Sutton Court | |
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The rear façade remodelled by Thomas Henry Wyatt in 1858 | |
Location | Stowey, Somerset, England |
Coordinates | 51°20′30″N2°34′49″W / 51.34167°N 2.58028°W Coordinates: 51°20′30″N2°34′49″W / 51.34167°N 2.58028°W |
Built | 14th, 15th, 16th centuries |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
Official name | Sutton Court |
Designated | 21 September 1960 [1] |
Reference no. | 1129576 |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Sutton Court Lodge, gates and gatepiers |
Designated | 15 January 1986 [2] |
Reference no. | 1129577 |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Curtain Wall to north of Sutton Court with gazebo |
Designated | 15 January 1986 [3] |
Reference no. | 1136595 |
Sutton Court is an English house remodelled by Thomas Henry Wyatt in the 1850s from a manor house built in the 15th and 16th centuries around a 14th-century fortified pele tower and surrounding buildings. The house has been designated as Grade II* listed building. [1] [4]
The house is at Stowey in the Chew Valley in an area of Somerset now part of Bath and North East Somerset and near to the village of Bishop Sutton. The house is surrounded by an extensive estate laid out as a ferme ornée , part of which is now the Folly Farm nature reserve. The estate is boarded by the villages of Chew Magna to the north, Cholwell to the south, Clutton to the east and the reservoir Chew Valley Lake to the west.
Since the early modern period the house has been the country seat of several prominent families including the St Loes, one of whom married Bess of Hardwick. They lived at Sutton Court and expanded the property in the second half of the 16th century. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries it was owned by the Strachey baronets and their descendants until it was sold in 1987 and converted into apartments. In the early 1980s the house was used as a film location for the BBC Look and Read series Dark Towers, a series very popular to this day in primary schools.
The original tower of a fortified house forms a central part of the current building and was built in the 14th century by Walter de Sutton. The estate was later purchased by the St Loe family of Newton St Loe Castle, who expanded the hall [5] and established a small deer park of around 200 acres (81 ha) which covered the site now occupied by Folly Farm. [6] A length of original embattled wall, also built in the 14th century, survives. [7]
G.W. and J.H. Wade suggest that Bishop Hooper, Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, found asylum at Sutton Court around 1550 during the Marian Persecutions when the house was owned by the Protestant sympathiser Sir John St Loe, a Member of Parliament (MP) and High Sheriff of Somerset. [8] [9] [10] Sir John St Loe was a friend and neighbour of John Locke a philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism . Locke who lived in Belluton, Pensford approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) from Sutton Court. John St Loe was buried at the local Church of St Andrew, Chew Magna. [11]
About 1558, according to a date on a fireplace, Bess of Hardwick and her third husband, Sir John's son Sir William St Loe, added a north east wing with a parlour and chapel, which includes Tudor buttresses. [12] Sir William St Loe was a soldier, politician and courtier. His official positions included Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, Chief Butler of England and Member of Parliament for Derbyshire. He died suddenly without male issue in 1564/5, which Mary S. Lovell suggests may have been as a result of poisoning by his younger brother. [13] All his property was left to Bess, to the detriment of his daughters and brother. [14] When Bess died in 1608 the house was left to her son Charles Cavendish. [15]
In the early 17th century it was the seat of Richard Jones and his son Sir William Jones, the Attorney General of England. [16] In the 1650s the estate was bought by the Baber family. [6] [17]
The house soon became the seat of the Strachey family including John Strachey, the geologist, [8] who inherited estates including Sutton Court from his father in 1674 at three years of age. He introduced a theory of rock formations known as stratum, based on a pictorial cross-section of the geology under the estate and coal seams in nearby coal works of the Somerset Coalfield. He projected them according to their measured thicknesses and attitudes into unknown areas between the coal workings. [18] [19] The purpose was to enhance the value of his grant of a coal-lease on parts of his estate. This work was later developed by William Smith. [20]
Henry Strachey, the grandson of the geologist and a senior civil servant, was created a baronet in 1801. [21] When he inherited the house in the 18th century the house had been mortgaged, however the mortgage was redeemed by Strachey's employer Clive of India. [22]
Henry Strachey, the 2nd Baronet, was appointed High Sheriff of Somerset in 1832 [23] and Edward Strachey the 3rd Baronet High Sheriff in 1864. [24] In 1858 much of the house was remodelled for the 3rd Baronet by Thomas Henry Wyatt. [12] [25]
