… is the Water End Barn, now the city‘s JD Wetherspoon but originally the property of Sir John Jennings.

Sarah Jennings, his granddaughter and later the favourite of Queen Anne, married John Churchill in secret (which nobody else ever did, of course) and they became the first Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. As you can see from her Wikipaedia page, their first surviving child Henrietta is the most recent common ancestor of Earl Spencer and of Sir Winston Churchill, John’s great-grandfathers including Sir Henry Winston.


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  1. Interesting synchronicity for me as I have just been reading Sir Winston’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples where I came across the mention of Sarah Jennings.

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    1. The first Winston Churchill was John’s Royalist father, whose mother was Sarah Winston:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(Cavalier)

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  2. […] was the third Duke of his line. He succeeded to the title on the death of his father at the first Battle of St. Albans, in 1455, when he was still in his late teens. He was destined to be one of the more effective […]

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