in the dining room. Lady Tyrconnell inherited Kiplin the following year and in 1819 commissioned the architect P. F. Robinson to build a wing to the south. Built in 'Wyatville's Gothic', this room was initially a Gothic-style drawing room. After 30 years of marriage the couple had one daughter, Elizabeth, who died the day she was born. They were now faced with the problem of to whom they might pass the Hall and estate on their own deaths. Predeceased by her husband, in 1868 Sarah died, leaving the estate to John Carpenter's first cousin twice removed, Captain Walter Cecil Talbot. Talbot was the second son of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and inherited Kiplin Hall on condition that he legally change his surname to Carpenter, marry a Protestant and submit to a seven-yearly examination of his faith by a team of Anglican clergy. He accepted these conditions and inherited the estate in 1868, eventually taking up residence in 1887. He instructed the architect William Eden Nesfield to add a further floor to the Gothic-style drawing room and the space was converted to a Jacobean-style library. His second wife, Beatrice de Grey, was prominent in the Arts and Crafts movement and the Hall contains some beautiful works by local craftsmen in this style. Eventually he was promoted to Admiral but died on a trip to London in 1904 and his only daughter, Sarah Marie Talbot Carpenter, inherited. Twentieth century Sarah Talbot Carpenter married Christopher Hatton Turnor from Stoke Rochford in Lincolnshire in 1907 but they had no children. The couple never resided at Kiplin and the house was let. Five sales of land reduced the estate to 120 acres and disposed of many of the tenant farms, land and cottages that had contributed to its running. The estate entered virtually a century of decline. Much of the nearby local landscape has since been extensively quarried for sand and gravel extraction. In 1937 Sarah Turnor shared ownership of the Hall with her first cousin, Bridget Elizabeth Talbot, daughter of the Admiral's youngest brother, Alfred. Miss Talbot had happy memories of visiting the estate in her childhood and had previously campaigned to save the Ashridge Estate near her home in Little Gaddesden (near Berkhamstead). In an attempt to capitalise on the connection with Maryland (see above) she advertised the Hall as a guest house to American visitors and as a conference