de Burgh , family , of West Drayton and Colham x Burgh , de , family , of West Drayton and Colham

de Burgh , family , of West Drayton and Colham x Burgh , de , family , of West Drayton and Colham

The De Burgh family were connected with West Drayton and Hillingdon for over 150 years. In 1786 Fysh Burgh, formerly of Lincoln's Inn, purchased the manor and rectory of West Drayton from Henry Earl of Uxbridge. The following year the heir and mortgagees of the late John Dodd of Swallowfield Place, Berkshire, sold the manor of Colham with Philpotts Bridge and Colham Farms in Hillingdon to Fysh Burgh for the sum of £15,000.

Fysh Burgh was born Fysh Coppinger, the elder son of John Coppinger of Lincoln's Inn and Katherine, daughter of Timothy Fysh of Scarborough, Yorkshire. On the death of his mother in 1763 Fysh Coppinger inherited her estates in Yorkshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire. He took the name of Burgh some time after 1773, proving descent from Thomas Lord Burgh of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and, in December 1790, adopted the form De Burgh, which was used thereafter by his family.

Fysh De Burgh died in Bath in January 1800 and was buried in the family vault in West Drayton church. The notice in The Gentleman's Magazine described him as 'formerly eminent in the law.' His only son Fysh, a captain in the First Regiment of Guards, had died in January 1793, so he devised his estates in trust for his only daughter Catherine, wife of James Godfrey Lill of Gaulstown, Co Westmeath, Ireland, who assumed the name of De Burgh. Easter De Burgh, the widow of Fysh, held a life interest in the estates until her death in 1823. The inheritance passed to Catherine's son, Hubert, who immediately mortgaged the estates. Although Hubert retained actual possession of the property it was seldom, if ever, unencumbered by mortgages until his death in 1872.

In 1827 Hubert married Marianne, daughter of Admiral John Richard Delap Tollemache, and sister of John 1st Baron Tollemache. By this marriage Hubert became brother-in-law to the 7th Earl of Cardigan, and was left a legacy of £7,000 in the earl's will. The marriage ended in separation in 1856, Hubert remaining at Drayton Hall, while Marianne and her three youngest children moved to No. 61 Eccleston Square, Pimlico. Of their children only three survived into adulthood. Francis, who served in the 11th Hussars, became lord of the manors on his father's death. Francis died without issue in 1874 at the age of 35, and the De Burgh estates passed jointly to his two sisters, Minna Edith Elizabeth, wife of her cousin Rafe Oswald Leycester of Toft Hall, Cheshire, and Eva Elizabeth. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the estates were sold off gradually, mainly for building purposes. On the death in 1939 of the last lady of the manors, Miss Eva Elizabeth De Burgh, the family's connection with West Drayton and Hillingdon came to an end.