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Tag: local history

An Estate through Time: Compton Verney (part two)

Join us for the second part of our story of Compton Verney (read part one here).

‘Remember he is old enough to be your father and you cannot be in love with him. It may be all very fine to be Lady Willoughby de Broke but a coronet will not ensure your happiness.’ Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Charlecote Park.

Despite her sister’s warning Margaret (Miggy) was determined to be mistress of Compton Verney. She and Henry Peyto Verney were married in March 1829 and Miggy moved into the house. Compton Verney also became a second home for sister Mary Elizabeth and her children. The house may have inspired the redevelopment of Mary’s own home, Charlecote Park, as while it was loved, it looked tired, and wasn’t in as good condition as Miggy’s.

Henry made only minor alterations to the Compton Verney: these included the introduction of lodges on the estate and the extension of the lower lake around 1815. John Gibson, the architect, had also worked at Charlecote.

Compton Verney continued to be owned by successive lords of the Willoughby de Broke family until 1921, when the nineteenth lord sold the house and land to a soap manufacturer and racehorse owner called Joseph Watson. In 1922, not long before his death, Watson became the peer Lord Manton. His son sold the estate in 1929, but not before removing valuable stained glass from the chapel!

In 1933 Samuel Lamb and his family moved into the house where they remained until war broke out. Lamb was a cotton magnate who spent a great deal of time running his mills in Manchester. His wife Gita, however, lived in the house when not in London. During the 1930s, the Lambs hosted lavish weekend parties, attended by among others, Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop and other pro-German members of British society.

From 1939 Compton Verney was unoccupied until the grounds were used by the army as an experimental station for smoke-screen camouflage (an outstation of the Camouflage School at Stratford-upon-Avon). Sadly, after the army left in 1945 the house was never lived in again and various buildings were demolished or fell into disrepair. Large parts of the estate were sold off. Samuel Lamb, however, did allow guides and scouts to camp there.

‘One abiding memory… is of the Friday night when we had a terrific storm. We all gathered in the bell tent and sat round with cups of hot cocoa and singing campfire songs while the rain lashed down outside. We learned later that this was the night of the Lynmouth floods.’ (Patricia Partridge, August 1952)

In 1958 Compton Verney was sold to an industrialist, Harry Ellard, a local property and night-club owner who liked to collect ruined old buildings. Ellard rarely went in the house, and when he did visit the estate he preferred to stay in his caravan in the park. He did, however, occasionally allow film companies into the grounds. Peter Hall’s film of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968), starring Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Ian Richardson, was shot there.

Ellard eventually became a recluse living in a single room in a house in Solihull that he’d converted into a restaurant complex called the Regency Club, then known locally as Harry’s Folly. Ellard died in 1983 leaving over five million pounds. Following his funeral in January 1984, his ashes were buried on the site of the old chapel by the lake at Compton Verney.

By the 1980s, the house at Compton Verney had become semi-derelict. But the story has a happy ending, because in 1993 the Peter Moores Foundation bought the house and immediate grounds and so the charitable Compton Verney House Trust was born. Today the house is Grade 1 listed and home to an award-winning art gallery.

Sources:

Charlecote Park Guide Book, National Trust

Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park

Mistress of Charlecote: the memoirs of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Victor Gollancz, 1989

3 February 2021
An Estate through Time: Compton Verney (part one)

Lately, many of us have been missing our visits to local estates and country houses. So I’d like to invite you on a two-part online historical tour of one of Warkwickshire’s most interesting estates, Compton Verney.

Currently, the Grade I listed property houses an award-winning art gallery opened by Prince Charles in 2004, but apart from this, the estate has a fascinating history.

There has been a manor at Compton Verney since 1150 or earlier. Then, the village was known as Compton Murdak. For a brief time the estate was in the possession of Alice Perrers, Edward III’s mistress, but in 1453 it was sold to the ruthless and ambitious Richard Verney (1435-1490). The Verney family had begun acquiring lands around Compton Murdak in the 1430s, before buying the estate. According to William Dugdale they also built a manor house there around 1442.

(Image: Detail from Ford Madox Brown’s painting of Chaucer reading to the court of King Edward III, showing Alice Perrers and Edward III)

The manor and house built by the Verney family became known as Compton Verney around the 1500s.

The first surviving inventory of the house, which dates from the Civil War in 1642, describes a house of thirty rooms, furnished with velvet, tapestry and pictures to a total value of £900 (quite a tidy sum then) A silk and wool embroidery showing Lucretia’s Banquet may have been one of the original pieces hanging in the Great Hall from this period. According to records, this was sold to the V&A in 1913.

The house was further extended in the late sixteenth century, following the advantageous marriage of Sir Richard Verney (1563-1630) to Margaret, daughter of Sir Fulke Greville. Richard inherited her family estates and claims to the barony of Willoughby de Broke.

