Cold Overton Hall
| Cold Overton Hall | |
| Leicestershire | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Cold Overton Hall | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SK809100 |
| Location: | 52°40’56"N, -0°48’12"W |
| History | |
| Built c.1664 | |
| For: | John St John |
| Country house | |
| Information | |
Cold Overton Hall is a seventeenth-century country house in the village of Cold Overton, Leicestershire. It was built in the Restoration period, around, 1664 for John St John, and is a Grade I listed building.
The hall is built in three storeys plus attics with a five-bay frontage. It is constructed of ironstone with limestone dressings and a hipped Swithland slate roof. The west front has a two-storey flat-roofed porch projecting from a pedimented three-bay centre.[1]
History
Around 1620, John St John (who served a year as High Sheriff of Leicestershire in 1632) bought the manor of Cold Overton from the Earl of Northampton and built the present hall around 1664.
In the early 18th century, the estate was sold by the St John family to the self-made merchant Turner family, in which it descended to a John Turner. Having no heir, he willed it to his cousin Layton Frewen, who also died childless and left it in 1777 to his own cousin, the Rev Thomas Frewen, who thereupon adopted the additional surname of Turner. The property passed to the latter's son John Frewen-Turner, who was MP for Athlone (1807–1812) and High Sheriff of Leicestershire in 1791.[2]
In the mid-19th century, the hall was sold to Earl Cowley, who left his wife to live with another woman in France. The hall was bought in 1912 by James Montagu, who carried out a major refurbishment, introducing 16th- and 17th-century panelling, ceilings, and fireplaces.
The house is still privately owned.
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1075147: Cold Overton Hall and adjoining garden walls (Grade I listing)
- ↑ Burke, John. A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry. p. 532.