Boston Manor
| Boston Manor | |
| Middlesex | |
|---|---|
 Boston Manor House | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ16847834 |
| Location: | 51°29’31"N, 0°19’6"W |
| Town: | Brentford |
| History | |
| Built 1622 | |
| For: | Mary Reade |
| Manor house | |
| Jacobean | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | Hounslow Council |
Boston Manor is a Jacobean manor house in the east of Middlesex, built in 1622 with internal alterations, intensively restored in later centuries. Boston Manor Park is the adjoining publicly owned green space including a lake. The house is a Grade I listed building.[1]
The manor over which this house presided, also known as Boston Manor, was founded in the Middle Ages.
History of the former Manor of Boston
The earliest reference to Boston (or Bordwadestone as it was then spelled) was around the 1170s. Bordwad has not been identified with a group of people or physical feature. The final part of the word is the common Anglo-Saxon ending tun meaning 'farmstead'. The house of today stands towards the northern end of the manor lands. The Lord of the Manor in the 1170s is recorded as Ralph de Brito. There is no record of where he built his hall, but we know that he founded a chapel dedicated to St. Lawrence in the south of the manor on a site that is now derelict.
The northern extent of the manor was marked by a boundary stone. Later a tree to the west of it came to be the local Gospel Oak.
In about 1280, King Edward I granted this area of the township to the prioress of St Helen's Bishopsgate. It is at this point Boston became a recognised rural settlement and the prioress received what amounted to "constructive possession" and ownership. The King may have favoured this particular Convent in Bishopsgate because it was full of the unmarried daughters of members of the Guild of Goldsmiths, and so by making them self-supporting by giving them the means to charge their new tenants rents and to sell the produce grown on their newly acquired demesne, he could justify taxing their fathers more heavily and collect the tax in the form of silver coinage, which was more convenient.
In 1539 under Henry VIII, the convent was dissolved and the manor (including its holdings) returned to the Crown. When King Edward VI was a child, the lands were granted in or shortly before 1547 to his uncle and regent, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. When the Duke was beheaded, his lands were forfeit to the Crown.
Queen Elizabeth I granted the manor to her favourite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester who immediately sold it to Sir Thomas Gresham, an internationally wealthy merchant and financier who had also bought Osterley as his summer residence. He later founded the Royal Exchange. Gresham died without issue, and the property passed to his stepson Sir William Reade, who married Mary Goldsmith.
It was Mary in her widowhood who built Boston Manor House, in 1622–1623. She then married Sir Edward Spencer of Althorp, and it appears that he bought out the claim of the late William Reade's heirs, though on Mary's death in 1658 the lands passed to John Goldsmith. In 1670 the latter's executors sold Boston to another very wealthy city merchant, James Clitherow I, with its then 230 acres.
The manor was gradually reduced by the Clitherow family for the next 250 years. The neighbouring settlement of Brentford expanded onto the property of this manor, which largely became known as the Manor of New Brentford. However during the 18th century the name 'Boston Manor' was still in use in preference to 'New Brentford'.
In 1923, John Bourchier Stracey-Clitherow sold the final part of the estate: the house and 20 acres purchased by the Brentford Urban District Council and opened as a public park in 1924.
Boston Manor House
History of the manor house
The manor house was built in 1622-3 for the newly widowed, and shortly to be remarried Dame Mary Reade. whose late husband was granted a patent of possession for Boston Manor from James I. To the north of the house the Clitherrow family added extensions that contained the kitchen services and quarters for the domestic staff. It passed out of private ownership in 1924.
The house was badly damaged during Second World War by a V-1 flying bomb dropping across the road. For a time after the War, the house was used as a school. After extensive restoration work, was re-opened in 1963 as a visitor centre and museum.
Due to its unique architecture and decoration it has been often used as a setting for period films.
The south-west corner of the house was seen to in danger of collapse: the lower courses of brickwork were visibly bowing out and a vertical crack could be seen running up the wall, and so for many years it was propped up by scaffolding. English Heritage eventually carried out work to consolidate the foundations to prevent further deterioration and possible collapse.
An organization called the Friends of Boston Manor now exists with the aim of helping to restore and maintain the historical aspects of Boston Manor Park and House.[2]
Description of the house
The manor house is a Grade I listed Jacobean manor house on the west-side of Boston Manor Road, Brentford, Middlesex; the only building in the area of the Jacobean period. It is set in twenty acres of beautiful parkland which gently slopes down to the nearby River Brent.
The house has thick walls of red brick and stands three storeys high. The windows are set into stone architraves and a stone cornice between the second and third storeys of the house. It has three gables on the longer sides and two on the shorter with stone coping. The rainwater downpipe headers which collect from the roof gutters are each embossed with dates. The three on the original part of the house are dated 1662, this being the date that building began. Another is 1670, which was when the third gable was added, and 1915 for when improvements were made to the drainage system.
It was traditional with grand houses of this time to consider the front side of the house to be that side which looks out over an elegantly landscaped garden. However, during the ownership of James Clitherow (IV), the central ground floor window on the east side was converted into a doorway and a porch was added. It is fashioned from pale grit stone which has weathered to an almost light golden colour, with Elizabethan detail, and topped with a low ornamental balustrade. Considering its design and apparent age, it is thought to have been salvaged from another building.
Immediately to the left of the entrance hall is the dining room. It is not very large and is painted in a bright yellow which was both popular and expensive when it was in fashion. It has a number of prints and paintings hanging on the walls of local scenes from times gone by.
The library, which is about the same size as the dining room, has some interesting features but is closed to visitors for safety reasons.
The west side of the hall also has a mostly original left hand winding Jacobean staircase. One side of the stairs are mirrored with a Trompe d'œil balustrade: very rare for this period, but with striking similarities to those at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.
The Clitheroe Family in the 19th century added to the top of the newel posts small plaster or composition castings of lions 'sejant erect', each animal hold a shield bearing the arms of a different member of the Clitherow family. These may have been added for the visit of King William IV and Queen Adelaide.
The two landings give a fine view over the garden with its cedar trees planted in 1754.
The art collection at the house includes an oil on canvas of Christopher Clitherow by Godfrey Kneller; oils of Syon House and Isleworth by James Isaiah Lewis; an oil of James Clitherow (1766–1841) by Henry William Pickersgill; and an oil of James Clitherow (1731–1805) by George Romney.[3]
See also
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Boston Manor) |
- Boston Manor
- Friends of Boston Mnaor House
- London Metropolitan Archives holdings on Boston Manor House and the Clitherow family
=References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1079603: Boston Manor House (Grade I listing)
- ↑ Official website of Friends of Boston Manor House. Accessed 2009-10-31
- ↑ MacArthur, Rosie; Johnson, Andy; Piperger, Justin (2013). Oil paintings in public ownership in London, West. London: Public Catalogue Foundation. p. 3. ISBN 9781909475151.
Books
- Lysons, Daniel: 'The Environs of London' (1795–1800)
- Sharpe, Montague: 'Bregantforda and the Hanweal' (1904) ; Some Accounts of Bygone Hanwell and its Chapelry of New Brentford. Brentford Printing and Publishing Coy., Ltd. London. UK.
- Oswald, Arthur: 'Boston Manor House' in Country Life 18 March 1965, pp 63–7
- McNamara, Janet: 'Boston Manor Brentford – A History and Guide'
- Neaves, Cyrill: 'A history of Greater Ealing' (S. R. Publishers, 1971) ISBN 0-85409-679-5