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Wimbledon manor house; the residence of the lord of the manor, was an English country house at Wimbledon, Surrey, now part of Greater London. The manor house was over the centuries exploded, burnt and several times demolished. The first known manor house, The Old Rectory was built around 1500 still stands as a private home, despite very nearly falling into a state beyond repair, in the 19th century. The ambitious later Elizabethan prodigy house, Wimbledon Palace, was "a house of the first importance" according to Sir John Summerson, and is now demolished.Summerson 2012, 13.. 53Wimbledon and the H-plan," Architecture in Britain 1530-1830, 4th ed. p. 36.
The manor house passed through several further iterations, being entirely rebuilt three times. From the 18th Century onwards the manor lands began to reduce in size as various owners sold off parts. What was known as the 'Old Park', an area of around 300 acres stretching westwards from the present Cannizaro Park, was sold off in 1705. Most of the present day Wimbledon Common was also once part of the manor, with grazing rights given to tenants of the lord of the manor.
The Common land was saved from enclosure and development in 1871 by a remarkably early act of conservation. 42 acres, previously part of the manor parklands, are now occupied by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club that has made Wimbledon synonymous with tennis. Further tracts of the Grade II* listed public Wimbledon Park include its present-day golf course and the lake, the latter created along with further improvements to the park by the famous landscaper Capability Brown for John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer, in 1768.Jane Brown, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, 1716-1783: The Omnipotent Magician, "Earl Spencer's Wimbledon", pp278f; she notes that the architectural historian Dorothy Stroud located the approximate site of the house on upper Home Park Road, near its intersection with Arthur Road.
By 1720, it was known as The Old Laundry House, presumably for the Cecil house built in 1588, next door (see below). The house was uninhabited when Sir Theodore Janssen bought the manor in 1717 (see below) and who allegedly pulled down the south wing and restored the remainder of the house. By 1861, the house was a near ruin when it was sold as part of Wimbledon Park (but not the manor), by Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer, to the developer, John Beaumont (see below). Beaumont restored and extended The Old Rectory, repaired the exterior, transformed the interior, laid out the grounds and planted the famous fig walk. His successor, Samuel Willson, who bought the house for £6,000 in 1882, carried on the works, adding two-storey drawing-room wing and installing carved-oak doors and English, Flemish and Italian chimney pieces. In 1909 the house was purchased by marine engineer Matthias Jacobs, who enlarged it considerably with help from his brother, an architect, who designed a new single-storey billiard room, a large service wing to the north and a study extension to mask the chapel. In 1923, Thomas Lethaby purchased the house and he concentrated on embellishing the interior. The drawing room was fitted with oak panelling from the Chantry House, Newark, an elaborate plaster ceiling based on one at Knole House, and a grand fireplace. The Lethabys sold the house in 1947. In 1953, Russell Brock, later Baron Brock of Wimbledon, an eminent cardiologist, bought the house for £13,750. The Brock family sold it in 1978 and the kitchen garden was sold and developed for housing known today as Rectory Orchard. The Old Rectory was then bought by an Iraqi entrepreneur and philanthropist, Basil Faidhi. Faidhi had fled Iraq for Britain and though he spent vast sums restoring the house with assistance from English Heritage, he also created a basement discothèque for his daughter, Nina, and a bar. In 1992 Faidhi commissioned Wimbledon historian Richard Milward to write a history of the building: The Rectory – Wimbledon’s Oldest House.
In 1994, the astrophysicist, songwriter and lead guitarist of the rock band Queen, Brian May, paid £4 million for the house, with the intention of living there with his partner and later wife, the long-running BBC TV soap opera EastEnders actress Anita Dobson. In 2006 May sold The Old Rectory for £16 million to an Italian architect-owner Antonella Carminati and her husband, who initiated further works with the help of the architect Sir Donald Insall. In 2012, the Carminatis put The Old Rectory on the market for £26 million. The house standing in acres, was sold in June 2013 for an undisclosed sum to Ian Taylor.
The site, which was near the village of Wimbledon, was near the top of a high hill, astride the upper part of what is now Home Park Road, with extensive views northwards over the present day Wimbledon Park, above a steep slope that was dramatically terraced with massive retaining walls. The house was built on a modified H plan, with a slightly recessed central range facing south, and on the north, a central entrance between deep flanking wings, with matching staircase towers in the inner corners. An informally arranged service wing, not part of the symmetrical design, lay to the west. The entrance court, essentially a deep gated terrace entered from the sides, lay 26 steps below the upper cour d'honneur, which could be approached only by a monumental axial staircase with paired helical flights rising from a central raised landing. Wimbledon's series of terraces and axial stairs and its hilltop site was "inspired presumably" by the Villa Farnese at Caprarola.Summerson 1963. loc. cit.
