Pendley Manor
| Pendley Manor | |
| Hertfordshire | |
|---|---|
 The main frontage of Pendley Manor | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP94251179 |
| Location: | 51°47’49"N, 0°38’5"W |
| Village: | Tring |
| History | |
| Address: | Cow Lane |
| Built 1874 | |
| For: | Joseph Grout Williams by Walter F K Ryan |
| Country house | |
| Victorian Neo-Jacobean | |
| Information | |
| Condition: | Converted to a hotel |
| Website: | pendley-manor.co.uk |
Pendley Manor is a country house which has now become a hotel, conference and function centre. It stands near Tring, in the north-west of Hertfordshire.
The house is a Grade I listed building, as an important example of Victorian architecture.[1]
Contents
History
A village of Pendley (or Penley, Pendele, or Pentlai) is recorded from early sources. At the Norman Conquest, the manor of Pendley was confiscated from its English owner and granted to the Conqueror's brother-in-law, Robert, Count of Mortain, who became one of the greatest landholders in England.[2][3]
In the Middle Ages the manor was held in the Honour of Berkhampstead. A later owner was John de Angle, an early Member of Parliament.
Later Middle Ages
By the 15th century, Pendley was a small town. In 1440 the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire Sir Robert Whittingham (or Whytingham) and his wife Agnes received a grant of free warren from King Henry VI at Pendley manor; Sir Robert enclosed 200 acres and tore down the buildings on the land, returning the estate to pasture.[2] He built a manor house at the western end of the now-demolished town as a double cloistered courtyard similar to those found at Herstmonceux Castle and Eton College.[3][4] Whittingham subsequently obtained a papal licence to build a chapel at the manor house and engage a priest to hold services there when the roads became impassable in winter.[5]
On the accession of the Yorkist King Edward IV, Whittingham's fortunes changed; the king attainded Whittingham for his loyalty to Henry VI and in 1461 granted Pendley manor to George Neville, Bishop of Exeter. Around 1472, Whittingham's daughter Margaret married John Verney, son of a Lord Mayor of London Sir Ralph de Verney. Because of the king's favour for Verney, he lifted the attainder on Whittingham and Pendley Manor land passed to the Verney family. The Verney family lived at the mediæval manor for the next 150 years.
Modernity
The Anderson family held the manor for four generations from 1606-7.
In 1630 the manor was the scene of a minor scandal with longer-term historical repercussions, when a friend of Sir Richard Anderson, the Rev. Lawrence Washington, visited Pendley Manor. During he became enamoured of Amphyllis Twigden, but as Washington was a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, he was prohibited from marrying, but they rebelled at this flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth and in 1631 Amphyllis bore him a son out of wedlock, John Washington. The next year Archbishop Laud granted the couple a licence to marry, and Lawrence and Amphyllis were married in Tring in late 1632. Their son emigrated to Virginia in 1657, and his great-grandson, George Washington, led the rebellion which created the United States of America, and became their first President.[6]
The manor passed to the Harcourt family after the heiress, Elizabeth Anderson, married Simon Harcourt in 1677.
In the 1830s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the railway engineer Robert Stephenson began construction on the new London and Birmingham Railway. The project was delayed by opposition from local landowners (among them Lord Brownlow and Sir Astley Cooper); after a change in the planned route, parliamentary approval was granted, and the railway line was built along a route parallel to the Grand Junction Canal, some distance to the east of Tring[7] — but too close to Pendley Manor to suit the occupant, Sir William Harcourt. He regarded the incursion of the iron horse into the locality as an intolerable nuisance and abandoned Pendley Manor. The ancient mediæval manor buildings burnt down soon after in 1835.[8][9]
The new manor
A local landowner and mill owner, Joseph Grout Williams commissioned architect Walter F K Ryan to build a new Tudor style Manor, the present building, in 1872. He and his descendants then occupied the Victorian Manor from 1875 until 1983.
The last private owner was BBC show jumping commentator Dorian Williams, who developed it as a center for adult education and the arts after the second World War. He inaugurated the Pendley Open Air Shakespeare Festival in 1949 in the hotel grounds which continues to run to the present day.[8][9] The grounds have two landscaped open-air theatres. The indoor Court Theatre has permanently occupied the former stables to the estate since 1978 and presents a full programme of drama and musical performance.[10]
The house was sold to a property company in 1983 and then in 1989 to a hotel company which invested in the building and re-opened it as a country house hotel in 1991. There have since been several extensions built to house additional rooms, a spa and gymnasium and a banqueting / conference suite.[8][9]
Architecture
The present building was erected c.1874 near the site of the old manor house. It was designed in a neo-Jacobean style by the architect Walter F K Ryan and it built in red brick with Bath stone dressings. Architectural features include a half-timbered jettied top floor; tall decorated brick chimney pots; a square tower with an ogee-shaped lead roof; ornamental herringbone brickwork, carved Jacobean-style Ionic pilasters and stucco panels. The date 1875 is carved in stone above the porch.[1][11]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Pendley Manor) |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 National Heritage List 1078009: Pendley Manor
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Quinlan, Ray (2003). The Greater Ridgeway: A Walk Along the Ancient Route From Lyme Regis to Hunstanton. Cicerone Press. p. 158. ISBN 1-85284-346-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=6xlwJwtYWPwC&pg=PA158&dq=pendley+manor&hl=en&ei=AIm1TvqZLY7LtAbx28DSAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=pendley%20manor&f=false.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Pendley Manor". July 2008. Archived from the original on 27 October 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171027094921/http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/places/places-t/tring/tring-pendley.htm. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ↑ Emery, Anthony (2000). Greater Mediæval Houses of England and Wales, 1300-1500: East Anglia, Central England, and Wales. Cambridge University Press. pp. 186, 176 ,. ISBN 0-521-58131-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=FRw9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA186&dq=pendley+manor&hl=en&ei=AIm1TvqZLY7LtAbx28DSAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CGIQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=pendley%20manor&f=false.
- ↑ WHITTINGHAM, Robert (d.1452), of London and Pendley, Herts. at the History of Parliament. Accessed November 2013
- ↑ "George Washington & the Tring Connection" (in en). Archived from the original on 27 October 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171027161612/http://www.tringlocalhistorymuseum.org.uk/page81.html. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ↑ Birtchnell, Percy (1960). "Our Communications". A Short History of Berkhamsted. ISBN 9781871372007.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 @@"Our Story". Archived from the original on 27 October 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171027110057/http://www.pendley-manor.co.uk/about-pendley-manor/our-story/. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Pendley Manor - A short history. Available at the hotel reception. November 2011
- ↑ http://www.courttheatre.co.uk/index.html The Court Theatre
- ↑ Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire, 1953; 1977 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09611-8
