This day 239 years ago was the 17th birthday of Georgiana, daughter of Earl Spencer, Lord of the Manor at Wimbledon. It should also have been her wedding day to the fifth Duke of Devonshire but they were actually married two days earlier.

Georgiana was later to become a celebrated figure in society, surrounded by a salon of political and literary notables. Renowned both during and after her life, she was recently back in the public gaze when actress Keira Knightley played her in the blockbuster film The Duchess.

But in that summer of 1774, the real Georgiana was already attracting a great deal of attention. Her parents were worried by the degree of publicity surrounding their daughter and feared hordes of spectators at the wedding. To avoid any unseemly behaviour they brought the date forward by two days and the ceremony took place at St Mary’s parish church, Wimbledon Village, on Sunday, 5 June.

The bride wore a white and gold dress with silver slippers and the ceremony was accompanied by the music of Thomas Arne, composer of the national anthem, God Save the King. Georgiana’s trousseau cost the then staggering sum of £1486 and included dresses for every occasion and trunks containing 65 pairs of shoes.

The couple spent their honeymoon in Wimbledon. But as anyone who watched The Duchess or read the best-selling biography can confirm, the marriage was less than successful.

Georgiana had several miscarriages before giving birth to her own four children – only three of them by the Duke - and having introduced her husband to her friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster, she went on to live in a triad with them both for the next quarter century.

Furthermore, she was forced to give up her own illegitimate daughter by Earl Grey to the latter’s parents while having to raise her husband’s illegitimate daughter by a maid herself.

But life brought some compensations for this harsh fate. She got to know many great figures of the day and campaigned on behalf of the famous Whig leader and champion of liberty, Charles James Fox, Britain’s first ever Foreign Secretary.

At the age of 22, she is also said to have anonymously published a novel entitled The Sylph, based on her personal letters.

Nevertheless, she had other problems as well as a dysfunctional family. Money ought to have posed no difficulties for her. After all, both her own family and that of her husband were vastly wealthy.

Her father Earl Spencer’s Wimbledon estate alone stretched from Putney Heath right down to today’s South Wimbledon and he also had the much bigger Althorp estate in Northamptonshire.

Moreover, the Cavendishes, her husband’s relatives, were among the country’s richest people. Yet Georgiana still managed to accumulate staggering levels of debt through gambling and neither her relatives nor her husband’s would agree to finance her.

The Duke only discovered the amount she owed after she died in 1806, age 48, from an abscess of the liver.

As for the date of her wedding, in The Duchess, Keira Knightley is mistakenly shown marrying Ralph Fiennes as the Duke of Devonshire on 7 June. However, the true date was reported in contemporary press coverage.

The film makers also planned to portray the wedding at St Paul’s Cathedral to draw an analogy with another famous Spencer bride, Lady Diana, later the Princess of Wales. But eagle-eyed researchers discovered the real Wimbledon venue.

The Wimbledon Society is working with the Wimbledon Guardian to ensure that you, the readers, can share the fascinating discoveries that continue to emerge about our local heritage.

For more information, visit wimbledonsociety.org.uk and www.wimbledonmuseum.org.uk.

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