Built on an ‘improbably grand scale’. Two centuries of downsizing has left this country house a pale comparison of its magnificent past.
If archaeologists were to dig around Haymes, at Cleeve Hill, there is no knowing what unexpected treasures might be found. It was once the site of a Roman settlement; its excellent location no doubt attracting the Hayme family, medieval owners of the land between the 13th and 15th centuries. Later still, it was also the site of Haymes Place, a 16th century mansion built, according to historian Nicholas Kingsley, on an ‘improbably grand scale’.
What we see today are the remnants of the house, virtually unrecognisable from Thomas Robins’ view of 1760. Haymes Place, allegedly modelled on Isaac Ware’s Chesterfield House in London, had a centre of seven bays and two-and-a-half storeys, linked by curved quadrant wings to five by four pavilions.
Sir William Strachan had inherited a small sixteenth century house, but after acquiring the Manor of Bishops Cleeve in 1735, he rebuilt it at the centre of his 100-acre estate. Kingsley believes the house was never completed, because by the 1770s Sir William was living in a rented cottage at Hucclecote.
Sir William sold Haymes Place in 1773 to Messrs Thorniloe and Lilley of Worcester. Five years later, the main block had been demolished, along with the quadrants, although the pavilions still survived. (According to auction details from 1921, there was the suggestion that ‘a considerable portion had been destroyed by fire’ about this time). More importantly, it seems that it was now called Haymes Farm, a name that stuck until well into the twentieth century. In 1792, Bigland recorded that ‘Sir William’s elegant mansion house… in a few years was levelled to the ground, and the materials sold’.
Haymes Farm and the Bishop Cleeve estates descended by marriage from John Thorniloe, first to the Russell family and then to Sir John Somerset Pakington, 1st Baron Hampton. It is doubtful that he lived here, most likely renting the property to tenants. He sold the estates in 1871 to Joseph Lovegrove, the County Coroner. By the turn of the twentieth century, Haymes Farm was in the hands of William Holliday who might have been responsible for demolishing one of the two surviving pavilions. At some stage, the house was given a large rear extension, including the integration of a re-sited mid-18th century lodge. In 1921, the house was sold to Alfred Newey, a horse-trainer of Cleeve Hill, but most famous for winning the Grand National on Eremon in 1907.
Newey remained until 1933, and by the 1960s it belonged to Peter R.B. Deakin, who ran a mushroom-growing business until 2005. The business was sold and survives today at the nearby Chelbury Mushrooms Farm.
Haymes is Grade II listed and currently on the market at Knight Frank with a guide price of £5 million. According to the sales catalogue, it is ‘a beautiful, well-proportioned Georgian family home which has been the subject of a complete renovation’. Maybe so, but having seen comments elsewhere, there is little enthusiasm for the changes by country house followers.
My thanks to historian Nicholas Kingsley for providing the history of the house, much of which is included here, making it much easier to research some of Haymes’ later occupants.
HOUSE AND HERITAGE 