This old country house once boasted an 1,110-acre estate complete with five farms and three workers’ cottages. They now make up the hamlet around the manor.
The 10th Century Bradford Manor was damaged by fire in around 1770. Purchased and then rebuilt in the 1860s, the existing Manor was styled and rebuilt by J. T. English. Image: Fine & Country.
Bradford Manor, near Holsworthy, in Devon, is being marketed by Fine & Country, with offers wanted over £1.95 million.
The manor house stands on the site of an older manor house destroyed by fire in the 1770’s and subsequently demolished.
The previous Bradford Manor was a Doomsday recorded Manor dating back to the 11th century. Image: Fine & Country.
The present house was built in 1868 by Joseph Thomas English (1819-1892), a successful businessman who was married twice and had ten children. He was the younger brother of Henry Hampden English and together they founded English Brothers, timber merchants, of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. J.T. English subsequently moved to Stamford (Lincolnshire), Stratford-on-Avon (Warwickshire), Stratton (Cornwall) and finally Bradford (North Devon). Amazingly these moves all took place in the 1860’s. When he built Bradford Manor the estate was 11,000 acres with five farms. As well as managing his estate he held shares in shipping, railways and finance.
Bradford Manor contains many original Victorian features including panelled doors, fireplaces, moulded coving ceilings and a servants’ bell system. Image: Fine & Country.
Following his death the house passed through several sons but the longest tenant was Alexander Emanuel English (1872-1962), the younger son, who obtained the freehold of Bradford Manor in 1904. He was frequently absent in India and Burma during a long career with the Indian Civil Service.
The house was extended during the mid-20th century and comprises of 25 rooms. The sale also includes a Victorian walled garden, open fronted carriage barn, coach house, garaging and extensive stone and slate barns.
As property owner of this important historic and quality manor house the prestigious title, Lord and Lady of Bradford, is obtained which rarely becomes available.
Bradford Manor has a pillared entrance with lighting and wrought iron railings. There is a front door screen with solid hardwood door and brass fittings, door lock and bell push with etched glass over, and sash side windows. Image: Fine & Country.Bradford Manor has four reception rooms and six bedrooms. Image: Fine & Country.Each room has been sympathetically refurbished in keeping with its age and style with particular quality in its recent library, kitchen and master bedroom en-suite bathroom. Image: Fine & Country.The first floor landing area contains a number of period features, including original sash windows with deep sill and wood panels. Image: Fine & Country.A period wood banister staircase climbs to the first floor. Image: Fine & Country.
After a period as Borocourt Hospital this Victorian mansion has been completely restored to its original appearance both inside and out.
In the 1970s critic Jennifer Sherwood summarised Wyfold Abbey’s architecture as a “Nightmare Abbey”. Image: Hamptons International.
Wyfold Court, the Grade-II listed Gothic mansion at Rotherfield Pepppard, in Oxfordshire, was built between 1872 and 1873, during the reign of Queen Victoria, for Edward Hermon, Conservative MP for Preston and a partner in Horrocks, Miller and Co, cotton merchants. It was designed by the architect George Somers Clarke, who was a pupil of Sir Charles Barry, and the visionary behind the Houses of Parliament.
The south-west front of Wyfold Court in 1888, showing the porte cochere. Image: Historic England.
In the late 1990s, Wyfold was converted into eleven apartments by English Heritage. The four bedroom apartment that’s currently on the market at Hamptons International for £1.85 million occupies one of the mansion’s most impressive corners.
Edward Hermon’s only daughter was Frances Caroline Hermon who married Robert Hodge, MP for the Southern or Henley Division of Oxfordshire. He was created a baronet as Sir Robert Hodge of Wyfold Court in July 1902 and later ennobled as Baron Wyfold in May 1919. Image: Hamptons International.
An ornamental carriage entrance with timber doors leads the way into a communal reception hall. The inner hall, with chequerboard floor tiles and marble pillars is said to be a copy of a similar corridor found at the House of Commons. Resplendent with period grandeur the feeling is enhanced by an impressive 43 ft high grand stair case, crafted in teak with beautiful stained glass windows featuring past Kings and Queens of England.
