Letter: Mitfords at home

MITFORD Hall, in Northumberland, was not the house "immortalised in Jessica [Mitford's] Hons and Rebels" ("Talk of the Toon", 21 March). The relevant house in her book was the newly built one at Swinbrook, near Burford, Oxfordshire.

When the estate in Northumberland was about to be sold in 1992 (to Freddy and Bruce Shepherd or their company), Jessica was quoted as saying "I do not even know of the place."

All the same, she, her sister Nancy and all were, and are, descended from a John Mitford (c1643-1720), the third of 11 children, who left Mitford to seek his fortune in London and, by his marriage to a Sarah Powell in 1671, founded that branch of the family.

DAVID BRUXNER

London SW3