The 4th Baronet who was also Edward Strachey, a Liberal politician, was returned to Parliament for Somerset South at the 1892 general election. He served under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and later H. H. Asquith as Treasurer of the Household from 1905 to 1909 and under Asquith as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1909 to 1911. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Strachie in 1911. [26] During the 1970s major restoration work was undertaken to deal with dry rot and replace wiring which resulted in the removal of several ceilings and decorations from many of the rooms. [22]
After the death of Edward Strachey, 2nd Baron Strachie in 1973, it passed to Tory MEP Charles Strachey, 4th Baron O'Hagan, the grandson of Frances Constance Maddalena (d.1931), daughter of the 1st Baron Strachie He sold it in 1987 for conversion into flats. [27]
The building is now private apartments set in fifteen acres (3 ha) of communal grounds, including a trout lake and tennis court. It is run by a management company made up of the residents. [28]
Sutton Court is built of squared and coursed sandstone rubble throughout with freestone and ashlar dressings, copings, slate roofs. [1] The north front comprises a central three-storey fourteenth century pele tower with a taller circular stair turret and two-storey ranges linking it to the 1558 'Bess of Hardwick Building' to the left and a four bay 1858–1860 servants' wing of three storeys to the right. [1] Windows to the pele tower and right-hand linking range are 15th century, of two cusped lights with hood moulds, some of which have been renewed, and some relocated from other areas. [1] The doorway to the tower dates from 1858 to 1860. The windows to the left-hand linking range and the 'Hardwick Building' are four and six lights, with chamfered mullions. The two-storey 'Hardwick' range has diagonal offset buttresses. There are eighteenth-century battlements to the pele tower, with tall octagonal ashlar stacks. [1]
To the north of the servants wing are old stables and stable yard with a coach house and groom's cottage along with the laundry and wash house, which was once a brew house. [22]
A curtain wall to the north of the house with a gazebo is also designated as a listed building. It includes 14th century masonry at the bottom of the wall; however most of the structure as it is now dates from the 18th and 19th centuries. The corner gazebo was built in the 19th century. [3]
The gate lodge, gates and gatepiers were built around 1820. [2]
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries a ferme ornée was established, [6] with planting of various trees and the damming of streams to form ponds with paths and seating around them. [29] Tenant farmers leased the majority of the land and during most of the 20th century it was used for dairy cattle, sheep and pigs. [30] Much of the estate was sold in 1987 to the Avon Wildlife Trust who established their Folly Farm nature reserve on the site. [6]
Elizabeth Cavendish, later Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, known as Bess of Hardwick, of Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, was a notable figure of Elizabethan English society. By a series of well-made marriages, she rose to the highest levels of English nobility and became enormously wealthy. Bess was a shrewd business woman, increasing her assets with business interests including mines and glass-making workshops.
Chew Magna is a village and civil parish within the Chew Valley in the unitary authority of Bath and North East Somerset, in the ceremonial county of Somerset, England. The parish has a population of 1,149.
Strachey is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Tormarton is a village in South Gloucestershire, England. Its name may come from Thor Maer Tun meaning The settlement with the thorn (tree) on the boundary. Another source suggests the name derives from the church tower (Tor) on the border between Wessex and Mercia. It is one mile North-East of junction 18 of the M4 motorway, with the A46 road and close to the border between Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. In 2001 and 2011 there were 144 households and the population was 348. A National Trail, the Cotswold Way passes through the village. There is a church, a hotel, a pub and also a number of bed and breakfasts in the village. A Highways Agency depot with a salt dome is situated near to the village.
Newton St Loe is a small Somerset village and civil parish located close to the villages of Corston and Stanton Prior, between Bath and Bristol in England. The majority of the village is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. The parish has a population of 681.
Bishop Sutton is a village on the northern slopes of the Mendip Hills, within the affluent Chew Valley in Somerset. It lies east of Chew Valley Lake and north east of the Mendip Hills, approximately ten miles south of Bristol on the A368, Weston-super-Mare to Bath road between West Harptree and Chelwood. Bishop Sutton and the neighbouring village of Stowey form the civil parish of Stowey Sutton.
