ISLAND HISTORY
Robert Lewis Dashwood’s main parish
was at Sherfield English in Hampshire but
the Mount remained the family home and
all of his children were born there.
In 1905 he purchased a notebook in
which to record the pictures displayed
in the house totalling three hundred
and eighty-five. They consisted of
oil paintings, watercolours, pastels,
miniatures and a comparatively
recent innovation – enlarged, framed
photographs.
Many were family portraits and Robert
Lewis wrote down where in the house they
were exhibited. An oil painting of Mrs
Dashwood, his great, great grandmother
hung in the dining room as did Charles
Vere Dashwood his great grandfather.
Both were works by George Romney.
His five times great aunt, Lady Sarah
Brooke, her portrait by Sir Peter Lely, was
displayed in the lower drawing room. A
Stubbs’ painting of a cob and dogs hung
in the study and a Morland landscape in
the library. Other pictures adorned the
hallway and staircase, the upper and lower
drawing rooms, the upper landing and
various bedrooms.
Robert and Edith produced seven
children of whom four did not marry.
Taking pains to deny any relationship
to Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of
the scandalous Hellfire Club, Theresa,
Cuthbert, Constance and Caroline lived
at the Mount leading lives of Christian
goodness. Perhaps they did not notice
their father’s engravings of Sir Francis’s
notorious den of iniquity at West
Wycombe, where prostitutes dressed as
nuns were pursued by rich libertines
attired as the “monks” of Medenham.
Before the welfare state, the poor of
the parish relied on the big house for
sustenance, inadve 'FV