Egerton Levett, a colonel’s son, was born at Milford Hall, Staffordshire. He joined the Royal Navy and was later posted as an aide to Admiral Willies. In the course of his duties he met his future wife, Mabel Desborough Parkes (#914 on the family tree), the daughter of Ambassador Parkes (#849) who was then serving as Queen Victoria’s ambassador to China and Korea. They were married in 1884 and their son Evelyn was born the following year. Mabel’s father wrote “one of his happiest letters…written in January 1885 to his daughter, Mrs Levett, on the memorable occasion when he became a grandfather…”
In 1889, a year after his father’s death, Egerton inherited Sibton Abbey Manor, Yoxford in Suffolk, from his aunt. The property which included the ruins of what was the only Cistercian abbey in East Anglia had been in the Scrivener family since its purchase in the early seventeenth century by John Scrivener, son of an Ipswich barrister and bailiff grown rich in the wool trade. Egerton changed his name to Levett-Scrivener in accordance with his aunt’s wishes. In 1890 after 6 years of marriage and the birth of 2 sons, Mabel was killed in a riding accident. She is buried at St. Peter’s, Sibton. A year later Egerton married his cousin, Mary Mirehouse, (who is also buried at St. Peter’s), and three daughters followed.
After retirement from the Royal Navy Egerton became Bursar at Keble College, Oxford where the Butterfield Chapel, opened in 1876, was built with a gift of £40,000 from William Gibbs (1790-1875) (#11076) of Tyntesfield near Bristol.
Egerton became an avid agriculturist and farmer on the Sibton Abbey estate. He recorded all his labour costs, monitored rents, tracked produce and greatly improved the farmland.
The Levett-Scrivener family has long standing ties to the Royal Navy, Egerton’s son, Evelyn Harry (after his grandfather) followed his father and their ancestors are said to include Admiral William Bligh, captain of the ill-fated HMS Bounty.
