Glyndebourne

Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, near Lewes in East Sussex, is thought to be about six hundred years old and is listed at Grade II.

==History of the house== "There had been a manor house at Glynde Bourne (as it was often spelt) since the fifteenth century", but the exact age of the house is unknown. Some surviving timber framing and pre-Elizabethan panelling makes an early 16th-century date the most likely. In 1618, it came into the possession of the Hay family, passing to James Hay Langham in 1824. He inherited his father's baronetcy and estate in Northamptonshire in 1833 which under the terms of his inheritance should have led to him relinquishing Glyndebourne, but as a certified lunatic he was unable to do so. After litigation the estate passed to a relative, Langham Christie, but he later had to pay £50,000 to persuade another relative to withdraw a rival claim.