During the first part of the twentieth century, Sopwell House was owned by the Grimston family of Gorhambury From the early 1920s it was occupied by Major Geoffrey Barnett (1880-1957) and family. They lived there until the end of the Second World War when the house became a nursing home for the elderly. Geoffrey’s occupation was given as a stockbroker (1911 census). Jack Knight remembers delivering the post to him and his wife: Lady Aline Barnett. Lady Aline was born Lady Aline Grimston (1883-1970), the daughter of James Walter Grimston, the 3rd Earl of Verulam. She married Geoffrey in 1907 and had one son, Peter Cedric b1910 and a daughter Yvonne Frances b. 1913.
Many Sopwell residents remember Lady Aline as being quite a character with a reputation for dangerous driving. Mrs Betty Terry remembers that she was always getting pulled over for speeding: “Although they had a chauffeur, she liked to do it herself and [was] always getting into trouble with the police over the driving”.
Mary Myers also remembers her: “She was renowned for being one of the worst drivers in the world and one of the joys of having the Herts Advertiser was to see how much she’d been fined this week…. Mostly her fines were in Barnet… she used to drive a lot in that area and they were always picking her up, and we came to the conclusion that she couldn’t resist putting her foot down and racing down Barnet Hill!”
Jack Knight: “she didn’t care about anybody really. She used to park her car in the middle of the market place to do her shopping…But she, she was quite a nice lady but didn’t worry much about anybody else I don’t think”.
Her fame also reached the international as well as the national newspapers – see clips below. There were many items about her exploits in several American newspapers in the 1960s. By this time she was living in Little Manor Harpenden. Then in her 80s, she boasted that she had had a brush with the police for every year she had been driving and she had been driving since 1906. She was fined £5 for driving at 30mph in the fast lane. in 1963. She drove a Bristol 2 litre car. (The Guardian Sept 27 1963).
Mary Myers also remembers her dogs: “She lived there [Sopwell House] with a butler and other staff and two Pekinese dogs. Now these dogs had a will of their own and they for some barmy reason decided that our mongrel was the most delightful animal in the world and they used to escape from the manor, walk all the way up the lane, under the railway bridge, into Mile House Lane, into New House Park. Every morning they would appear if they could get out and they would not go. So come evening, we had to phone the manor for somebody to come and collect the dogs and it was usually the butler on a bicycle with a big basket on the front”.
Examples of snippets from national newspapers.
Evening Standard 9 Oct 1937 
Evening Standard 29 Oct 1937 
Herald Express 20 July 1933
