ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

      Brandenburgh House in Hammersmith, which eventually became Elizabeth Craven's home, dated back to Stuart times. The house was built in c.1625-6 for Sir Nicholas Crispe (1598-1666), a local merchant whose family money came from the brick-making trade. This business flourished because the area West of London was rapidly expanding during this period. Throughout his career he was a stout royalist, which brought him some gains and some severe losses. Sir Nicholas Crisp, Bt., line engraving by Robert Hartley Cromek, published 1 May 1795 by T. Cadell & W. Davies, after an unknown artist. NPG D13876        Crispe's house was in an elegant fashionable, Dutch style and built solely of bricks, with no timber structure. This was an innovation in its time. It overlooked the river, less for the purpose of a pretty view than that of transporting heavy goods by water.       In 1628 Crispe purchased most of the shares of the Guinea Compa...

The name Elizabeth Craven cropped up again and again in the history of the Craven family. In the middle of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Gwendolen Theresa Johnstone-Douglas married the 6th Earl of Craven, and so she became another Elizabeth Craven. But becoming Countess of Craven was no means a smooth or easy path. Eliza, as she was known, was born in 1916. She was the daughter of an artist, Sholto Johnstone-Douglas, a distant relative of the Marquess of Queensberry. Sholto was a war-artist in World War I, and in 1926 he and his family moved into the Villa Marie at Valescure near Saint-Raphael in the South of France. The house had previously been occupied by Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. The French Riviera was the playground of rich aristocrats in the interwar years, and the social scene was distinctly lively. In 1935, Eliza was invited to a fancy-dress party given by the Marquis and Marquise de Chabannes, known as the "Cous-Cous party" as they loved all ...