Page-Turner Family History

Wricklemarsh seat of Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt   (c.1695 – 1775) Sir Gregory Page. the second baronet, was 30 when he succeeded his father and in the following year, he married Martha, daughter of Robert Kenward of Yalding, Kent. This Sir Gregory appears not to have concerned himself greatly with the family business. Indeed he had probably little need to do so for with his father’s accumulated fortune, substantially ’ augmented by the successful South Sea speculation, he was described as “ the richest commoner in England ”. He greatly extended his father‘s small Greenwich property by investment in real estate with the following purchases which made him one of the most important land-owners in south-east England. Thus, when Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt,  came into his rights as head of the family only two or three members lived at Greenwich. With neither a family to worry about nor a living to be earned, Gregory Page set about devoting the middle years of his life to the pur...

The South Sea Company and Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt William Hogarth, ‘The South Sea Scheme: speculators ruined by the collapse of the South Sea Company’ (1721) Sir Gregory Page 2 nd Bt, a minor during the Bubble, gained £ 200,000 from his guardians ’ speculation on his behalf. With this, he bought an estate at Wricklemarsh (now Blackheath) where he pulled down the old manor house and commissioned a large manor from architect John James. Though demolished in 1787, surviving visual evidence and fragments reveal it was an eloquent Palladian essay: a central block with pavilions linked by a colonnade and a large portico.  Page was a merchant who epitomized many of the traits and characteristics to be found among the nouveau riche merchants of his era. He was in fact Gregory Page 2 nd Bt and followed a grandfather and father of the same name both of whom had been highly successful merchants in their day;  Gregory Page 1 st Bt progressed to a career in politics. The first Gregory ...