Langtry Manor

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Lantry Manor
Hampshire

Langtry Manor Hotel
Location
Grid reference: SZ10299159
Location: 50°43’26"N, 1°51’20"W
Town: Bournemouth
History
Address: 26 Derby Road
Built 1877
For: Emily Langton Langton
Country house
Information
Condition: Converted to a hotel
Website: langtrymanor.co.uk

The Langtry Manor (formerly the Red House) is a country house hotel at 26 Derby Road in the East Cliff area of Bournemouth, Hampshire.

The foundation stone is inscribed "E.L.L. 1877": a residence for 60 years, it was originally known as the "Red House", and after 1937 the "Manor Heath Hotel", before being renamed the Langtry Manor in the late 1970s.

Originally built and owned by widowed women's rights campaigner and temperance activist Emily Langton Langton (1847–1897),[1][2] after her death the house was sold.[2] In 1938 a new set of owners converted it into a hotel, "Manor Heath Hotel", which cheekily advertised it as having been built originally for Lillie Langtry by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII).[2][3] Despite the hotel's advertising puff and resultant local legend, no actual association between Langtry and the house ever existed.[2]

Emily Langton Langton and the Red House 1877–1887

Emily Langton Langton (1847–1897) was born Emily Langton Massingberd, the eldest daughter of Charles Langton Massingberd of Gunby Hall, Lincolnshire. In 1867 she married her second cousin, Edmund Langton.[4] The couple lived principally in Bournemouth.[1][5] Edmund died, aged 34, in November 1875, at his father's home of Eastwood, East Cliffe Road, Bournemouth.[2]

The widowed Emily Langton Langton was left with a son and three daughters. She turned to temperance work with the British Women's Temperance Association, and in 1877 built the Red House at the junction of Knyveton Road and Derby Road, Bournemouth, including a large assembly room for her meetings.[6] The foundation stone of the home is inscribed "E.L.L. 1877".[7] The interior of the house sports one of her mottos, "They say – what say they? Let them say", which she also emblazoned in the progressive women's club, the Pioneer Club, which she founded in 1892 in London.[8][9][10]

Emily Langton Langton, 1878
by Theodore Blake Wirgman

A portrait of Emily painted by Theodore Blake Wirgman in 1878 shows her with a violin, and in December 1880 she was one of the instrumentalists for the Congregational Band of Hope in the Richmond Hill Congregational School-room, Bournemouth.[11] In January 1881 she held a notable fancy dress dance "at the Assembly Room of the Red House, Bournemouth".[12] In September 1882 she held a "fashionable concert" at the Red House in aid of funds for the Bournemouth Dispensary.[13]

Emily was not always at the Red House, and at the time of the 1881 Census in April she was staying in Kensington and the Red House had been let to John Edward Cooke, late of the Royal Navy, and his wife and young family.[14][15][16] In 1882 the Red House was let to a Mr and Mrs Holdsworth.[17]

Emily made her first speech in favour of women's suffrage at Westminster Town Hall in 1882.[2] On 15 December 1883, Laura Ormiston Grant and Caroline Biggs held a suffrage meeting "at the home of Mrs Langton (The Red House, Derby Road)".[18] Emily Langton is listed at the Red House in Snow's Directory and Strangers' Guide to Bournemouth for 1883/1884,[19] and in Kelly's Directory of Hampshire for 1885.[2]

Emily Langton Langton's father died in 1887 and she succeeded to his Gunby Hall estate in Lincolnshire. That year she resumed her maiden name of Massingberd by royal licence, describing herself as "of The Red House, Bournemouth, and of Gunby Hall, Lincoln, widow".[20] For four years she managed the Gunby Hall estate herself, and then moved to London in 1991,[1] and the Red House saw little of her when the house was often let to others.

The Red House's later history

Subsequent tenants

In 1889 the wife of Warren Thomas Peacocke (d. 1920), a Captain in the Rifle Brigade, gave birth to a son, Warren "John" Richard Peacocke, at the Red House,[21] though his family seems to have lived mainly at Efford Park, Lymington.[22][23]

In 1891 the census shows the Red House inhabited by Emily Langton's young widowed sister Alice Clark (d. 1927) and her two young children, plus Emily's 18-year-old daughter Diana Massingberd, and five servants.[24]

Bennett ownership

Emily Langton Langton died in 1897. By 1901 the Red House was occupied by Henry Martin Cornwall Legh (1839–1904), a retired Colonel in the Grenadier Guards, and his wife Constance.[25][2] Shortly afterwards the Red House was occupied (and it seems owned) by the Revd George Bennett, former Head Master of Sarum Cathedral School (1881–90) and Rector of Folke in Dorset (1890–1903) and later Vicar of Rodmersham in Kent (1903–5) and Rector of West Quantoxhead, Bridgwater (1907–11).[26] Bennett was, in fact, described as of the Red House in 1898,[27] so he had presumably let the house to Colonel Legh for a short time.[2]

