Portrait of William Whitmore, Esq., three-quarter-length, in a blue coat with a landscape beyond

The Whitmore family held the estate of Apley in Shropshire from 1572 and the house was re-built in a Gothick style by Thomas Whitmore in 1811. It became the inspiration for P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle, in his series of Jeeves and Wooster novels. The castle is one of Wodehouse's best-known settings with its eccentric aristocratic owner Lord Emsworth, his ten fearsome sisters and his cherished prize pig, the Empress of Blandings.