After his wife died in 1929, Robert Hodge had little use for such a large house and, in 1932, he sold it to the Government who converted it for medical use as Borocourt Hospital. The hospital closed in 1993. Image: Hamptons International.Wyfold Court, Oxfordshire. Image: Hamptons International.Wyfold Court, Oxfordshire. Image: Hamptons International.
The apartment is arranged over three floors. Access to the apartment is from the ground floor where the entrance hall provides access to principle reception rooms and kitchen/breakfast room all of which have breath-taking views over formal gardens and surrounding countryside.
There is much to be admired in the drawing room; the 20 ft high ceiling, ornately decorated with painted plaster mouldings, an outstanding carved timber fireplace housing a wood-burning stove and full height windows providing wonderful views and a door to a private area of garden.
In August, 1947, the Leamington Spa Courier announced that the executors of the late Sir Wathen Waller had instructed a Birmingham firm of auctioneers to offer for sale the remainder of the Woodcote estate situated at Leek Wootton, between Kenilworth and Warwick. The estate comprised a stone-fronted mansion, surrounded by charming grounds, the Home Farm, woodlands, and a number of cottages extending in all to about 253 acres.
Grade II listed Woodcote House was built in Elizabethan-style in 1861 and extended in 1869 on the site of an earlier house. Designed by John Gibson, it was built in Jacobean style for Henry Christopher Wise. The Wise family once owned Warwick Priory, which was dismantled and removed to America. A member of the Wise family was head gardener to Charles I, a position of some importance.
In 1864, All Saints’ Church, Leek Wootton, was thoroughly repaired and an open roof, the gift of the late Henry Christopher Wise, was erected; there was also a memorial to his three sons. In 1897, carved choir stalls were installed by Lady Waller as a memorial to her husband, the late General Sir George Waller, 3rd Baronet, and a chancel screen was erected in 1930 in memory of Captain Sir Francis Waller, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, killed in action in 1914.
The Wallers came of fighting stock. One of their ancestors captured the Duke of Orleans, at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, when Henry V conferred honours upon him.
In 1947, the executors of Sir Wathen Waller sold Woodcote House to Warwick Rural District Council for £25,654 to be used as a police headquarters. Following a conversion costing £60,000 Woodcote became the headquarters of the Warwickshire Constabulary in 1949. The house is linked to the east to significant 1960s/70s buildings developed as part of the Warwickshire Police headquarters.
The new house of 1861 was built in practically the same position as an older house with stables, farm buildings and a kitchen garden in much the same place. The gardens and pleasure grounds were re-arranged, a reservoir built and five acres of the park were taken to enlarge the garden. Constructed with locally quarried stone, which like most Warwickshire sandstone, it is soft and crumbly. Image: Archiseek.Woodcote House, Warwickshire, in the 1900s. Image: Our Warwickshire.Woodcote House, Leek Wootton, Warwickshire. Image: GVA.
New Lodge, in Windsor Forest, appeared in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News in June 1910. It was the home of Colonel Victor Van de Weyer and was to be the scene of house parties for Ascot race meeting.
New Lodge, at Winkfield. This image appeared in The Sporting and Dramatic News in June 1910. Image: The British Newspaper Archive.
The house was built by Thomas Talbot-Bury (1809-1877) between 1856-1859 for Jean-Sylvain Van der Weyer (1802-1874), the Belgian Ambassador to Britain, friend of Queen Victoria and Albert and a notable book collector. His American father-in-law Joshua Bates, a partner in Barings’ Bank is said to have paid for the house, which was Tudor-Gothic, in the style of Pugin-Barry.
Queen Victoria and her children were regular visitors to New Lodge and planted the Wellingtonia trees that line the driveway.
Van der Weyer made his fortune from investments in the United States and Canada. The family held interests in Chicago, Detroit and Canada Grand Junction bonds, the Grand Russian Railway Company and Atlantic and St Lawrence railroad bonds, among others.
His wealth was used to buy land and farms surrounding New Lodge, as did his eldest son, Victor, who inherited the estate in 1874. After he died in 1915, Captain William Van der Weyer, a grandson of the Belgian Ambassador, sold the estate in 70 separate lots the following year.
