Who used to live here?

This is a puzzle. The land may once have been owned by a religious house, possibly the Benedictine Priory of St. Neot’s or the Augustinian Abbey of St. James Northampton. There are no real clues until 1669 when the Brand family is first recorded in the parish register. They were known to be a Catholic family and tenants of the Earl of Peterborough (Lord Mordaunt). The last Brand, Winifred, died in 1745, and the estate was sold in 1786 to Charles Higgins. The Higgins family was responsible for much of the present character of the buildings, the garden and Abbey Park. Tenants of the Higgins family remained until 1955 when the Abbey was bought by the late Mr. Rupert Allen. Turvey Abbey was eventually acquired by Olivetan Benedictine nuns in 1980, and the adjacent mews property by the Olivetan monks.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, John Higgins painted a series of water colours., some of which are shown below. The full collection can be found on the Turvey History website in the Longuet-Higgins Collection:
www.turveyhistory.org.uk/catalogue_item/longuet-higgins-collection