The house was altered further in the 17th century, but in 1711 George Verney (1661-1728), the 12th Baron Willoughby de Broke, decided to rebuild it in the then fashionable classical style, while maintaining much of the layout of the original house. The design has been attributed to the Oxford master-mason John Townesend (1678-1742) and his son William, who’d worked at Blenheim Palace and on many of the new college buildings being built in Oxford. The house was set in formal Barocque-style gardens, but when John Peyto Verney (1738 – 1816), inherited, he called in Scottish architect Robert Adam to rebuild the house once more.

Adam’s changes were more extensive than previously and swept away the courtyard house in favour of a u-shaped design with a grand classical porticoed entrance. Although Adam’s work on the mansion was completed in 1769, building work on the other buildings at Compton Verney continued until the 1780s.

In 1769, Capability Brown was called in to remodel the grounds. He did this by removing the formal gardens, and planting over 2,200 oak trees. He had previously done work at nearby Charlecote Park.

Brown also built the now Grade 1 listed chapel at Compton Verney in 1776, where the family tombs can still be seen. He demolished the medieval chapel beside the lake in 1772 as part of his landscape garden designs, and put up a new chapel in neo-classical style, bringing many of the older family monuments to the new building.

In the nineteenth century, after the death of his elder brother John, Henry Peyto Verney (1773-1852) inherited and became the 16th Baron. He was an eccentric character and became increasingly reclusive. Despite this, he set his sights on Margaret Williams, sister of Mary Elizabeth Lucy who lived at Charlecote (see the image to the left). Mary Elizabeth warned her sister, who she called Miggy:

‘Remember he is old enough to be your father and you cannot be in love with him. It may be all very fine to be Lady Willoughby de Broke but a coronet will not ensure your happiness.’

So, the question is: did Miggy marry him?

Find out here.

21 January 2021
Fred Winter – enterprise and legacy

Today I’d like to welcome guest blogger Jann Tracy, author of Marie Corelli: Shakespeare’s Champion back to the site. She is going to tell us about local businessman and entrepreneur, Fred Winter.

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In June 1858 Frederick Winter opened his first store in Stratford-upon-Avon, at 17 & 18 High Street. Twenty-three years later, Frederick and his wife Elizabeth lived over the shop, sharing space with their eight children, four shop assistants and two servants. The 1883 listing in Spennell’s Directory for 17 & 18 High Street is for Winter and Lonsdale, drapers and tailors.

The eldest of the three boys, Fred followed his father into the business, learning his trade as a Master Draper. Fred married Edith Casswell by special licence in 1896 and joined with his father in a management role until Frederick’s death in 1897, when he went into partnership with his mother. By the outbreak of the First World War, Fred had the lease on 14, 16, 17 and 18 High Street, and in 1917, with the addition of numbers 30 & 31, dominated both sides of the road.

No. 18 High St. Stratford-upon-Avon c1910. Image (SC42/251) courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

While building up his business, Fred had several disputes with that thorn in the town council’s side, Marie Corelli, especially over the establishment of the Free Library in Henley Street. In 1916 however, they were collaborating over the uncovering and preservation of the old timbers at 30 High Street.

As well as a successful businessman, Fred was mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon for two years running, in 1913-14 and 1914-15; he was also a JP and Alderman, and in the early 1930s became Master of his local Freemason’s Lodge.

In April 1918 Fred’s mother died of cancer and this time of sadness was increased by the knowledge that Fred and Edith’s eldest son was missing in action.

Frederick Charles, born 1898, and known in the family as Eric, joined up at the beginning of the First World War. His parents subsequently learnt that Eric was alive, though in a German prison camp. During his incarceration the family regularly sent parcels via the Red Cross, but didn’t know if he was receiving them, nor in what state his health was. Happily, Eric returned home and eventually took over the running of the business. Sadly Fred’s nephew, son of his sister May, was killed in action. (Image (DR602/57) courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Circular letter issued by Fred Winter to customers during WWI, c1916)

Envelope from letter sent to Fred Winter during WW1. Image (DR602/17) courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Edith died of cancer in 1933, aged just 59 while Fred died in 1941 aged 71. Fred was a popular man, as attested to by many of the letters in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Archive, commiserating with him in his sorrows, rejoicing in his happiness and thanking him for his many kindnesses.

More than a century after the young Frederick opened his first shop there’s still a Fred Winter presence in town. I think Fred would have approved the turning of his premises into a hub for the homeless, while, perhaps, regretting its necessity.

© Jann Tracy, 2020

Jann Tracy (2017) Marie Corelli: Shakespeare’s Champion, Walking Stork Publications

11 August 2020