Sulgrave Manor A partial history of the building, c.1540 to 2006

Note : much of the very limited research effort available in the Manor since the 1920s' rescue from oblivion have been devoted to the Washington family and the house contents rather than the house itself. Much remains to be done and some 'facts' are, as yet, unverified.

The house originally extended to perhaps three times its current length.

The original long Tudor house was built between 1540 and 1560 as the home of Lawrence Washington, established since 1529 as a wool-trader in Northampton. He acquired the lease of the manor through marriage and then purchased it in 1539 after the Priory of St Andrews was dissolved.

It is clear from the traces of a door and a fireplace in the present exterior east wall and from the inner construction that the house extended beyond its present size. Possible foundations were found in 1927 when the gardens were established which suggested that the house originally extended to perhaps three times its current length.

It remained in the ownership of the Washington family and their cousins, the Makepeaces until 1659. In 1673, it was purchased by the Hodges family which retained ownership until 1839. It was John Hodges, who built the north wing around 1700, largely from stone from the derelict or demolished wings of the original house. The manor was sold in 1839 to Col. the Hon. Hely-Hutchinson and then passed to his son-in-law's family, the Reynell-Packs of Devon, who retained it until it was purchased by the British Peace Centenary Committee in 1914.

From the death in 1757 of John Hodges' niece, Theodosia, the Manor was let to tenants (except for a brief period in the late 1880s) until it assumed its new role. As a result there seem to have been few changes made to the fabric of the building during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Such repairs as were done seem to have been done as cheaply as possible - for example a partial replacement of the west wall of the north wing.

A modest farm-house of no pretensions.

During this period, the building was as shown in the photo - a modest farm-house of no pretensions. Such descriptions of it as exist are dismissive :

"formerly the residence of the Washingtons,…..degenerated into a common farm house" Baker, History of the County of Northamptonshire, 1822-30

"The ancient home of the Washingtons …. is little more than a quaint and interesting ruin." E.W Tuffley, 'The origin of the Stars and Stripes, St Nicholas Magazine November 1883

"The house itself consists of two wings at right angles to one another. In the adjacent yards and courts, nettles, docks and thistles are the only things that flourish. It is a place that has lost its ancient dignity and is now frowsy and neglected. … a neglected, degenerated, unused farm-house which no one lives in or cares for ….This old manorial estate… is now in the hands of a non-resident proprietor, comprises some 213 acres, and can be let to any one who cares to take it and can afford to spend (and lose) money over it, for £200 per annum." William Clarke, The Ancestral Home of the Washingtons, English Illustrated Magazine, Dec 1890

There is, however, a positive outcome from this neglect - the lack of improvement means that the house retains a claim to authenticity to which few others of its age can lay claim. The changes made by successive tenants were superficial and their traces were largely eradicated in the 1920s. Open to the public since then, the only significant changes have been those dictated by necessity - the installation of heating and lighting.

Not only is the house more authentically true to the periods of its building than most, it is also a rare representative of the housing of the minor gentry of the 16th to 18th centuries.

Northamptonshire was a county full of gentry.

"(There has been) a patriotic but misguided desire to confer upon the Washington family a social and territorial importance to which they themselves certainly had never aspired. They were worthy representatives of the worthiest English stock, but in no sense county magnates, and the Manor House was never a 'nobleman's seat' - even in miniature. To equip it, therefore, if only in imagination, with stately approaches, such as an avenue or towering gate-house, or with extensive 'pleasaunces' would be entirely inappropriate, and those responsible for the recent restorations have striven, in a spirit of truth and reverence, to revive only such features of this typically English home as are in conformity with surviving traces or documentary records." …… From the introduction by Viscount Lee of Fareham to Sulgrave Manor and the Washingtons by H. Clifford Smith, F.S.A., published in 1933

Northamptonshire was a county full of gentry; some 350 gentry families are estimated to have been resident in the early 17th century :

"No shire within this land is so plentifullie stored with Gentry, in regard whereof this Shire may seem worthy to be termed the Herald's Garden" John Norden Spectulae Brittaniae Pars Altera: or a Delineation of Northamptonshire, 1610

The Washingtons, in the 'train' of the Spencers and the Parrs, are typical of that transition from professional (Lawrence, as a young man, was bailiff to Lord Parr, Catherine's uncle) through wealth generated by the wool trade to landed gentry that marked the growth of this sub-class in the 16th century. The successive owners of the estate were professional - clerics and soldiers - with claims to gentility but not to fame.

