The Honour of Grafton is a contiguous set of manors in the south of Northamptonshire, England up to the county's eastern border with Buckinghamshire. Its dominant legacies are semi-scattered Whittlewood Forest and a William Kent wing of Wakefield Lodge in the body of that woodland.
Other legacies are few or abolished. Titles of lord of the manor are now, in English law, entirely without privileges. Owning of local powers and most other vestigial manorial rights, such as fisheries, rentcharges, ground rents, tolls, is void unless already registered against the associated freeholds and agreed with owners of serviant or encumbered land, or demonstrable and in writing as to the few remaining unregistered lands in England.
Scope and date
It dates back beyond 1542, in the reign of Henry VIII when a bill for its management is known before parliament.
The William Kent wing and grounds though some more agricultural than at the time are all that remains of a hunting lodge/country house of 1748 to 50 designed by William Kent for the 2nd Duke of Grafton with later two-century additions and alterations. Some additions demolished and other alterations were made 1946-48 via architect A.G.S. Butler for Norman See.