Personalities
The many close connections between members of the families that have lived at Broadlands and public life in this country make this an archive of the first importance. The Temple family, Viscounts Palmerston, acquired Broadlands in 1737, holding it until 1865 when the third Viscount Palmerston became the last Prime Minister to die in office. Lord Palmerston’s stepson-in-law was the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the Victorian philanthropist. Further members of the Ashley family held the property until 1939, when it passed to Edwina Ashley — who had married Lord Louis Mountbatten, the future Earl Mountbatten of Burma, in 1922.
