Heytham Abbey
Heytham Abbey is a manor house in Weymouth, that serves as the seat of the Barons of Seymour. Built by a crusader, which dates its construction to somewhere between the late eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The fact that the building is titled "Abbey" suggests that it was once a church, which would mean that it was sold and converted into a manor house following Henry VIII's "Dissolution of the Monasteries" during 1536-1541 (for a historical example of this, compare the following manor houses;[1] [2] [3]). The Ferris family was granted Heytham Abbey by King Charles II (meaning the family line it was originally granted to must have expired), and they contintued to live there as late as the early nineteenth century.
Regarding Heytham Abbey and The Barons of Seymour[edit]
Heytham Abbey, and the Ferris family that inhabit it, are both fictional elements. However, the title of "Lord Seymour" was in use at the time by the Dukes of Somerset, whose family name was Seymour. It could be that in the Temeraire universe, the Ferris family became the Lords of Seymour instead of the Dukes, but since their seat is not in Somerset, but in the neighbouring Weymouth, it is more likely that they are a branch of the Seymour family (since no town in Britain exists with the name Seymour, it must have been named after the family) that recieved the title of "Barons of Seymour", while the existing Seymour family used a different title, such as Lord Somerset, to distinguish the two families.