New Lodge, which falls in between the parish of Bray and Winkfield between the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and Bracknell Forest Borough Council is nearby to Windsor Great Park and is within Green Belt land. Image: The British Newspaper Archive.
New Lodge was bought by Dr Venables (or Venebles) who leased it in 1925 to New Lodge Clinic Ltd, an exclusive establishment that operated until 1939, when the house was sublet to Sir Malcolm Deleringe and others for the accommodation of refugees. In 1942, the house was bought by Dr Barnardos, the children’s charity, for £24,000.
In 1956, New Lodge was acquired by the British Railways Transport Commission for £24,000 and turned into a training school, known as ‘The British Railways School of Transport’. At the time, the purchase of the house was believed to be more economical than the cost of a new building. However, the cost of conversion was said to have eventually cost over £100,000. It was later shared with B.T. Hotels, who used it to train staff until 1964.
New Lodge is currently an office conversion featuring around 30 units. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.
Faced with high running costs, the Commission closed the facility in 1971 and sold it a year afterwards to environmental information specialist Barbour Index, who used it as offices. Afterwards the Grade II* listed house was extensively refurbished and, after being sold in 2004 to the Marchday Group for office use, it was put up for sale again in 2013.
In 2016, a planning application was submitted by two brothers to convert New Lodge from serviced office use back to residential. Lewandowski Architects, based in Eton were appointed to work on the project and restore the listed building as far as possible to its original features.
The hunting lodge that was once a favourite of Queen Victoria was put on the market 2013. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.In 1972 New Lodge appeared in the Hammer House of Horror classic ‘Asylum’ starring Robert Powell, Peter Cushing and Britt Ekland. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.New Lodge still has many of its original period features, including this imposing fireplace. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.The floors have been converted into dozens of offices all with catering and toilet facilities but maintaining the stunning features of the building, including a grand staircase with a large stained glass window. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.The building went under considerable refurbishment in 2004 as independent business suites owned by Marchday Group Plc. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.It is hoped that the former hunting lodge will be restored back into a family home. Image: INS News Agency Ltd.
A Georgian mansion with Victorian additions. Not much remains of the house that General Robert E. Lee’s family once knew
Image: Savills.
The selling-point or Coton Hall is inevitably its connection with the de la Lee family, probably of Norman descent, who owned a sizeable chunk of Shropshire for about 500 years. This was their ancestral home, and in 1636, Richard Lee emigrated to Virginia, where he prospered in tobacco. Another descendant, Richard Henry Lee, was one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, and Robert E. Lee was commander of the Confederate States Army.
The present house was built about 1800 for Harry Lancelot Lee, the last of the family to live at Coton Hall, in the Parish of Alveley. In his book In Search of the Perfect Home, Marcus Binney says “the elegant simplicity of the house is pure Regency, but to Victorian tastes it was a little too plain, and a picturesque Italianate tower and wing was added about 1860.”
With attention drawn to the American link, Coton Hall was on the market for £2.2 million back in January 2017. Eighteen months later, still unsold, the guide price has been quietly dropped to £1.85 million.
Image: Savills.
According to Marcus Binney, the house is hidden until the last moment, and it is the ruined chapel on the grass circle in front that first comes into view. With its fine interiors, the cellars are of interest, being two-storeys deep, and on the lower level is an entrance to a tunnel which leads to the chapel.
There is another side to Coton Hall’s history, one that is often overlooked. The Lee relationship might have ended with Harry Lancelot Lee, but by the time he died in 1821, he had already let the estate to a local curate.
Image: Share History.
Coton Hall was bought by James Foster (1786 -1853), an iron-master and coal-master of Stourbridge. In 1831 he sat in Parliament for the Liberals, became High Sheriff of Worcestershire in 1840, and became the head of the firm of iron-masters, John Bradley and Company. Foster’s wealth was immense and later allowed him to buy Stourton Castle. When he died in 1853, he left his fortune to his nephew, William Orme Foster of nearby Apley Park.
Coton Hall came into the possession of Edward Lloyd Gatacre (1806 -1891), head of one of Shropshire’s most ancient families, having settled at Gatacre Hall in the reign of Henry III. Educated at Rugby and Christ Church, Oxford, he became one of the oldest magistrates in the county and filled the office of High Sheriff in 1856.
