Chorleywood House

Chorleywood House
Hertfordshire
Chorleywood House
Location
Grid reference:	TQ03209688
Location:	51°39’40"N, -0°30’34"W
History
	Built 1822, from 1892
For:	John Barnes Lady Ella Russell
	Country house
	Regency
Information
Condition:	Converted to flats

Chorleywood House stands off the Rickmansworth Road in Chorleywood, in Hertfordshire. This was originally the great house of the Chorleywood House Estate, which estate has however been separated to serve as a municipal recreational area and nature reserve. The house is now divided into flats.

The house is a Regency mansion, built in 1822 by John Barnes, replacing an earlier farmhouse.

History

The house was built in 1822 for John Barnes (1791-1866), and it remained in his family for almost fifty years, though let to as series of distinguished tenants.

In 1870 the property was advertised for sale. An extract from the advertisement is as follows.

The highly attractive and charming residential estate known as Chorleywood House adjoining the Turnpike road …comprising a most substantial and spacious mansion well adapted in every respect for the requirements of a gentleman’s family beautifully placed upon rising ground in an ornamental and prettily timbered park and approached by carriage drives from two Lodge entrances. Extensive pleasure grounds artistically arranged commanding delightful views of the surrounding country and overlooking the valley of the Chess.

The mansion contains four reception rooms, billiard room, 16 bed chambers and dressing rooms with spacious and well-arranged offices. The kitchen gardens are extensive and in perfect order vineries, peach and stove houses, forcing pits and all necessary outbuildings."

The house was bought by Howard Gilliatt. Then in 1892, the house was bought by Lady Ela Russell, a relative of the Duke of Bedford, whose estate at Chenies was close by. Lady Ella had just come into a substantial inheritance following her father's death the previous year and she began a long programme of extensive renovations and additions to Chorleywood House. She modified and enlarged the house. She also developed the estate to be virtually self-sufficient, with her own farms and market garden. She created formal gardens and parkland, and built cottages for her chauffeur and gardener behind the house. In addition she installed electricity using her own generator housed in a building near the summerhouse. Besides owning Chorleywood House she also had a London town house in Princes Gate. She also had an interest in art and painted many notable pictures some of which were recently sold at Christies.

Lady Ella's great nephew, the 13th Duke of Bedford, recalled her in his autobiography published in 1959:

The boredom of our normal routine was only relieved by two great-aunts, sisters of my grandfather. They both lived in large houses one at Bexhill and one at Chorleywood. They always had us to stay every year, sometimes twice a year. Both of them lived in a very grand manner, with great houses full of housemaids and parlourmaids, just as they had been brought up at Woburn. They were just as eccentric as my family is supposed to be. The one at Bexhill was called Lady Ermyntrude Malet and she had peppered the estate with ruins, towers and follies. I have very warm memories of her as she used to give me ten shillings a day pocket-money. Her sister Lady Ela Russell was an old maid who lived entirely alone with her horde of servants. The Chorleywood House had been built to her own design.

Lady Ela continued to live at Chorleywood House and to run the Estate until her death in 1936. She left the property to her first cousin, Lady Romola Russell (1879-1966) who was also unmarried. Romola lived in the house for six months and then sold it to the local council.

In June 1940, the mansion and land were bought by the local council, in co-operation with others, and the land was designated a as public open space.

During the Second World War, the mansion housed evacuees from London. Chorleywood UDC then adopted the house for their offices and the Public Library was housed here. Tenants lived in flats in the upper storeys.

With the end of Chorleywood UDC in the local government reorganisation in in 1974, the mansion was entirely converted into flats which are now leased privately. The grounds remain a public open space.

Outside links

• Chorleywood House Estate