Menabilly
| Menabilly | |
| Cornwall | |
|---|---|
| |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SX100511 |
| Location: | 50°19’47"N, 4°40’14"W |
| Village: | Fowey |
| History | |
| Built 18th century | |
| For: | Jonathan Rashleigh |
| Country house | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | Rashleigh family |
Menabilly is an historic estate and grand country house on the south coast of Cornwall, within the parish of Tywardreath on the Gribben peninsula about two miles west of Fowey.
Menabilly has been the seat of the Rashleigh family from the 16th century to the present day. Its name is from the Cornish Men Ebeli, meaning 'stone of colts'.
The house is a Grade II* listed building.[1][2] It is in the early Georgian style and was re-built on the site of an earlier Elizabethan house, parts of which were possibly incorporated into the present structure.
The house is surrounded by woodland and nearby is the farmhouse named {{map|SX100511|Menabilly Barton. In the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 Jonathan Rashleigh of Menabilly, Par, was listed as the largest landowner in Cornwall with an estate of 30,156 acres or almost 4% of the total area of Cornwall.[3]
Contents
Rashleigh family seat
The Rashleigh family of Menabilly originated as powerful merchants in the 16th century. In 1545 Philip Rashleigh (died 1551), a younger son of the Rashleigh family of Barnstaple in Devon, who had become wealthy through trade, purchased the manor of Trenant near Fowey from the King after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. His two sons Robert and John founded the Rashleigh family of Fowey. The land on which Menabilly was built has been owned by the Rashleigh family since the 1560s. In 1589 the building of the first house at Menabilly was commenced by John Rashleigh]] (1554–1624), shipowner, member of parliament for Fowey in 1589 and 1597, Sheriff of Cornwall 1608-9, who captained his own ship Francis of Foy against the Spanish Armada in 1588. The house was completed in 1624 by his son Jonathan Rashleigh (1591–1675), five times member for the borough of Fowey and a Royalist during the Civil War. It was re-built between 1710 and 1715 by Jonathan Rashleigh III (1693–1764).
In national politics the Rashleighs of Menabilly obtained a voice in parliament because of their power to elect members of parliament for the pocket borough of Fowey. The electors consisted of the portreeve and commonalty (or burgesses), and the family purchased several of the freehold properties in the borough to which the right to vote as burgesses was attached. Thus they and their cousins the Rashleighs of Combe, Fowey, with their combined property holdings, controlled 12 votes in the 1570s and in 1650 controlled 15 votes, corresponding to the number of freehold properties in the borough manor owned by them in 1649. Members of the Rashleigh family frequently used their influence as landlords of these properties to have themselves elected to parliament as members for Fowey.
Description of house
The present house is of two storeys built around a central courtyard with a six-bay front on which the central 3 bays break forward.[2]
Philip Rashleigh (1729–1811) landscaped the gardens and planted the woodland around the house and estate. William Rashleigh, his nephew, succeeded after Philip's death in 1811, and following a fire in 1822 rebuilt the house greatly extended in size. Jonathan Rashleigh (1820–1905), the cricketer, improved and extended the gardens and grounds and planted many trees including pine, cedar, eucalyptus and beech. He also planted rhododendron, bamboo and hydrangea.
John Rashleigh, grandson of Jonathan, succeeded in 1905 but rarely lived at Menabilly and the house fell into serious decay. In 1943 it was discovered in a dilapidated state by the new tenant Daphne du Maurier, the author, who set about restoring it and made it her home before returning it to the Rashleighs in 1969.[4]
Menabilly in the 21st century
Today Menabilly and most of the grounds remain private although two cottages on the estate are rented as holiday lets.
In popular culture
The house was the inspiration, along with Milton Hall, Cambridgeshire, for "Manderley", the house in du Maurier's novel Rebecca (1938).[5] Like Menabilly, the fictional Manderley was hidden in woods and could not be seen from the shore. Du Maurier's novel The King's General is also set here and features the skeleton found in the cellar.
Outside links
- Menabilly House - British Listed Buildings
- Archives of Rashleigh family of Menabilly, early 13th century to 1989, Cornwall Record Office R/3737 – R/5883
References
- Pirie-Gordon, H., ed (1937). "Rashleigh of Menabilly". Burke's genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry (15th (centenary) ed.). London: Shaw Publishing.
- Du Maurier, Daphne (1993). Malet, Oriel. ed. Letters from Menabilly : Portrait of a Friendship. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297813040.
- Dunkin, Edwin Hadlow Wise (1882). Monumental Brasses of Cornwall, with Descriptive, Genealogical and Heraldic Notes. Spottiswoode.
- Cassidy, Irene (1981). "RASHLEIGH, John (1554–1624), of Fowey and Menabilly, Cornw.". in Hasler, P. W.. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1558–1603 [3 vols]. The Stationery Office. ISBN 978-0118875011. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/rashleigh-john-1554-1624.
- Hunneyball, Paul (2010). "Fowey: Borough". in Thrush, Andrew; Ferris, John P.. The House of Commons 1604–1629 [6 vols]. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107002258. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/constituencies/fowey.
- Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "RASHLEIGH, Philip (1689–1736), of Menabilly, Cornw.". in Sedgwick, R.. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–1754 [2 vols]. The Stationery Office. ISBN 978-0118800983. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/rashleigh-philip-1689-1736.
- College of Arms (Great Britain) (1895). Vivian, John Lambrick. ed. The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the Herald's Visitations of 1531, 1564, & 1620. H. S. Eland.
Further reading
- Rashleigh, E.W., Book of Pedigrees, Cornwall Record Office: RS/86
- Marshall, James C., Rashleigh of Devon, Devon Notes & Queries, Vol. IV (1906/7), pp. 201–16
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Cornwall, 1951; 1970 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09589-0
