Lady Charlottes Cottage

Lady Charlotte Albinia Montague Scott married James Thomas Stopford, the 4th Earl of Courtown on 4 July 1822 at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, London, England.

She was highly talented, beautiful, warm-hearted and beloved. She died of Tuberculosis in Rome on 29th February 1828 at age 28 leaving her husband and three young sons James, Edward and baby Barrington, only a month old.

Her memory was perpetuated by a romantic cottage built in a sylvian setting close to the seashore. The cottage, made of pitch pine, housed a museum of displayed curio, collected by the Courtown Family from their travels in China, India and Africa.

Tuberculosis (TB), known as consumption, was a deadly epidemic in the Victorian era, especially in crowded urban areas, leading to high mortality rates. But even the wealthy couldn’t escape. Lady Charlotte traveled to Rome to “dry out the lungs” as many of the elite did at the time.

Known as the White Death, as victims of the disease became so pale. So common was the disease that it even began to influence fashions! The illness's symptoms—weight loss, pale skin, and a feverish flush—became associated with beauty, fragility, and artistic sensitivity. The poet John Keats and novelists like Charlotte Brontë became symbols of this deadly but “romantic” disease.

Lady Charlotte as a young girl