The Bennetts seem to have continued to let the house, and in 1911 it was occupied by Louisa Lucy Sitwell, the 80-year-old widow of Sir Sitwell Reresby Sitwell, 3rd Baronet, who had died in 1862.[28] Lady Sitwell, the grandmother of Edith Sitwell, died in October 1911 but by then was living at Balcombe Tower, Branksome Park, Bournemouth.[29][2]

The Revd George Bennett died at the Red House, 5 September 1915.[30] His widow, Caroline Elizabeth Bennett, died there 4 September 1937.[31]

New ownership and hotel conversion

Immediately after Mrs Bennett's death in 1937, the house was sold and converted into a hotel. The first proprietors were Cecil Henry Ravenhill Hulbert (1895–1974) and his wife Dorothy Minnie, née Kemp (1899–1987), who named it the Manor Heath Hotel. From July 1938 they actively advertised it in newspapers, and produced a brochure saying that the house was "built originally for Lily Langtry".[3]

In 1977 Pamela Howard and her family purchased the hotel. After remodeling it to period decor, including artefacts and pictures from 1877, and adding memorabilia and features relating to Lillie Langtry, they renamed it as the Langtry Manor Hotel.[32]

Outside links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Clement, Mark. "Massingberd, Emily Caroline Langton (1847–1897)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2007.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Anthony J. Camp|Camp, Anthony J. Additions and Corrections to Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fiction 1714–1936 (2007). AnthonyJCamp.com. Retrieved 22 December 2015.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Manor Heath, Derby Road, Heath Cliff, Bournemouth (photograph of brochure cover and interior). Flickr.com photo uploaded by Alwyn Ladell. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  4. ↑ Burke's Landed Gentry, iii (1972), subheadings "Langton of Langton" and "Montgomery-Massingberd of Gunby".
  5. ↑ A daughter was born at Little Forest House, Bournemouth, in 1871; Hampshire Telegraph, 21 June 1871, p. 2.
  6. ↑ "Obituary: Mrs. Massingberd". The Englishwoman's Review. No. CCXXXIII – 15 April 1897. pp. 128–131.
  7. ↑ Edwards, Elizabeth. A History of Bournemouth: The Growth of a Victorian Town. Phillimore, 1981. p. 136.
  8. ↑ Doughan, David and Peter Gordon. Women, Clubs and Associations in Britain. Routledge, 2007. p. 56.
  9. ↑ "Ladies' Clubs in London". In: The Forum, Volume 22: September 1896 – February 1897. p. 686.
  10. ↑ Croly, Jane Cunningham. The History of the Woman's Club Movement in America. H. G. Allen & Company, 1898. p. 205.
  11. ↑ Hampshire Telegraph, 24 December 1880, p. 8.
  12. ↑ Hampshire Telegraph, 15 January 1881, p. 3.
  13. ↑ Hampshire Telegraph, 16 September 1882, p. 3.
  14. ↑ 1881 Census: The National Archives, RG11/1194-32-55.
  15. ↑ Burke's Landed Gentry (1882), subheading "Mackenzie of Fawley Court".
  16. ↑ Burke's Landed Gentry of Great Britain: The Kingdom in Scotland (2001), subheading "Mackenzie of Farr".
  17. ↑ Brough, James. The Prince & the Lily (1975), p. 259.
  18. ↑ Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey. Routledge, 2013. p. 166.
  19. ↑ Snow, A. Wilson. Snow's Directory and Strangers' Guide to Bournemouth, 1883 & 1884. Wilson & Pardy, 1883. p. 48.
  20. ↑ The Times, 19 March 1887. Quoted in: W.P.W. Phillimore & E.A. Fry. An Index to Changes of Name: Under Authority of Act of Parliament or Royal Licence, and including Irregular Changes from 1 George III to 64 Victoria, 1760 to 1901. London: Phillimore & Co., 1905. p. 219.
  21. ↑ The Morning Post, 7 May 1889, p. 1.
  22. ↑ Burke's Landed Gentry, ii (1882), p. 1246, subheading "Peacocke of Efford Park".
  23. ↑ Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes (1893).
  24. ↑ 1891 Census: The National Archives, RG12/903-73-73.
  25. ↑ 1901 Census: The National Archives]], RG13/1043-97-27/28.
  26. ↑ Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1898, p. 104.
  27. ↑ Western Gazette, 1 October 1915, p. 5.
  28. ↑ The National Archives, RG14, RD 95, ED 16.
  29. ↑ Court of Probate Act 1857|Principal Probate Registry, General Calendar of Grants, 1912.
  30. ↑ Western Gazette, 1 October 1915, p. 5.
  31. ↑ Western Daily Press, 16 October 1937, p. 6.
  32. ↑ "UK Holidays & Travel" (Classified Advertising). The Sunday Times. 23 April 1978. p. 27.
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