The Self-Styled Countess of Derwentwater

In 1868 a stranger arrived in the ruins of Dilston Castle in Northumberland. The unknown Countess of Derwentwater, clad in an Austrian military cloak, had arrived to enforce her right to the Radcliffe family’s Derwentwater Estate. She claimed to be the granddaughter of John Radcliffe, son of James Radcliffe, the 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, an English Jacobite executed for treason in 1716. The Countess told authorities that John had not died at the age of nineteen in London, as was thought, but had in fact fled to Germany, where he had married and had two sons. Amelia Matilda Mary Tudor Radcliffe, the self-styled Countess of Derwentwater, presented herself as the only surviving heir to the estate.

Amelia assumed the title Countess of Derwentwater soon after coming to public attention. She continued to use it despite having no right to the title as it was not inheritable by a female line of decent. Her occupancy in the ruins of Dilston Castle fuelled her public campaign to reassert her personal claim to the estate. After the resident cows had been removed from the castle’s ground floor, the Countess had tarpaulins stretched across the ceiling to cover the crumbling roof and hung Radcliffe family portraits on the walls to legitimise her presence. At this time the castle and the estate was owned by Greenwich Hospital, having been given to the hospital by the Government after the death of John, Amelia’s supposed grandfather, the last heir to the estate.

On hearing of Amelia’s residence in the only ruins of the castle left standing, Mr Grey, the Receiver of Rents from Greenwich Hospital, arrived to interview his unusual trespasser. After days of requesting she quit Dilston and sending over cooked breakfasts in an attempt to maintain cordiality between them, Mr Grey was left with little choice but to have the Countess forcibly removed from the ruins of the castle. She did not make her ejection an easy one. Amelia declared that she would rather face death than leave Dilston and barricaded herself inside the castle. When Mr Grey’s men started to remove her belongings and the make-shift tarpaulin roof, the Countess began thrusting her sword at them. She was quickly disarmed and carried from the room in the chair she refused to move from.

Rather than accept this defeat, or the carriage that was offered to taxi her wherever she wished to go (presumably so long as it was away from Dilston), she instead chose to camp in a roadside ditch close to the ruins. Her temporary tent became a popular attraction for all classes of local society, drawing the likes of the vicar of Newcastle and Northumberland gentry, to villagers from the local pits. It was reported that the road adjoining tent was sometimes impassable due to the crowd. After a week in her tent, a wooden hut was erected for her, which concerned the local magistrates as is obstructed the road. They fined the Countess ten shillings and ordered her removal. She was as inclined to move from her ditch as she was to leave the castle. The hut was soon dismantled around her and she eventually left with her belongings. Amelia was well-treated by local residents around Dilston, even selling them personal items when she became short of money. Charles Herbert Lawrence Alder was sold a portrait of Mary Queens of Scots in prison, a Waterford cut glass toilet jar with stopper and pieces of cut Rock Crystal.

Soon after her removal from the ditch a new phrase in the Countess’s agitation began. The farm tenants on the Derwentwater estate, who paid their rents to the hospital, were encouraged to stop paying their rent to Mr Grey, and start paying the Countess, as the rightful owner of the estate. When rents were not paid to Amelia, one of her supporters rounded up the livestock from the farms and sold them at auction, with all profits going to the Countess. Another farm auction for Amelia’s benefit, in which she intended to sell farm equipment and property, descended into a riot when two-thousand of her sympathisers arrived at the sale. Despite the swell of public support that bolstered her cause when she first came to public attention, sympathies waned when it was found that Amelia refused to give a penny to support those who had been reprimanded or fined for their part in the auction. Innocent supporters were beginning to suffer for her cause.

Her public campaign had a financial impact too and in 1871 Newcastle County Court declared the Countess bankrupt and her possessions, which she claimed were Radcliffe family heirlooms, were put up for auction at Mr Sutton’s Sale Rooms in Newcastle. The sale attracted very little attention, partially due to Amelia’s dwindling popularity and the dilapidated and dubious condition of her belongings. Several bankruptcy examinations followed in which Amelia either refused to attend or refused to answer any questions. In 1872 she was imprisoned in Newcastle for contempt of court and in less than a year was released. In a wonderful act of consistency, the Countess of Derwentwater refused to leave her cell and had to be carried out of prison.

Amelia, the self-styled Countess of Derwentwater, died in February 1880 of bronchitis, aged 49, still claiming to be the rightful heir of the Dewentwater estate and rallying against the authorities. She died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave in Blackhill Cemetery, near Consett. In 2012 the Northumbrian Jacobite Society erected a small plaque on her grave to recognise the final resting place of the eccentric and determined Countess. The real identity of Amelia, Countess of Derwentwater has never been uncovered. Ralph Arnold, a biographer of the Radcliffe family, has suggested that Amelia was a school teacher from Yorkshire who was able to forge documents to support her claim in Latin and French and produce an imaged Radcliffe pedigree. Others have suggested that she may have been a governess in Germany to noble family. Some have said that she was simply an emboldened West Country servant girl with knowledge of the Radcliffe family. Whoever she may have been, the Countess of Derwentwater remains a fascinating mystery that continues to intrigue today.