Gatacre put the estate up for sale in 1851, and it was bought by the Reverend Edward Ward Wakeman (1801-1855), a man much esteemed for his great kindness to the poor, and his works for charity. He was the son of Sir Henry Wakeman, 1st Baronet, and Sarah Offley, and married Louisa Thompson in 1835. Wakeman also acquired the Hanley Court estate in 1855, under the will of the Rev. T. H. Newport, but died only months afterwards.
Shrewsbury Chronicle, 1851. Image: The British Newspaper Archive.
His eldest son and heir, Offley Francis Drake Wakeman (1836-1865) only came of age in 1857, and the affairs at Coton Hall were briefly managed by his uncle, Offley Penbury Wakeman (1799-1858), 2nd Baronet of Periswell Hall, in Worcestershire.
After over-exerting himself in a cricket match in 1865, Offley Wakeman was found lying in a pool of blood, his death caused by the rupture of a blood vessel. His brother, Henry Allan Wakeman-Newport (1841-1923), had inherited the Hanley Court estate, and Coton Hall was awarded to the youngest brother, Edward Maltby Wakeman (1846-1926).
Edward graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, with a Master of Arts, became a Chartered Accountant, a J.P., and was awarded Honourable Lieutenant-Colonel in the 3rd Battalion Shropshire Light Infantry. He married Edith Mary Buchanan in 1874, and had two children, Gladys Louisa Wakeman and Edward Offley Wakeman, an only son, who died within his first year.
Image: Savills.
In 1878, the roof of the chapel collapsed, and all the Lee monuments were moved to Alveley Church.
Colonel Wakeman died in 1926, and left instructions that his funeral should be ‘the plainest possible description, and that all unnecessary expense should be avoided’. He was drawn in an open bier to the grave at Alveley Church by those whom he had employed. Edward left his property in trust for his daughter, with the request that the successors to the property assumed the name and arms of Wakeman. Gladys Louisa had married Captain Hugh Davenport Colville, Royal Navy, in 1906, and legally changed their name to Wakeman-Colville in 1927. They stayed at Coton Hall until the 1930s.
Image: JMC4 – Church Explorer.Image: Savills.
In the 1940s, Coton Hall was home to Mr and Mrs Howard Thompson. The house, which had always maintained a modest degree of secrecy, was opened to the public for one-day in 1956, and was described in the Birmingham Daily Post:
“On show in the Hall – the ancestral home of Gen. Robert E. Lee – will be four of the main rooms. These contain many art treasures, including superb paintings of the Lee family, who owned the hall for more than 500 years.
“In front of the Hall stands the remains of a chapel built in 1275, which was at one time the private domestic chapel of the reigning monarch. It was used by King Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor. The latter laid a rent charge on the manor which is still paid. A subterranean passage leads from the Hall to a crypt beneath the chapel
“The Hall, which stands on a hill, 550 feet above sea level, commands a wonderful view of the valley and the large trout lake.
“The main feature of the four-acre grounds are the trees, which have plaques attached to indicate their variety. Behind the Hall, overlooking a valley, stands a magnificent cedar tree, planted 226 years ago. In the same year, Thomas Lee sent some seeds to Coton from Virginia. These seeds have now flourished into the tall red chestnut trees in Coton Park.”
Marcus Binney says the ruined chapel is no antiquity. “Local historians have claimed that this is the chapel of ancient Saxon kings, but it is a simple Palladian box with a pretty Strawberry Hill Gothic window in the east end. It is attributed to Shrewsbury architect, Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.”
Coton Hall, built in mellowed sawn grey stone, with a slate roof, is being marketed by Savills and offers excellent family accommodation. Particularly notable are the well-proportioned reception rooms, with their high ceilings and decorative architectural detail. The additional Victorian wing, with Italianate turret, blends admirably with the Georgian part of the house.
