Bretby Hall is a country house at Bretby

Bretby

Bretby is a village in the south of Derbyshire, England, north of Swadlincote and east of Burton upon Trent, on the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire. The name means "dwelling place of Britons"...

, Derbyshire

Derbyshire

Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...

, England, north of Swadlincote

Swadlincote

Swadlincote is a town and unparished area in South Derbyshire, about southeast of Burton-upon-Trent and about south of Derby. It is the main town of South Derbyshire and the seat of South Derbyshire District Council....

 and east of Burton upon Trent

Burton upon Trent

Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a town straddling the River Trent in the east of Staffordshire, England. Its associated adjective is "Burtonian"....

 on the border with Staffordshire

Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

. It is a Grade II* listed building. The name Bretby means "dwelling place of Britons".

The first Bretby Hall was built in 1630 after Thomas Stanhope bought the manor of Bretby from the family of Stephen de Segrave, to whom it had been granted by Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester

Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester

Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester and 1st Earl of Lincoln , known in some references as the 4th Earl of Chester , was one of the "old school" of Anglo-Norman barons whose loyalty to the Angevin dynasty was consistent but contingent on the receipt of lucrative favours...

.

In 1628, his grandson Philip was made Earl of Chesterfield by King Charles I of England

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

. From then on, Bretby Hall was the ancestral home of the Earls of Chesterfield.

The second Earl was responsible for a complete restyling of the gardens so that some compared them favourably with the gardens at Versailles

Versailles

Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...

.

The fifth Earl

Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl of Chesterfield

Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl of Chesterfield KG, PC, FRS, FSA , known as Philip Stanhope until 1773, was a British politician and diplomat...

 demolished the mansion and built the present Hall (c.1812) to a design by Sir Jeffry Wyatville.

The sixth Earl

George Stanhope, 6th Earl of Chesterfield

George Stanhope, 6th Earl of Chesterfield PC , styled Lord Stanhope until 1815, was a British Tory politician, courtier and race horse owner...

, known as the "racing Earl", loved cricket and shooting, so he built a cricket pitch and raised game birds.

Following the death of the 7th earl in 1871, the Estate passed to his widowed mother, Anne Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Chesterfield (1802–1885), whose good friend, Benjamin Disraeli, paid frequent visits to Bretby. On the death of the Countess, her estates devolved upon Lord Porchester, the eldest son of her daughter, Evelyn (died 1875), who married in 1861 the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. the 5th Earl of Carnarvon

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon

George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon was an English aristocrat best known as the financial backer of the search for and the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.-Biography:...

, the famous egyptologist for whom Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun , Egyptian , ; approx. 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty , during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom...

, commenced breaking up the Bretby estate during World War I. They never lived at Bretby, preferring their home at Highclere, near Newbury. They did make regular visits, however, particularly for shooting. The main estate was sold to Mr J D Wragg, the Swadlincote industrialist. The proceeds helped to fund the Carter’s search for the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt in the early 1920s.

In 1926, the Hall was sold to Derbyshire County Council and was run as an orthopaedic hospital until the 1990s when it was sold to a private developer, who has converted it into luxury apartments and suites.