Trust evicts marquess from his stately home

THE MARQUESS of Bristol is to be thrown out of his family's stately home, Ickworth House.

The National Trust, which owns Ickworth, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, has served a legal notice on the trustees of the Marquess to end the lease on the part of the house that he occupies.

It will mean Lord Bristol, 39, currently serving a 10-month prison sentence for possession of heroin and cocaine, will have to leave the 18th-century mansion.

The action was being taken because the Marquess - Frederick John Hervey - had 'persistently' breached the terms of the lease.

Problems had included injury to visitors by his dogs, reckless driving in the park and the possession of drugs.

Lord Chorley, chairman of the National Trust, said the action had been taken with 'great reluctance and only after the most careful consideration'. But the Trust's statutory duty to safeguard its property and visitors was paramount.

The Marquess, who was sentenced in December, is thinking of moving abroad when he is released, likely, with remission, to be in May.

Simon Pott, his estate agent, said it was possible Lord Bristol would then return to the south of France. It was there that he relapsed into drug-taking when he was meant to be 'drying out' at a London clinic on bail last year.

Ickworth House was completed in 1830. Regarded as an architectural curiosity, it consists of an elliptical rotunda connected by two curved corridors to flanking wings. It was intended for the impressive art collection of Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, who commissioned the house. The the estate of 1,792 acres passed to the National Trust in 1956.