Firle Place

  Firle Place is an outstanding privately owned country house in Sussex that dates from the time of Henry VIII and was substantially remodelled during the Georgian period. Firle Place has been lived in by the Gage family for 500 years and the house provides the perfect setting to house an exemplary collection of works of art, fine furniture and porcelain of national significance.

The Firle Estate sits in the heart of the magnificent South Downs National Park and illustrates a rare cultural continuity with an unusually intact estate and thriving rural community.

In this 250th anniversary year of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, Firle Place will be featuring the life and career of General Thomas Gage (1721-1787), younger brother of the second Viscount Gage and Commander of the British Forces in America at the outbreak of the war.

Thomas Gage came from an established Sussex family, who had lived at Firle since the fifteenth century. Thomas’s father (another Thomas), was raised to the peerage as the first Viscount Gage in 1720.  The first Viscount and his wife Benedicta Hall were the parents of General Thomas Gage, their second son.

As a second son General Gage would not inherit, leaving two choices of occupation: the church or the army. Thomas elected to pursue an army career. 

Thomas’s marriage to Margaret Kemble (1734-1824) at Mount Kemble, the 1200 acre estate of her father, Peter Kemble, of Morristown, New Jersey, was a happy and auspicious one. Through her maternal grandparents she was related to some of the foremost families in the eastern seaboard: the Schuylers, de Lanceys, van Rensselaers and Livingstons. Thus, wealthy and politically well-connected, Margaret and her family moved comfortably in both British imperial and colonial circles. 

General Gage was appointed Governor of Massachusetts in 1774 at a time of rising tension between Britain and its American colonies. Tasked with enforcing the unpopular Coercive Acts after the Boston Tea Party, he faced immediate resistance. 

An experienced and generally cautious officer, Gage initially tried to avoid open conflict. He aimed to maintain control through restraint and limited military action, but he was hampered by a lack of troops and uncertain support from Britain.

His strategy focused on quietly disarming the colonists. In September 1774, he ordered a successful seizure of gunpowder near Boston, which alarmed the surrounding countryside and increased tensions. He later planned a larger operation to capture military supplies at Concord.

In April 1775, British troops marched toward Concord, but the mission was discovered in advance—famously through riders such as Paul Revere. Colonial militias mobilised, and fighting broke out at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, marking the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.