The Chew Valley is an affluent area in North Somerset, England, named after the River Chew, which rises at Chewton Mendip, and joins the River Avon at Keynsham. Technically, the area of the valley is bounded by the water catchment area of the Chew and its tributaries; however, the name Chew Valley is often used less formally to cover other nearby areas, for example, Blagdon Lake and its environs, which by a stricter definition are part of the Yeo Valley. The valley is an area of rich arable and dairy farmland, interspersed with a number of villages.
Chelwood is a small village within the civil parish of Compton Dando in Somerset, England, and is in the affluent Chew Valley in the Bath and North East Somerset council area, about 8 miles (13 km) from Bristol and Bath. The parish, which includes the hamlets of West Chelwood and Breach, has a population of 148. It is situated on the A368 between Marksbury and Bishop Sutton, very close to the A37.
West Harptree is a small village and civil parish in the Chew Valley, Somerset within the unitary district of Bath and North East Somerset. The parish has a population of 439.
Publow is a small village and civil parish in Bath and North East Somerset, England. It lies beside the River Chew in the Chew Valley. It is 7 miles from Bristol, 9 miles from Bath, and 4 miles from Keynsham. The principal settlement in the parish is Pensford. The parish also includes the village of Belluton and part of the village of Woollard. At the 2011 census it had a population of 1,119.
Stowey is a small village within the Chew Valley in Somerset, England. It lies south of Chew Valley Lake and north of the Mendip Hills, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south of Bristol on the A368 road Weston-super-Mare to Bath. Stowey and its neighbouring and larger village, Bishop Sutton, form the civil parish of Stowey Sutton.
Hinton Blewett is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Wells and 15 miles (24.1 km) south of Bristol on the northern slope of the Mendip Hills, within the designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and in the Chew Valley near the source of the River Chew. The parish has a population of 308.
Marksbury is a small village and civil parish on the eastern edge of the affluent Chew Valley in Somerset, about 4 miles (6.4 km) from Keynsham and 7 miles (11.3 km) from Bath on the A39 where it meets the A368. The parish, which includes the villages of Hunstrete and Stanton Prior, has a population of 397.
The Strachey baronetcy, of Sutton Court in the County of Somerset, England, is a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. This family was originally seated at Walden, Essex, where William Strachey was living under the rule of Edward VI. Later they moved to Surrey and at last settled at Sutton Court, Somerset. The title was created on 15 June 1801 for the politician and civil servant Henry Strachey. Sir Henry was private secretary to Lord Clive during his last expedition to India in 1764. He also took part in negotiations for peace with North America where he assisted the kings commissioners at Paris. He died in 1809 and was succeeded by his eldest son Henry, the second Baronet Strachey. His great-grandson, the fourth Baronet, was a Liberal politician. On 3 November 1911, he was created Baron Strachie, of Sutton Court in the County of Somerset, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. He later served as Paymaster-General. The peerage became extinct on the death of his son, the second Baron, in 1973. The late Baron was succeeded in the baronetcy by his first cousin once removed, the sixth Baronet. He was the son of John Strachey, son and namesake of John Strachey, second son of the third Baronet. Strachey died January 2014 and did not use his title. Also, he had not successfully proven his succession and was therefore not on the Official Roll of the Baronetage, with the baronetcy considered dormant.
Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet was a British civil servant and politician who sat in the House of Commons for 39 years from 1768 to 1807.
Edward Strachey, 1st Baron Strachie, PC, known as Sir Edward Strachey, Bt, between 1901 and 1911, was a British Liberal politician. He was a member of the Liberal administrations of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith between 1905 and 1915.
Cothelstone Manor in Cothelstone, Somerset, England was built in the mid-16th century, largely demolished by the parliamentary troops in 1646 and rebuilt by E.J. Esdaile in 1855–56.
The Church of St Andrew in Chew Magna, Somerset, England dates from the 12th century with a large 15th-century pinnacled sandstone tower, a Norman font and a rood screen that is the full width of the church. It is a Grade I listed building.
Sir William St Loe (1518–1565) was a 16th-century English soldier, politician and courtier. He was the third husband of Bess of Hardwick, his second wife. His official positions included Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, Chief Butler of England and Member of Parliament for Derbyshire.
Sir Edward Strachey, 3rd Baronet (1812–1901) was an English man of letters.