Red Rice House

Red Rice House
Hampshire
Red Rice House
Location
Grid reference:	SU339417
Location:	51°10’26"N, 1°30’58"W
Village:	Red Rice
History
	Built c. 1740
	Country house
	Palladian
Information

Red Rice House is a Georgian country house at Red Rice in Hampshire, which today houses a school.

The building was used during the Second World War by American forces and used for various secret and high level planning. This included the reserve headquarters of the D Day Landings, should the primary location become unserviceable.

The buildings and grounds

The house was probably built around 1740. The outside is faced with Clipsham stone. It has a slate roof and arched windows. There are 13 bays and a porte cochere of four Tuscan columns. William Burn re-modelled the house in the mid 19th century. More buildings were added when the site became a school in 1961.

The house is surrounded by an early Georgian park.

The stables areas include a clock tower and an arch of rubbed bricks. The park was extended by the diversion of a local road and the building has been extended.

The gate lodge and gatepiers are designated Grade II listed structures.

View from the front drive	Front of Building	The front of the House	View of the main corridor
View of the main corridor	The location of the building's original reading room	A drawing room (location of the original reading room)	The Grand Hall (ballroom), converted into a Chapel
Rear of the 'Nursery wing', showing the remains of a larger walled enclosure	Entrance to the Stable area	The Gatehouse

History

Early history

The current House was built around 1740 with red brick. The origin of the house is unclear. The manor of Abbotts Ann was the property of Thomas Pitt who purchased Little Ann in 1710, and probably acquired the neighbouring manor about the same date. Pitt died in 1726.

The house may have been built by General John Richmond Webb, a subordinate of the Duke of Marlborough, in about 1740. It is claimed that the trees in the park surrounding the house represent the troop line-up at the Battle of Malplaquet of 1709. There is no evidence though that the park's trees showed battle lines, other than the row of beeches from St John's cross along the Fullerton towards Red Rice; which could have appeared like two rows of soldiers.

In 1763 Sir Brian Broughton Delves of Broughton (Staffordshire) bought various estates in Hampshire, including the Abbotts Ann estate from Thomas Pitt. Redrice House was described as:

genteel, modern built house with large and pleasant gardens or walks, all in thorough repair at present, it is very well adapted for the reception of any nobleman or gentleman of fortune with a small family as a hunting seat, as it stands in fine healthy and sporting country, but it is not fit for a large family, nor a constant residence, there not being a foot of land belonging to it but yards and gardens. It is at present well tenanted but as the lease expires within a year, it is not certain that a good tenant can readily be got for it, and if it happens to be untenanted it will be attended with the expense of keeping servants there to take care of both house and gardens which, if once suffered to run out of order will cost money to repair these circumstances reducing the value of it greatly as it is not for everybody's money. It may be long on hand before a purchaser can be found for it.

Mansion and grounds. 49 acres, 14p.

Garden. 2 acres, 2r, 16p.

Paddock pasture. 1 acre, 3r, 34p. (occupier: J. Parsons).

Rents:

Pasture and Wood. Arable land 6 UKP 10 shillings and 6 pence.

Gardens - walled gardens, Cottage and gardens. 1 UKP 17 shillings and 6 pence.

In 1766, Sir Brian Broughton-Delves died and in 1769 his widow married Henry Errington, and the couple lived at Red Rice.

Henry Errington's neice was Maria Smythe, who met her first husband, Edward Weld, at Red Rice House. After a second marriage and second widowhood, Maria bore the name Maria Fitzherbert, by which name she was infamously involved in a scandal after undergoing an illegal marriage ceremony with George Prince of Wales. In the 1780s, Henry Errington was heavily involved with his niece's attachment to the Prince of Wales.

Later owners

In the early nineteenth century the house was in th ownership of the Lords Berwick, until in 1842 William Noel Hill, 3rd Lord Berwick, died at Red Rice unmarried and intestate.

The Rev Thomas Best JP purchased the estate. The Bests set out to expand the house, and from 1844 the architect William Burn began to remodel the house to become a mansion. The Bests built stables, started an arboretum, created pleasure grounds and developed a large, productive kitchen garden. At the back of the house a great variety of trees were planted in such a way that a large number of different species of tree could be seen individually from the house.

