Lady Louisa Cotes
(1814-1887)

Volume 1, page 152, sitting number 813.

Born on 28 March 1814 at London’s Portman Square, Lady Louisa Harriet Jenkinson, was the third daughter of Charles Jenkinson, 3rd Earl of Liverpool, and his wife Julia Evelyn Medley née Shuckburgh-Evelyn.

On 5 September 1839 she married John Cotes of Woodcote Hall in Shropshire, who had previously represented North Shropshire in Parliament 1832-1834. Their marriage produced two sons and five daughters.

The family appears on the 1851 census living at Woodcote Hall in Shropshire. Also present on the night of the census were a visiting artist, a governess and eighteen servants, including a butler, three footmen, a coachman and a groom. John Cotes described himself as a ‘Landed Proprietor’ (employing 20 labourers) and a ‘magistrate of the county.’

The family was also at Woodcote Hall when the censuses were taken in 1861 and 1871.

John Cotes died at Woodcote on 10 January 1874, leaving an estate valued at £25,000.

Lady Louisa Cotes died, aged 72, on 5 February 1887 at Pitchford Hall in Shropshire. Her estate was valued at £6739.

According to one report of her death, Pitchford Hall ‘was left to Lord Liverpool by a friend, a Shropshire country gentleman, who lived there’ (Wellington Journal, 12 February 1887). According to another short obituary, ‘Lady Louisa Cotes was one of the Maids of Honour to the Queen, and as such attended her Majesty at her Coronation’ (The Queen, 12 February 1887).