Patrick Comerford
My research into the life and work of the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924), is developing and growing in many exciting new directions. There are further invitations to speak about his work and its importance, and there is talk too of a new book.
But as I write about his work I also need to see it for myself with my own eyes. Two weeks ago I went to see Tylecote House on Hartwell Road, Roade, half-way between Old Stratford and Northampton.
This week I caught a bus from Stony Stratford to Addington to see the Old School House, Addington (1876), outside Winslow, a Jacobethan-style school and schoolmaster’s house that is now a private house.
Addington is a village in Buckinghamshire, about half way between Winslow (3.2 km) and Buckingham (4.8 km), and with a population of 145 people.
Addington is first referred to in the Domesday Book (1086) as Edintone, a name that means Eadda’s Estate. At the time, the manor was in the possession of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.
The main buildings in Addington include Saint Mary’s Church, Addington House on the site of the much older manor, and Addington Equestrian Centre, one of the prime sites for equestrian sports in the UK. The parish church is dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin. The church has three bells, the oldest dating back to 1666, hung for English change ringing and one sanctus bell hung for chiming.
I was in Addington to see the former school and schoolmaster’s house designed by Edward Swinfen Harris and built in 1876, with its bellcote and tall ‘Jacobeathan’ chimneys. The school was the gift of John Gellibrand Hubbard (1805-1889), a London financier, Conservative MP for Buckingham (1859-1868) and the City of London (1874-1887), and later Lord Addington (1887).
Swinfen Harris designed the house in a picturesque ‘Jacobeathan’ style and it was built in red brick with bands of blue brick and stone dressings. It has a tiled roof with ornamental panelled bargeboards.
The single-storey school room to the right has two gabled bays of three-light stone mullioned windows with bonded stone surrounds, small square centre lights over and small stone roundels at the apex of gable. The elaborate external chimney stack between bays has a decorative date plaque and an octagonal stone shaft.
The door to the left has an open timber porch with a hipped roof, an ogee arch with ornamented spandrels at the front and balusters with decorative cusping to the side. An enclosed porch at the right gable is half-timbered with some herringbone brick infill and a pointed arched door.
The open bellcote over the right-hand bay has a shingled spirelet. The two-storey schoolmaster’s house in the cross wing to the left has a hipped roof and tall ‘Jacobeathan’ chimney shafts. The gable at the front has a three-light sash window with stone mullions on first floor and square bay window with similar lights and a hipped roof below.
It has been converted and extended so that today it is a detached house with four bedrooms and four bathrooms and 2379 sq ft of space, with double glazed windows and has been extended since construction before 1900. When it was on the market recently a price of £1.5 million to £2 million was quoted.
The former manor house in Addington was used twice during the English Civil War as the headquarters of the parliamentarian forces. The Addington Manor estate was bought by JG Hubbard in 1854 before he was elected MP for Buckingham. He demolished part of the old house in 1857 and built a new Addington Manor to designs by Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892) in 1856-1857. Its site was near the earlier Addington House, which had belonged to John Poulett son of Vere Poulett, but had fallen into disrepair.
Hardwick is best known for designing the Doric Arch and Great Hall at Euston Station and the Great Western Hotel at Paddington Station. He designed the new manor in a French style with a large conservatory.
Addington Manor was built of brick with Bath stone quoins and dressings and heavy lead roofing, in the modified form of the French chateau style, with three lofty towers and a fine conservatory.
Round the great central tower were inscribed the words ‘Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that build it. Anno Domini 1857’. Over the library window, amid decorations of vine foliage and fruit, were the words ‘Dei Donum’. The third storey windows on the south and west sides of the mansion were crowned with the initials in monogram of the Lord and Lady Adlington, while on the north and south fronts of the building was the family’s heraldic emblem and the motto Alta Petens (‘Seek Higher Things’).
The ceiling of the oak hall was decorated by Owen Jones, and was said to be an exact copy of the oak ceiling in the older Addington Manor.
The Hubbard family moved into Addington Manor in December 1858 and there their distinguished visitors included the Duke of Connaught, Princess Victoria Louise, Bishop Wilberforce, members of the Gladstone family and prominent political figures.
Hubbard also built and endowed Saint Alban’s Church, Holborn, which was designed by the architect William Butterfield, and as patron appointed Father Alexander Mackonochie as the priest.
His son, Egerton Hubbard (1842-1915), 2nd Baron Addington, was MP for Buckingham in 1874-1880 and 1886-1889. He died in 1915, and during World War I the house was let as a school. Later, the house was occupied by Mrs Lawson-Johnston and family, and was then a guest house and hotel with Mrs Hocker and Mr Gordon Holmes.
Addington Manor was sold in 1926 to CB Smith-Bingham who lived nearby at Addington House. An auction sale to dispose of fittings and materials was held in June 1928 with a further auction a month later. He demolished Addington Manor in 1928 and it was rebuilt in the neo-classical style in 1928-1929, designed by the architect Michael Theodore Waterhouse (1889-1968).
During World War II, Addington Manor was a safe house from 1940 to 1945 for the Moravec, Strankmüller and Tauer families of the Czechoslovak military intelligence staff, who had their headquarters in London. František Moravec planned the assassination in Prague of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, although his killing was masterminded in London and not in Addington.
The house was eventually sold to Kenneth James William Mackay, 3rd Earl of Inchcape, who founded the Addington Equestrian Centre on the estate.
Addington House, Park House, Addington Place and Addington Grange were once one house, formerly Addington House, but are now divided into four separate units. This house dates from the late 17th century and it was much altered in 1859-1860 and again in the 20th century.
The Stable Block, Vine Cottage and the Stocks are developed from a former stable block at Addington House that has been converted onto flats and workshops. The date 1642 is inscribed on a tablet re-set above central arch.
The Tythe Barn in Addington was built in the late 16th century and it too is now converted into housing.
Saint Mary’s Church was open when I visited Addington this week, and I must describe it in detail in a posting in the days or weeks ahead.
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