Originally Cytewelle, the family owned land in Derbyshire and then increased their fortune by becoming the world's largest supplier of iron nails at their large iron works at nearby Eckington (where Mick Jagger's father was born).
A Sitwell has lived at the Hall for nearly four hundred years. The family traces itself back to French Kings, Robert the Bruce and even the Macbeths. The Renishaw that stands today was built in 1625, as a three-storied castellated building, long and grey. It has been added to since, especially - rather grandly - by Sir Sitwell Sitwell at tbe beginning of the 19th century.
Sir Reresby remembers his grandfather, Sir George, fondly, which is rather unexpected. Sir George was indifferent to his extravagant wife Lady Ida, disliked his daughter Edith and by all accounts was trying to his two sons Osbert and Sacheverell, but had a mania for building. He was constantly drawing up plans for improvements and invited his friend Edwin Lutyens to pass comment.
There are many stories about Sir George, including his invention of a strange culinary concoction he called the Sitwell Egg: with a yolk of smoked meat, a white of compressed rice, and a shell of synthetic lime. He took it to Sir Gordon Selfridge to market, but nothing came of this - all went very quiet and the subject was dropped.
Sir George was not an easy man to live with.
He said firmly that I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of my gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.?
But his legacy, for which we should all be grateful, is the classical Italianate garden at Renishaw Hall - one of the most beautiful of its kind in the country. His 1909 book On the Making of Gardens remains much consulted, although at present it is out of print.
Scholarly and creative, he based it on his visits to gardens in Italy and also on his work redesigning the gardens at Renishaw on a formal plan, using the principles of classical Italian garden design.
He wrote prolifically: his first book was printed on a private press in 1889: The Barons of Pulford in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries and their Descendants.
There were several more, meticulously researched (he filled seven sitting rooms at Renishaw with his papers). He travelled a great deal in Italy, and ended his life in 1943 at Castello di Montegufoni, the vast castle he bought in Tuscany in 1909.
An acquaintance of Sir George had told him that he would "give him a ring on Thursday." Sir George waited, and then complained bitterly to his son Osbert about people's lack of consideration: "Such a pity to promise people things and then forget about them. It is not considerate - really inexcusable."
He had been expecting to receive a piece of jewellery.
In the twentieth century the Sitwell family became famous through the writings of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, the three gifted children of the eccentric Sir George and Lady Ida Sitwell. They have fallen somewhat out of fashion today but there is no doubting their significant - and often controversial - contribution to the English literary and artistic world. The youngest, known as Sachie, was the only one of his generation to marry, and Renishaw now belongs to his elder son, Sir Reresby Sitwell, seventh baronet.