Eye Manor

Eye Manor
Herefordshire
Eye Manor
Location
Location:	52°16’12"N, 2°44’24"W
Village:	Eye
History
	Country house
Information
Owned by:	Robert Jenrick

Eye Manor stands at Eye in Herefordshire, a Carolean country house found between Ludlow and Leominster. It is well known for its plasterwork ceilings. Today it is a Grade I listed building.

The house was bought by Conservative politician Robert Jenrick for £1.1 million in 2009.

History

The house stands on what was once a marsh island, hence its name, from the Middle English eye meaning ‘island’. It stands beside a 12th-century church noted for its 15th-century alabaster tombs.

The 17th-century square brick shell was completed in 1680, but rests on an earlier Mediæval sandstone plinth with extensive cellars. The modest exterior belies an impressive panelled interior with its plaster ceilings by the craftsmen who went on to decorate the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The 10 plaster ceilings in the naturalistic style are considered the finest complete set of Restoration ceilings in a private home in England and represent an exuberant plasterwork display of exotic fruits, cherubs and mythical scenes. Ceilings of similar scale and quality are seen at Holyrood House and it is widely considered that the same craftsmen worked on both projects.

Eye Manor

The house contains a secret passage and priesthole, discovered during the Second World War by Jeremy Sandford: these are ususlly assumed to have been 17th century passages in which to conceal Roman Catholic priests or bring them into the house, but at the time the house was owned by the Protestant Gorges family.

The original mullioned windows were changed for wooden sash windows when the house was remodelled probably during the early 18th century.

The present house was built by Ferdinando Gorges, a prominent merchant and owner of sugar plantations in the West Indies and his wife, Meliora Gorges. According to Pevsner, Ferdinando Gorges was known by contemporaries as 'The King of the Black Market' owing to his profitable involvement in the slave trade. Ferdinando Gorges was the godson of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the colonial entrepreneur and the founder of the US province of Maine and brother of Richard Gorges, Governor-General of New England. In his early commercial activities, Ferdinando Gorges is believed to have chartered the ship The Mayflower. Ferdinando's son and grandson, Richard and Henry Gorges, served as Members of Parliament for Leominster. Ferdinando Gorges's daughter Barbara was married to the statesman Thomas Coningsby, 1st Earl Coningsby. Ferdindo Gorges was involved in a protracted property dispute with Sir Christopher Wren that was described by Samuel Pepys as "the most dirty litigation in the land".

In the 18th century the house became part of the adjoining Berrington Hall estate of the Lords Rodney (descended from Admiral Rodney). Berrington Hall is now owned by the National Trust.

In the 20th century Eye Manor was the home of the private publisher Christopher Sandford of the Golden Cockerel Press and his wife Lettice Sandford, an artist and proponent of traditional country crafts and reviver of the corn dolly.

Jeremy Sandford, the writer, broadcaster and director of the award-winning television drama Cathy Come Home, grew up at the house and subsequently wrote of his childhood in Herefordshire. Christopher Sandford's mother, the Irish writer Mary Carbery wife of Algernon 9th Baron Carbery of Castle Freke in County Cork, lived and died in the house. Lady Carbery spent much of her early life crossing Europe in Creeping Jenny, a caravan drawn by white oxen which at one stage was parked in on the lawns of Eye Manor. Lady Carbery's son, John, 10th Baron Carbery, was an Irish nationalist and member of the Kenyan Happy Valley set. During the Second World War the house was the HQ of the English Resistance who were intended to go underground in case of a German invasion and then emerge to engage in acts of sabotage. The house was the home of the North Herefordshire Home Guard and the neighbouring Berrington Estate was the encampment for US servicemen before the notorious Slapton Sands disaster.

In the late 20th century, Eye Manor was home to the amateur gardener, Margery Moncrieff, who laid out the present gardens in an intricate series of outdoor 'rooms'.

Outside links

• Eye Manor, A souvenir Guide with Historical Notes, by Christopher Sandford, John Roberts Press
• A Herefordshire Childhood, Jeremy Sandford.
• The Mercian Maquis, Bernard Lowry & Mick Wilks, Logaston Press, 2002
• Times Article on Eye Manor