On 7 March, Thomas Mullard Shurmur, a foreman overseeing restorations at Red Rice, shot (almost mortally) Thomas Brealey (a 'time-keeper'). On 22 July at Winchester assizes, Shurmur was found guilty of 'Shooting with intent', and was sentenced to 14 years' transportation.

Captain Thomas George Best, son or grandson of the Rev Thomas Best, sold the estate to Lord Grantley in 1913.

Lord Grantley removed a number of rooms on two floors to construct a very fine Great Hall with plasterwork in a coved ceiling and pillared entrance. A new ceiling, in the style of Adam, was added to the dining-room. Several marble fireplaces were installed. General Edwardian alterations included plaster cherubs in the morning-room. More trees were added. Between 1915 and 1924 though, parts of the estate were sold; including parts of Abbotts Ann and much of the surrounding countryside.

In 1920, the Miller-Mundy family bought the estate and moved here from their estate at Shipley Park in Derbyshire. They made many changes and repairs to the building. Outbuildings were built to accommodate estate workers involved in the family's interests in sport, shooting and rearing pheasants and livestock. Four tennis courts and a secluded Japanese water-garden, trees and a path leading to two discreet rose-gardens, each containing a fountain, were built. In 1933 there were major renovations. The old, decaying, grey rendering was removed and the red brick walls were encased in honey-coloured Clipsham stone with the ground floor boldly rusticated and a beetling cornice at the top. All windows replaced by chain-hung sashes with proportioned panes. The roof was renewed and drains re-designed. Fire hydrants and static water-tanks were built around the house, fed from the original Regency water-supply system. Almost all internal timber was replaced due to damage from death-watch beetle and woodworm.

In 1937, according to a local story, Peter Miller-Mundy, at his 21st birthday party, turned fire-hoses on his guests, and released and shot a pheasant in the Great Hall (where the Chapel is now).

The war years, 1939-1945

Early in September 1939, eight of the rooms were filled with specimens of butterflies, birds, mammals, etc., which were sent there for safe keeping by the British Museum. In 1940, Red Rice became the centre of a bomb disposal unit and later that year was occupied by Women's Air Force personnel from RAF Middle Wallop, which had opened that year.

The house was later taken over in the Second World War as a planning centre, mainly used by the American army; it was visited by the Supreme Commander, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it is part of local folklore that the bomb which destroyed the pub in Goodworth Clatford was aimed at him. Members of the Women's land army worked in the farm on the estate.

In August 1944, a conference was held at Red Rice, attended by Secretary Henry R. Morgenthau Jr of the United States and Brendan Bracken, a Minister in the War Cabinet. The conference was to discuss the Morgenthau Plan, the 'Treasury Plan for the Treatment of Germany'. The plan was ratified by Churchill and Eisenhower three weeks later in Canada.

In 1945 the Army attempted to return the house to civilian use in good order after the war. The interior was painted the colour of weak tea on all walls, doorways, window-frames and the plasterwork on the ceilings.

After the war

In 1961, Major Edward Peter Miller-Mundy divided and sold the Estate. The middle part of the Red Rice estate, extending to approximately 1,800 acres for £300,000 to Sir Richard Boughey. The farming side of the hamlet (approximately 850 acres) was purchased by the Scott family, including the parkland to the south-east of the main house, 16 farm workers cottages, the market garden, farm buildings, outlying barns and woodland. The house was sold to create a new school, Redrice School.

Redrice School later became redrice Collage, and in 1982 it was taken over by Farleigh School.

On film and television

The house and estae have appeared on screen on occasion including:

• No Hiding Place (1974, television)
• Codename Icarus (1981 BBC television series)
• Spectacular Britain (BBC Wildlife, 1976): the Home Farm estate land at Dipden Bottom, was turned into a giant map of Great Britain and David Attenborough spent many days being filmed as he walked round the map to introduce the location of unusual wildlife.
• Tarka The Otter (1977): an underwater film set was build on the land inside the market garden for filming.

References

• Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Hampshire & The Isle of Wight, 1967 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09606-4