This Grade II listed country house is situated on the fringes of Epping Forest. The Wood House was built in 1895 on the Copped Hall Estate, inherited by Ernest James Wythes in 1887. He lived at Copped Hall, the Palladian mansion that was largely destroyed by fire in 1917. He initially moved to The Wood House on a temporary basis but stayed after abandoning plans to rebuild the fire-damaged house. The Wood House was constructed to the designs of Walter E. Tower and Charles Eames Kempe and is said to have been inspired by The Ancient House (also known as Sparrow’s House) in Ipswich, a property which features some magnificent pargetting on its exterior. Kempe was an eminent Victorian stained-glass designer and manufacturer and his studios produced windows for numerous cathedrals and churches. It is believed that the house has had several prominent visitors including Winston Churchill who is rumoured to have stayed during The Blitz. In more recent times it was home to singer Rod Stewart for more than thirty years.
Wood House. Taken from the Archives of Country Life in 1956. (Country Life)
A drawing of Loaningdale House from 1867. It was originally called Sunnyside and featured in a book ‘Biggar and the House of Fleming’ by William Hunter.
In November 1917 a newspaper advertisement in The Scotsman announced the pending auction of the Loaningdale Estate, near Biggar, Lanarkshire. It was offered at the ‘low upset price’ of £3,500 in an attempt to be rid of the property. The newspaper described Loaningdale House as a ‘very desirable residential estate with its mansion-house containing four public rooms, twelve bedrooms and dressing rooms, servants’ accommodation, stables, coach-house and good gardens’. Britain was at war and it wasn’t the best time to be selling; every day country mansions were being offered for sale and, for those still able to afford it, there were numerous properties to choose from. At December’s auction Loaningdale House failed to find a buyer (as it had done in 1908) and its owner, Gavin William Ralston (1862-1924), was resigned to keeping the house.
Loaningdale House went back onto the rental market, as it had been since the death of Ralston’s father, Gavin Ralston (1827-1894), but the succession of tenants came at a price. In 1901, the property was described by one tenant as being in “a dirty and unhealthy condition with bad smells.”
However, Loaningdale House had enjoyed much better days. It had been built in the early 18th century for Nicol Sommerville on the site of an old farmstead called Sunnyside. It was enlarged by Dr Black and, in 1855, was bought by Walter Scott Lorraine, a Glasgow merchant, who remodelled and enlarged the house three years later to the designs of architect Thomas McGuffie and changed the name to Loaningdale. It was described in 1867 as ‘a spacious and elegant building, somewhat in the Elizabethan style of architecture’.
This modern image of Loaningdale House provides no clues to its existence as Loaningdale Approved School for Boys that closed in the 1980. (Panoramio)
After his death in 1871 the property was bought by Gavin Ralston, a writer and a Master of Arts at Glasgow University. He died in 1894 and Loaningdale passed to his wife, Christina Ballantine Walker, who lived in Edinburgh but had been inclined to rent the house out.
After she died in 1908 it became the property of their eldest son, Gavin William Ralston, a barrister who practised at Dr Johnson’s Buildings at Temple. After failing to sell Loaningdale in 1917 he finally sold the house in 1921, probably to a Mr and Mrs Baird, but gained national headlines when he married Countess Makharoff in 1924. He had met his wife when touring Russia and she was just a girl of 15. It seems the first seeds of their romance were sown and when she fled the country after the Russian Revolution of 1917 (shooting two Bolsheviks in the process) she eventually arrived in England. Just 11 days into their honeymoon Ralston died of a heart-attack while walking down a country lane at Worth Matravers, near Swanage in Dorset.
A modern accommodation extension was built in the 1960’s. The house was put up for sale in 2015 and sold for just £520,000. (Zoopla)
In 1963 Loaningdale House became an Approved School for Boys but nearly suffered closure in 1967 when the body of a 15-year-old local girl was discovered in a nearby churchyard. She had been hit over the head with a heavy object and strangled from behind. The police began taking dental casts, including boys from the school, and it was determined that the murderer was 17-year-old Gordon Hay, a resident at Loaningdale. He became the first person in Britain to be convicted based on evidence from forensic dentistry. The school finally closed in the 1980’s and in recent times the house has been used as an outdoor education centre. The core of the house remains but has been spoilt by a 1960’s accommodation block and outbuildings to the east.
Not the most sympathetic addition to Loaningdale House, built in 1858 for Walter Scott Lorraine. (Dicky Hart)
Modern buildings were built to the east of Loaningdale House. It now operates as a Scottish Outdoor Education Centre (SOEC) for children and young people.
