousin as the 18th Earl of
Shrewsbury
& Waterford - Premier Earl of England and Ireland.
In 1960 the 21st Earl of
Shrewsbury sold the Estate, with different lots going to different
buyers including local tenant farmers and Sandwell Metropolitan
Council. The 22nd
Earl of Shrewsbury lives nearby, but no longer owns any land or
property in Ingestre.