Located on the Main Staircase
This portrait is of Charles Eversfield (1683-1749) and his first wife Mary (née Dunscombe) who lived at Denne Park in Horsham. Charles Eversfield was an MP for Horsham from the age of 21 and for the next 36 years. During this period Horsham was known as a ‘rotten borough’ due to powerful members of the community influencing the few landowners in Horsham who were eligible to vote.
Charles Eversfield’s first wife died in 1714 and he would remarry Henrietta Maria Lady Jenkinson in 1731. A visitor to Denne Park in 1724 described the portrait which confirms that it is of Charles’s first wife Mary. The portrait artist is not known, as it appears that this has been cut down, which would have removed the signature although it does have many similarities to the style of popular portrait artist of this period, Godfrey Kneller.
The portrait remained at Denne Park until just after the end of the second world war, when the last of the family there passed away. The picture was bought by Horsham Museum Society in 1948 following a fund-raising campaign.