An impeccable Grade II listed manor house with Gothic touches 

This country house estate at Hope Under Dinmore is currently on the market and likely to cost potential buyers well over £30 million. At its centre is Dinmore Manor, a Grade II listed large country house in a well-wooded, hilly part of Herefordshire. It includes a substantial acreage of about 1,552 acres including productive arable land, pasture and woodland. The house was erected on the site of a Preceptory about the time of Queen Elizabeth and, according to records, altered around 1830 and extended about 1928.

Since 1732 it was in the possession of the Fleming and St. John families and has enjoyed remarkably few owners since.

By the turn of the 20^th century it was in the possession of the Rev. Harris Fleming St. John (1833-1903), who, as an only son, inherited from his father, Fleming St. John. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a Master of Arts and in 1878 married Gertrude Margaret Ward, the eldest surviving daughter of Charles Ward of Clifton. He enjoyed an ecclesiastical career after being ordained as a Deacon in 1859 and a Priest from 1861. He became Chaplain of Dinmore Preceptory Chapel in 1879 having formerly filled curacies at Kempsford, Gloucestershire, and Leeds, and had acted as Domestic Chaplain to Bishop Wodford of Ely (1873-85). The chapel at Dinmore was fully restored by him in 1886. Being Lord of the Manor at Dinmore (and owning Henwick Grange, Worcestershire) meant he was also a considerable landowner.

Following Harris St. John’s death, the Dinmore estate passed to his son, Oliver Stukely Fleming St. John (1881-1955), a man more akin to the land, who made his wealth as a fruit grower at Kipperknowle Farm.  He was educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, and later gained the rank of Lieutenant between 1916 and 1919 in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. He married, firstly, Agnes Margaret Jane Jenkin in 1913 and, secondly, Elizabeth Sarah Ross in 1924.

In 1927 the estate was bought by Richard Hollins Murray (1882-1957) who was responsible for the house we see today. Murray was a Chartered Accountant and a Manchester-based Company Director, also owning a large house called Erlesdine, at Bowden, Cheshire. In 1927, the same year he bought Dinmore Manor, he patented the idea of reflective glass beads for advertising signs and road signage, a concept later developed by Percy Shaw to create ‘cat’s eyes’ in the road.

Richard Hollins Murray spent a considerable sum on the house, including several ‘Gothic’ additions, and restored the 13^th century chapel of the Knight Hospitallers of Jerusalem, as well as the cloisters leading from the chapel to the manor. (Murray was an Officer of the Order of St. John Jerusalem). The gardens were also re-landscaped with the creation of a new rock garden. They became his ‘pride and joy’ and were regularly opened to the public. He enhanced them with amplifying apparatus in the belfry of the chapel through which classical music concerts were broadcast while visitors walked around the grounds.

Following his death in 1957 the estate passed to his son, Charles Ian Murray (1911-1976) and remained with the family until the end of the century. In 1999 it was bought by Martin Dawes, ‘a serial entrepreneur’, who made his fortune renting television and radio sets in the North-West in the Sixties. He pocketed £70 million from the sale of his Martin Dawes Telecommunications business to Cellnet and probably used this windfall to buy Dinmore Manor. Later, in 2002, he made up to £29 million by selling his 35 per cent stake in Opal Telecom, which was bought by Carphone Warehouse, of which he became a director.

In addition to the Manor House, the wider estate now includes 21 other residential properties, a magnificent shoot, an outstanding cattle breeding facility and a world class equestrian complex set up by Dawes for a reputed £14 million.

All images courtesy of Savills, except where stated.

This home-made 8mm movie was produced by the Murray family of Dinmore Manor, Herefordshire, in 1938. The sound was added some years later. Music; excerpts from Les Preludes, Liszt.