At the end of a lane which becomes an open road through the park, Barton Blount lies in undulating pastoral country with a tiny church in the grounds of a great house, grown out of the old home of the Blounts who were here from the 14th to the 16th century.
An old manor house at the time of the Civil War, it was partly fortified to watch the movements of the Cavaliers at Tutbury, and perhaps the sorry plight of the old church at the end of the 17th century was due to that war.
Sir Walter Blount lives as the Blunt of Shakespeare's "Henry the Fourth". He was standard-bearer for Henry at Shrewsbury, and was killed there, it is said, through being mistaken for the king. The most famous of the Blounts was another Sir Walter who was Lord High Treasurer in 1464 and became the first Lord Mountjoy. Another was made Earl of Devonshire in the year Elizabeth died. He was apparently one of the handsomest men of her court and was not more than 20 when he fought a duel with the Earl of Essex, who had been envious of him because the queen gave him a gold brooch for his skill in a tilting match. He was with Sir Philip Sidney at the Battle of Zutphen, and in Armada year he built ships at his own expense and sent them against the Spaniards. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