The estate stood within a day's ride of Westminster, making it eminently suitable for an active courtier; there, the Cecils entertained Queen Elizabeth I for three days in 1599.John Gough Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1823), p. 440, the Kingston 1599 churchwardens' accounts include: "Paid for "mending the wayes, when the Queen went from Wimbledon to Nonsuch, 20d.". John Thorpe's undated plan of Wimbledon's ground floor and forecourts of ca 1609,Thorpe's notebook in the Sir John Soane Museum is published as Sir John Summerson, 1966. The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe in Sir John Soane's Museum, T113, 114; a schematic rendering is Summerson 1963, fig. 9. suggests that they were about twelve acres in extent, divided among eleven separate spaces, featuring plantations, walks, and parterres, laid out asymmetrically on the sloping site.Roy Strong, The Renaissance Garden, p. 61: Janette Dillon, The Language of Space in Court Performance, 1400-1625 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 54.
During the libel trial of Anne Lake Cecil, Lady Ros in 1618, evidence was submitted that a servant overheard the Countess of Exeter in the great chamber. It was said that James VI and I visited to check the acoustics.Carole Levin, 'Anne Lake Cecil Rodney', A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen (Taylor & Francis, 2016), p. 34. The house was damaged in 1628 by the accidental igniting of gunpowder stored there.John Stow, Annals, sub 1628. The glories of this house, after repairs had been effected, were concentrated in the long Gallery, one of two in the house, which was richly painted and marbleized, no doubt by Francis Cleyn, who was responsible also for the exterior that was painted en camaieu in tones of yellow and burnt ochre.Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, vol. ii, p. 128; John Aubrey, The Natural History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey, posthumously published ms, noted by Lysons 1792.
The magnificent gardens were created for the Queen by French garden designer André Mollet. He organised a new symmetrical arrangement on the south front. An old sunken garden to the east became an orange garden with parterres and orangery.David Jacques, Gardens of Court and Country: English Design, 1630–1730 (Yale, 2017), pp. 82–83. A richly decorated room "below stairs" in the service quarters of the main house was used by the gardeners to plant orange and pomegranate trees in "boxes" or planters.Caley, 'Survey of the Manor of Wimbledon' (1792), pp. 401–402.
The house and gardens were described in a survey made in 1649.John Caley, 'Survey of the Manor of Wimbledon', Archaeologia, 10 (London, 1792), pp. 399–448 The old east wing of the house had incorporated a shell grotto. Inigo Jones reworked this wing with a chapel and marble parlour beside a terrace overlooking the orange garden. Henrietta Maria's bed was set in an alcove in the stone gallery on the west side.Simon Thurley, Palaces of the Revolution: Life, Death and Art at the Stuart Court (London: William Collins, 2021), pp. 179–81. A large attic space was used for drying clothes.Caley (1792), p. 411. Interiors included panelling, some unpainted or varnished green, and "liver coloured" in the Marble Parlour. Several rooms were decorated with gilded stars. The floor of the long gallery was sweet smelling cedar.Ian C. Bristow, Architectural Colour in British Interiors, 1615–1840 (Yale, 1996), pp. 11–12. After noting the lower court and the upper court, the survey reported its several ascents in detail, counting the very steps:Quoted in Lysons 1792.
