Maria Elisabeth Augusta (Lily) Cartwright

Victorian life in an english country house

Maria Elisabeth von Sandizell, known as Lili, first came to England in 1828 as the young wife of Sir Thomas Cartwright, a diplomat and heir to Aynhoe Park in Northamptonshire, where his family had lived since 1615. This visit marked her introduction to her father-in-law, a prominent Tory MP, and his large family. Lili revisited the house on several occasions before 1850, when on the death of his father her husband inherited the estate. During these visits, often with time hanging heavy on her hands, she painted a series of charming watercolours of interiors of the house, its cottages, church and school. Throughout her marriage she also kept a detailed diary which, from her point of view as a foreign Roman Catholic observer, sheds fascinating light on the way of life of this typical English Protestant country family.
This great English country house remains externally virtually unchanged since the early 19th Century when the house was embellished by the famous architect Sir John Soane.
Aynhoe Park stayed within the family until 1960's when it was sold.

Maria Elisabeth Cartwright's watercolours of the interiors of Aynhoe between 1834 and 1847 were published by Mrs Elizabeth Cartwright-Hignett in 1989 under the title "Lili at Aynhoe".