End of the line

The Viscount and Anne enjoyed almost a decade at Fairfax House, regularly hosting parties and gatherings, as well as taking a visual part in the city’s social life attending the assembly rooms and the races and engaging in other pleasurable pursuits.

In 1772 Lord Fairfax died and, with no surviving male heirs, the Viscountcy of Emley became extinct. Anne now in her late-forties and suffering from periodic bouts of ill health evidently no longer desired the urban life and promptly sold the property. She retreated to family’s country seat at Gilling Castle, where with the support of the family’s chaplain, Father Anslem Bolton, she lived until her death in 1793.