House & Family History: Burnham Westgate Hall was rebuilt by John de Carle in the 1780s to designs of John Soane (in one of his first commissions) for Thomas Pitt, who was raised to the peerage in 1784 as the 1st Lord Camelford. Camelford was a politician, connoisseur of art, member of the Society of Dilettanti, and a brother of Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder. Before he took on Burnham Westgate he was a neighbor of Horace Walpole at Twickenham, living in a house he called "the Palazzo Pitti." Pitt also built Camelford House, on Oxford Street, at the top of Park Lane, in London. In his biography of Horace Walpole, Timothy Mowl says Pitt was a homosexual who "was 'outed' by that early queer-basher Mrs. Thrale." She called him "a finical, lady-like man." In 1765 Sir J. Eardley-Wilmot pronounced Pitt "the prince of all the male beauties" and "very well bred, polite, and sensible." In 1933 Burnham Westgate was given to the Women's Section of the British Legion as a war memorial and managed by Norfolk County Council. Between 1945 and the 1990s the House was used as an old people's home; in the early 1990s Patricia, Lady Rawlings, and Paul Zuckerman restored it as a private house. The House and 38 acres were listed for sale for £10 million by Knight Frank in the summer of 2012 (it had been reported in a number of media outlets in January of 2012, falsely, as it turned out, that Johnny Depp had purchased Burnham Westgate for £6.25 million).

House Listed: Grade II*

Park Listed: Not Listed

Past Seat / Home of: Martin family. Overman family. Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford, 18th century. Patricia, Baroness Rawlings, 1990s-2012.

Current Ownership Type: Individual / Family Trust

Primary Current Ownership Use: Private Home

House Open to Public: No

Historic Houses Member: No