Lechlade Manor

At the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the manor of Lechlade was held by Siward Barn, a grandson of Edward the Confessor. Later owners included Isabel, wife of Roger de Mortimer, and Richard of Cornwall, second son of King John.[1] The manor passed out of possession of The Crown in the 16th century, and by the 18th was in the ownership of Sir Jacob Wheate. Encumbered by very considerable debts, Sir Jacob sold the manor and, after a further succession of sales, it was bought by George Milward in the early 19th century. His grandson, another George, began the construction of the present house in 1871.[1]

John Loughborough Pearson (1817–1897) specialised in ecclesiastical architecture. In a career of over fifty years, he worked on some 200 church buildings, principally on restorations, although his Truro Cathedral was the first new Anglican cathedral to be built in England since the reconstruction of St Paul's.[lower-alpha 1][3][4] The small amount of secular building he undertook was mainly in London, or in the West, including Treberfydd in Wales,[5] and Quar Wood and Lechlade, both in Gloucestershire.[6]

The Milwards owned the manor for just over 100 years, selling the estate to the Sisterhood of St Clotilde in 1939.[7] The convent operated a girls' school at the manor until 1998 when it was sold, the remaining sisters returning to France.[lower-alpha 2][8] The main house again became a private home, while the stables were converted, and a number of homes were built as enabling development in the grounds.[9][10]

Lechlade Manor is of three storeys, and is constructed to a rough E-plan.[11] The house is gabled, and contains one of Pearson's characteristic, double-height bow windows on the garden frontage.[12] David Verey and Alan Brooks, in their Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds volume of the Buildings of England, record that the cost of the manor was some £6,000.[12] They note the inspiration for the Cloister Court at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a sequence of buildings Pearson constructed some twenty years later, almost at the end of his life.[13] Mark Girouard, in his study The Victorian Country House, notes that Lechlade, "one of Pearson's few country houses", demonstrates his move away from strict adherence to a Gothic style, towards a more relaxed neo-Elizabethan or Jacobethan idiom.[14]

Historic England's listing record states that the ground floor interiors retain much of Pearson's original work. The house is a Grade II listed building.[11] Ancillary estate buildings also have Grade II listings, including the lodge and Manor Farmhouse.[15][16]

• Bradley, Simon; Nikolaus, Pevsner (2014) [1970]. Cambridgeshire. The Buildings of England. New Haven, US, and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20596-1. OCLC 895381346.
• Girouard, Mark (1979). The Victorian Country House. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02390-9.
• Verey, David; Brooks, Alan (2000) [1970]. Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds. The Buildings of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-140-71098-4. OCLC 633122306.