6 miles north of Brackley
Visitors from all over America come to Sulgrave to pay homage at Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral home of their first President, George Washington. He was a descendant of Lawrence Washington, a wool merchant, who built the house in the late 1550s. Today, the two-storey greystone house is a Washington Museum. Among its many mementoes of George Washington and his wife are a chair from his Mount Vernon home; a wooden snuffbox bearing his features; and a piece of Martha Washington’s wedding gown.
The much-altered and restored medieval Church of St James contains a brass monument to Lawrence Washington and his wife, Anne, and has a 17th-century pew used by the Washington family.
The road into Sulgrave is lined by grassy banks, and the cottages and houses have been there for centuries. One bears the date 1636 on its porch.
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