Loaningdale House,
Biggar, South Lanarkshire, ML12 6LX
Frankby Hall, built in 1846 for the Royden family, and sold in 1933.
When the will of Sir Thomas Bland Royden, of Frankby Hall, Cheshire was proved in 1917 it came out at a staggering £1,271,354. The baronet had been Chairman of Thomas Royden and Sons, shipbuilders and ship-owners, of Liverpool. He was a former member of Liverpool City Council, Lord Mayor in 1878-79 and High Sheriff in 1903-04. He had been made a Baronet in 1905.
Sir Thomas Bland Royden (1831-1917)
Frankby Hall, and its 810 acres, had been the home of the Royden family for more than 200 years. The last house had been built in 1846 and following Royden’s death passed to his son, Sir Thomas Royden, 2nd Bt., later to become the first and last Baron Royden of Frankby. He had an even more prestigious career, becoming Chairman of the LMS Railway Company and a director at the Cunard Steam Ship Company, Midland Bank and the Suez Canal. He was largely absent from Frankby Hall and sold the mansion and 61-acres by auction to Wallasey Corporation in 1933. The house was altered to become two chapels for the Wallasey Municipal Cemetery which was created at a cost of £10,000 in its grounds. One chapel was for Church of England and Nonconformist services, and the other was for Roman Catholic services.
From the Liverpool Daily Post, 2 May, 1940. (British Newspaper Archive)Frankby Hall seen in 1945. From the Liverpool Evening Express, 24 August, 1945. (British Newspaper Archive)Frankby Hall. Now used as chapels for Frankby Cemetery.Entrance to Frankby Cemetery, but once the approach to Frankby Hall.
An English country house built with wealth secured in California and Hawaii (Fine & Country)
This fine manor house was built about 1895 by the architect Edward Penfold, a partner in Baker and Penfold of Reigate.
Quite remarkable are the circumstances leading up to the construction of Kingswood Manor. For these we must travel to the USA where Claus Spreckels (1828-1908), a German-born immigrant, made his fortune by starting a brewery and later founding the California Sugar Refinery. When he went to Hawaii in 1876 he managed to secure sole supply of sugar cane and with it much of the West Coast refined sugar market. In 1899 he founded the Spreckels Sugar Company, Inc.
The businessman gave over $25 million to his five grown children but his favourite child was the only daughter, Emma Claudine Spreckels. He gifted an entire city block in Honolulu to her and an endowment worth almost $2 million. However, in 1893, when Emma married Thomas Palmer Watson, a Yorkshire-born grain-broker of San Jose and many years her senior, she failed to tell her father. Claus didn’t approve and taunted her with the gift he’d generously provided. Emma gave it back but, because of her father’s high-standing in San Francisco, the married couple were forced to flee to England.
Thomas and Emma built Kingswood Manor in the village of Lower Kingswood. Thomas died in 1904 and she married John Wakefield Ferris, a Gloucestershire-born civil engineer and contractor, who also gained wealth in California by reclaiming about 80,000 acres of land subject to overflow by dyking and draining. Their daughter, Jean Ferris, later became the Marquise d’Espinay-Durtal, Princesse de Brons. When he died in 1920 the couple were about to vacate Kingswood Manor for Nutfield Priory at Redhill. (Emma later married a third time and died at Nutfield).
The house was built to the designs of Surrey architect Edward Penfold (Fine & Country)
In 1922 Kingswood Manor was sold to Mr Alfred Norman Rickett, a stockbroker, and the Hon Jessie Hair Nivison, daughter of Robert Nivison, 1st Baron Glendyne, who remained until the 1940s. According to the sales information the house was reputedly later owned by the Sultan of Brunei but this cannot be verified. The present owners have been at Kingswood Manor since 1996 which still retains period features such as open fireplaces, a grand oak staircase, oak floors, wood panelling, high ceilings and ornate architraves. The house was put up for sale for £3.5 million in 2017.
An aerial view of Kingswood Manor shows the generous layout (Fine & Country)Gates to Kingswood Manor. Did the Sultan of Brunei once own the house? (Fine & Country)
HOUSE AND HERITAGE 