of Gilo. On both occasions the manor was assessed at four hides. In the middle of the 12th century the manor was granted to the Cluniac Priory of St Andrew at Northampton, and the ringwork site was abandoned as a manorial seat. Sulgrave Manor In, 1538 St Andrew's Priory was suppressed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and surrendered all its estates to the Crown. The Washington family In 1539 or 1540 the Crown sold three manors, including Sulgrave, to Lawrence Washington, a wool merchant who in 1532 had been Mayor of Northampton. Washington's descendants retained the manor until 1659, when one of them sold it. In 1656 a descendant, John Washington of Purleigh, Essex, emigrated to the Colony of Virginia. He is notable for being the great-grandfather of George Washington, who from 1775 commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and in 1789 was elected first President of the United States. Lawrence Washington had Sulgrave Manor house built in about 1540–60. It is at the northeast end of the village, built of local limestone, with a southwest front, a kitchen and buttery, a great hall, and above it a great chamber and two smaller private chambers. The great hall has a stone floor, and its Tudor fireplace contains a salt cupboard carved with Lawrence Washington's initials. The house has a projecting two-storey southwest porch, over the doorway of which are set in plaster the royal arms of England and initials "ER" for Elizabeth Regina commemorating Elizabeth I, who acceded to the English throne in 1558. The doorway spandrels are decorated with the Washington family arms: two bars and three mullets or spur-rowels. The Hodges family In about 1673 Sulgrave Manor passed to the Rev Moses Hodges, from whom it passed to his son John Hodges. The lands of Sulgrave manor had become divided into three estates, but John Hodges reunited them. Behind the great hall is a staircase with twisted balusters that was added late in the 17th century. In about 1700 John Hodges had the house rebuilt and enlarged by adding a north-east wing at right angles to the original Tudor building. Hodges also had a separate brewhouse built at the same time. The Hodges family had the west part of the original house demolished in about 1780. The Hodges sold the house in 1840, by which time it was a dilapidated farmhouse. Restoration and museum