Unlike many country houses requisitioned by the military in World War Two, this property survived and has even had parts of its former estate reinstated.
Shudy Camps Hall, in the farming village of Shudy Camps, Cambridgeshire, had remained in the same family — the Dayrells — for three generations, and later, in the prewar years, was home to the Rev Canon Thornton, the Vicar of Shudy Camps and canon emeritus of Ely Cathedral. SAVILLS.
Despite the positive noises from estate agents, there appears to be a slowdown in the sale of large country houses. Take Shudy Camps Hall in Cambridgeshire, featured here two years at a guide price of £5 million, later dropped to £4.5 million, and now available to buyers at Savills for a much reduced £3.75 million. However, the latest price has stripped out the Elizabethan House and Park Lodge, now available as separate lots.
Shudy Camps Hall is a Grade II listed Queen Anne House. It is fundamentally a 17th century house with later 18th and 19th century additions.
Also referred to as Shudy Camps Park, it was built by Marmaduke Dayrell about 1700 and remained with the family for three generations. The Rev. Richard Dayrell offered the debt-burdened Shudy Camps Park estate for sale in 1898.
Shudy Camps is close to the village of Castle Camps, an area steeped with interesting history, which lies 15 miles south east of the city of Cambridge. SAVILLS.Standing in the centre of 29 acres, Shudy Camps Hall, has seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms and seven reception rooms. SAVILLS.Shudy Camps Hall. SAVILLS.
Shudy Camps Hall was bought by Arthur Gee, who perhaps thought his surname not grand enough and changed it to Maitland. He died in 1903 and the house, along with 300 acres, was sold to the Rev. Cannon F.F.S.M.Thornton, Vicar of Shudy Camps and Canon Emeritus of Ely Cathedral.
On his death in 1939 the estate was broken up – the parkland was requisitioned by the British Army and the house occupied by the Royal Air Force. It has now returned to private ownership and over the last few years the estate has been gradually pieced back together with the acquisition of various cottages within the grounds.
Shudy Camps Hall. SAVILLS.Shudy Camps Hall. SAVILLS.Shudy Camps Hall. SAVILLS.A striking well-proportioned Grade II listed house with a particularly long symmetrical façade of 19th Century paired twelve pane hung sashes flanked by 18th Century wings, it was originally a 17th Century house with later 18th and 19th Century additions. Notable external features include symmetrical arched windows in the wings to either side and a central pillared porch believed to be part of the 19th Century alterations. SAVILLS.When Shudy Camps Park was requisitioned by the War Office in 1939, members of the Royal Air Force moved into The Hall, a handsome Queen Anne house that nestled in the park grounds. SAVILLS.The present owners have acquired other cottages in the grounds: the four-bedroom Elizabethan House, which forms part of the courtyard to the rear of The Hall; and The Lodge, another well-appointed four-bedroom house nearby. SAVILLS.The Hall is a quintessential Queen Anne country house with views over its own park like grounds and surrounding rolling countryside. SAVILLS.Shudy Camps Hall. SAVILLS.
A secretive house built on the riches of West Indian sugar plantations and slavery
Image: Savills.
Country Life magazine describes this house as ‘a fitting addition to the market in Humphry Repton’s bicentenary year’. Dullingham House, near Newmarket, Cambridgeshire, is being marketed by Savills with a guide price of £2.75 million.
The country house is understood to have been built for Sir Christopher Jeaffreson in the early part of the 18th Century – possibly on the site of an earlier house and is a fine example of red brick Georgian architecture, with patterned burnt headers beneath a slate roof.
A look into the history of Dullingham House shows it was likely constructed from the riches of sugar and the slave trade.
Image: Savills.
In 1878, two volumes entitled A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century, edited by John Cordy Jeaffreson, made up from the papers of Christopher Jeaffreson (1676-1686) of Dullingham House, were published.
Within these volumes we learn that Christopher Jeaffreson was born in 1650, and that he was in his seventy-fifth year when he died at Dullingham House.
His father was a ‘fortunate adventurer’, one John Jeaffreson, became a landed proprietor in St. Christopher’s Island, and obtained the title of Colonel from his command of the militia on the island. The Colonel became a rich man and among other estates in England, where he spent the last years of his life, he acquired ‘the manorial property and farms pertaining to Dullingham House in 1656 (from the infant Sir Richard Wingfield), so that his son Christopher, the ‘young squire’, on reaching the age of 22, at which he succeeded to his inheritance, ‘had the revenue of an affluent country gentleman, apart from the rents of his West Indian property’.
Image: Savills.
Christopher married soon afterwards, but his wife soon died, leaving him a disconsolate widower. He set out on a voyage to St. Kitts ‘in order that he might settle and restore his estate on the island’. He ended up staying five years in the West Indies, where he worked energetically as a planter and merchant, and took an active political interest in the colony.
On his death in 1725, the estates in the West Indies and Suffolk passed to another Christopher Jeaffreson, M.P. (1699-1749), the man thought responsible for building the Dullingham House we see today.
Image: Savills.
At a by-election in 1744 he was returned unopposed for Cambridge on the interest of his friend, Samuel Shepheard. He was replaced by Shepheard at the general election of 1747, but on Shepheard’s death the next year was again returned. He died in 1749, according to William Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, ‘from too much drinking, which brought him into a consumption. He was one of the tallest men I ever saw’.
When Sir Christopher died in 1749, the estate, its new house and small pleasure ground passed to his son, also Christopher, who remained at Dullingham until his death in 1788. His only son, Colonel Christopher Jeaffreson inherited and in 1799 called in Humphry Repton (1752-1818) to give advice on the alteration of the grounds.
Image: Savills.
Christopher Jeaffreson died in 1824, and the estate passed to his daughter Harriet, who married William Pigot in 1827. Their son, Christopher William Pigot, born in 1836, took the name of Robinson in 1857 under an inheritance from his maternal grandmother. In 1870 he married Mary Marianne Mariana Dunn-Gardner, the eldest daughter of John Dunn-Gardner, MP, DL, JP of Chatteris, and sister of Algernon Dunn-Gardner, of Denton Hall, Suffolk.
When Christopher Robinson died in 1889, Mary Robinson, a lady of peculiarly fine character, had a high sense of duty and took her responsibilities as the owner of a large estate very seriously, frequently lending the grounds of Dullingham House for flower shows and fetes.
Image: Savills.Dullingham House, as seen from the air in 1951. Image: Britain from Above.
Mary Robinson lived at Dullingham until she died, aged ninety-one, in 1939. The estate then descended to her half-brother’s daughter, Miriam Leader, who sold it in 1947 to Frederick Boyton Taylor (1894-1959). His son, Peter Boyton Taylor (1921-1996), divided up the property, the house, gardens and park being purchased by Angela Tomkins who, together with her father, developed the park as a race-horse stud.
In 1994 the House and its immediate grounds were purchased by Sir Martin and Lady Nourse and the stable courtyard developed for private housing.
Image: Savills.Image: Savills.
Dullingham House is Grade II listed as being of Historical and Architectural interest. The property has been the subject of various additions and alterations over the centuries – at one point (according to the listing) it is described as having had ‘two projecting cross wings to the east and west which were substantially reduced in the 1950’s to be replaced by flanking, shaped walls’. The façade looked very different in Victorian times with altered fenestration, and according to Savills, the top floor was added about 1900 by Mary Robinson. Indeed, there were dormer windows on the upper floor before subsequent alterations resulted in the existing elevations.
Apart from the normal reception rooms, Dullingham House has eight bedrooms and comes with the Repton ‘pleasure’ grounds and walled gardens, set within 8-acres.
HOUSE AND HERITAGE 