The scite of this manor-house being placed on the side slipp of a rising ground, renders it to stand of that height that, betwixt the basis of the brick-wall of the sayd lower court, and the hall door of the sayd manor-house, there are five severall assents, consisting of three-score and ten stepps, which are distinguished in a very graceful manner; to witt, from the parke to a payre of rayled gates, set betwixt two large pillers of brick; in the middle of the wall standing on the north side of the sayd lower court is the first assent, consisting of eight stepps, of good freestone, layed in a long square, within which gates, levell with the highest of those eight stepps, is a pavement of freestone, leading to a payr of iron gates rayled on each side thereof with turned Baluster of freestone, within which is a little paved court leading to an arched vault neatly pillowred with brick, conteyning on each side of the pillers a little roome well arched, serving for celleridge of botteled wines; on each side of this vault are a payre of staires of stone stepps, twentie-three stepps in assent, eight foote nine inches broad; meeting an even landing-place in the height thereof, leading from the foresayed gates unto the lower court, and make the second assent; from the height of this assent a pavement of Flanders brickes thirteene foot six inches broad", leading "to the third assent, which stands on the south side of the lower courte, consisting of a round modell, in the middle whereof is a payre of iron gates rayled as aforesayd, within which is a fountayne fitted with a leaden cesterne fed with a pipe of lead; this round conteynes a payre of stone stayres of 26 stepps in assent, ordered and adorned as the second assent is, and leades into the sayd higher courte, and soe makes the third assent; from the height whereof a pavement of square stone nine foote broad and eightie-seaven foote long leades up to the fowerth assent, which consists of eleven stepps of freestone very well wrought and ordered, leading into a gallery paved with square stone, sixtie-two foote long and eight foote broad....
From the forementioned first assent there is a way cut forth of the parke, planted on each side thereof with elmes and other trees, in a very decent order, extending itself in a direct line two hundred thirty-one perches from thence quite through the parke northward unto Putney-common, being a very special ornament to the whole house.
In 1741, Janssen, appears to be living next door to the house he had built, albeit with the Campbell design incomplete (see map). Because the house was sold in 1749, the year after his death, this might indicate that he at least continued to own the house, which had been separated from the manor estate, in 1721; with the Rush family as tenants (see map). This theory appears to be confirmed by the Wimbledon Museum: "Although he (Janssen) was allowed to keep his newly built house he preferred to live in another, nearer the High Street". Reports that Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough owned and demolished this house, therefore, seem to be incorrect. Sir Theodore continued to live out his life quietly in Wimbledon. He died in 1748 aged 94 and is buried in the graveyard of St Mary's Church. So in 1749 the Janssen house and land comprising some 70 acres, was sold to Mrs Martha Rush. In 1759 it was inherited by her son Samuel. In 1782 alterations were made to the façade and a further storey was added; possibly completing the original Campbell design (see pic). In 1783 the estate was inherited by Sir William Beaumaris Rush who died there in 1833 aged 83. The family were for a century and a half the proprietors of a great vinegar yard in Southwark, afterwards Potts's, and from the last of those wealthy merchants Sir William inherited a large fortune. The house, which had become known as Belvedere House, stood at what became the rear gardens of today's Nos. 6-12 Alan Road, was eventually demolished in 1900, to make way for a housing development to be known as the Belvedere Estate.
English Heritage, which lists Wimbledon Park a Grade II* protected monument, suggest that the Duchess consulted the landscape gardener Charles Bridgeman, but the extent of his contribution is unknown. Through the Duchess of Marlborough, Wimbledon manor passed, in 1744, to her heir, the 10-year-old John, 1st Viscount Spencer,Full estate history details in Lysons 1792. soon to be made the 1st Earl Spencer.Under a contract of late 1764 Lancelot Brown undertook landscaping projects in the park, which still comprised some 1200 acres; his work, which included the lake (Wimbledon Park Lake),Aubrey had noted that "the park is low marish ground." was complete by 1768,P. Willis, 1984. "Capability Brown's Account with Drummonds Bank, 1753-1783", Architectural History, notes a payment at Drummonds Bank, 6 April 1768; Jane Brown 2011, p. 179. In 1780, Hannah More visited the house as the guest of Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St Asaph, to whom Lord Spencer lent the house annually for a season: "I did not think there could have been so beautiful a place within seven miles of London. The park has as much variety of ground, and is as un-Londonish as if it were an hundred miles out." Hannah More enjoyed the Duchess of Marlborough's books in the library, where: "numbers of the books were presents to her from the great authors of her time, whose names she had carefully written in the blank leaves, for I believe she had the pride of being thought learned, as well as rich and beautiful."Bartlett 1865, p. 70. "elegantly fitted up, and are used as an occasional retirement by Lord Spencer's family. The situation is singularly eligible, having a beautiful home prospect of the park, with a fine piece of water towards the north, and an extensive view over the country of Surrey on the south."Lysons 1792. The house burnt down at Easter 1785, spreading from the laundry-room where linen was being aired in preparation for the return of the family after a brief absence.Bartlett 1865, p. 69. Lord Spencer cleared away the ruins and leveled and turfed the ground, so that scarcely a trace remained of its foundations except for a tunnel, which still survives, which had linked the main house to the separate staff quarters.
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