Many houses of this scale, which have remained owner-occupied throughout, have been successively improved by the generations so that the Tudor and Queen Anne origins are barely tangible. Those which have changed hands, since the 1920s, have been modernised as homes for the 20th/21st century equivalents of the minor gentry. Few are open to the public and of those, most have more modern accretions.

The future of the house changed radically when it was identified as the home of George Washington's great-great-great-great-great grandfather, his son and grandson. In 1911, as the centenary of the Treaty of Ghent, 1814 ending the troubles between the United States and the United Kingdom drew near, a committee to organise celebrations of the anniversary was established in the US with President Theodore Roosevelt at its head. It was soon matched by a British Committee, led firstly by Earl Grey and then by the Marquess of Cambridge, brother of Queen Mary; others on the British Committee included Lord Rothschild, Ramsey Macdonald, Arthur Conan Doyle and Viscount Lee of Fareham. They decided to buy Sulgrave Manor as part of the celebrations and raised the money to do so by public subscription for the sum of £8,400 in January, 1914.

Sir Reginald Blomfield

After the First World War, the refurbishment of the house was confined to stripping out those few 'modern' conveniences that had gathered over the years. Two significant professionals were involved in the work: for the exterior, Sir Reginald Blomfield, R.A. (who designed the Imperial War Museum and Menin Gate) was the consulting architect and, for the interior Harold Clifford Smith, Keeper of Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum, who was also involved in a variety of roles with the Mansion House, Chequers, Buckingham Palace and the Winston Churchill Birthday Trust.

Early postcards of the house show it in its truncated shape with only the wing to the east of the porch in place.

Restoration was focussed on the original Tudor house which were opened to the public while the resident curator lived in the North Wing's 18th century. Early postcards of the house show it in its truncated shape with only the wing to the east of the porch in place.

The opening of the house in 1921.

The opening of the house in 1921, presided over by the Marquess of Cambridge, was surrounded by publicity with coverage in most of the national newspapers. Special trains ran from London with the nearest station being signed as 'Helmdon for Sulgrave Manor' through into the 1940s. Interest was also sustained in the United States, especially through the work of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America and they raised the funding for the second stage of the restoration.

The second stage of the work involved the re-design of the grounds, the building of a balancing wing to the west of the porch and the provision of public facilities. The rooms were improved with additional purchases: the kitchen, for example, was transformed from this

to this

The work was again supervised by Sir Reginald Blomfield and the Manor is fortunate to possess his drawings of the 1920 and 1927 work:

1920 Plan of works.

1927 Plan of works.

1927 sketch by Blomfield.

His final sketch of his work in 1927 shows the house as it remained, largely, for the next seventy years. The resident curator moved into the new wing and the North Wing with two bedrooms, parlour and kitchen was refurbished and opened to the public. Notable in this stage of development was the installation of a complete kitchen purchased from Weston Corbett Manor before its destruction.

The Courtyard complex with its hall, toilets, shop and café was built with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The next development, completed in 1999, added a range of essential visitor facilities and space for the development of the education programme which brings 11,000 school children to the manor each year. The Courtyard complex with its hall, toilets, shop and café was built with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Since then, the grounds have been enhanced by the introduction of the National Garden of the Herb Society in the area designated by Blomfield as the Kitchen and Herb Gardens.

The National Society's Herb Garden.

Disabled access to all parts of the grounds was achieved in 2006 through donations from a range of trusts and from the local American military community. Linking the National Society's Herb Garden to the orchard in one direction and to 'the circle', the original entry point in the other, this has opened up a new area to be incorporated into the garden as a vegetable and cutting flower area.

As research in the history of the house and grounds proceeds, the significance of the work of Clifford Smith and Blomfield is increasingly appreciated. Efforts are therefore underway to fund work in the archives which will enable an assessment of the importance of the Manor's extensive collection of their drawings, plans and writings and, hopefully, to make them accessible to researchers.

Disabled access to all parts of the grounds has been achieved.