Newnham Park
| Newnham Park | |
| Devon | |
|---|---|
 Newnham Park | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SX55565794 |
| Location: | 50°24’13"N, 4°2’2"W |
| History | |
| Built Before 1718 | |
| Country house | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | David Michael Strode Cobbold |
| Website: | http://www.newnham.co.uk/ |
Newnham Park is a grand country house and estate in Devon, in the parish of Sparkwell.
The estate was known as 'Loughtor' until about 1700 when the ancient Strode family, long seated at Newnham, about a mile south-east of the manor house of Loughtor, abandoned Newnham and moved their residence to Loughtor (which they had inherited by a marriage in the 16th century). Here they built a new mansion house which they renamed "Newnham Park".
Today the house, with an estate of about 1,550 acres,[1] is still owned by a descendant (via various female lines) of the Courtenay and Strode families which held the estate from the 15th century. Part of the estate is operated as a commercial clay-pigeon shooting ground.
History
Descent
Sir William Pole (d.1635) relates[2] the early holders of Loughtorre through the families of L Abbé (from the 113th century), de Radford, Courtenay, then Strode.
Elizabeth Courtenay, heiress of Loughtor, married William Strode (1512-1579) of Newnham,[3] bringing the estate into that family.
Until 1718 it is not clear what use, if any, was made by the Strode family of the old manor house of the Courtenays at Loughtor, as they appear to have continued to reside chiefly at "Old Newnham". The first of the Strodes to live at Loughtor was Sidney II Strode, who inherited the Strode estates aged 34, only 3 years before his own death in 1721, but during that short time abandoned Old Newnham and moved his residence to the manor of Loughtor, just a third of a mile to the north-east, and where he rebuilt the manor house and called it "Newnham Park"[4]
In 1897, the estate was inherited by George Sydney Strode Lowe, a nephew of the preceding owner, and in accordance with the bequest he changed his name by royal licence to Strode and adopted the arms of Strode. He himself had no son and left the estate to his daughter, Eileen, who in turn bequeathed it to her own daughter, Judith Eileen Strode Valle-Pope, who in 1955 married Michael Maurice Cobbold, from whom the estate has now descended to the Cobbold family.[5]
References
- ↑ Newnham Estate
- ↑ Pole, Sir William (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, Sir John-William de la Pole (ed.), London, 1791, pp.329–30
- ↑ Vivian, p.718
- ↑ Risdon, p.395 (1810 Additions): "The present residence of the family was erected, about a century ago, by Sidney Strode Esq, and is now under the name of Newnham Park"
- ↑ Cobbold family tree
- Journals of the Reverend John Swete (vol. 4) (published in Travels in Georgian Devon: The Illustrated Journals of Reverend John Swete, 1789-1800, ed. Todd Gray & Margery Rowe, 1999) , page 17–20 ISBN 978-1855227415
- Risdon, Tristram: 'Survey of Devon' (1635) (in 1811 edition pp. 197–8, 395: Newnham & Loughter
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Devon, 1952; 1989 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09596-8
- Pole, Sir William (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, Sir John-William de la Pole (ed.), London, 1791, pp. 329–10, Newenham & Loughtorre
- Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, pp. 718–20, pedigree of Strode of Newnham