Horwood House
Encyclopedia
Horwood House lies 0.5 mile (0.80467 km) south east of the village of Little Horwood
in Buckinghamshire
. This mansion is a comparatively modern house, built in 1911, the date being embossed into the gutter hopper-heads. Today it is a conference and training venue, owned and operated by Principal Hayley Group
It was built for Frederick Arthur Denny (who had made his fortune in pork and bacon) and designed in the William & Mary style by the architect Detmar Blow
and the interior designer Billerey. It is built on the site of the former Old Horwood, a 300 year old farmhouse previously known as Rectory House. Old Horwood was a building of late sixteenth-century construction, consisting of two storeys and an attic, with walls of timber and brick, which a Colonel Daucy occupied for a period and local folklore suggests that his ghost haunts the present house. It was extended in the later seventeenth century, and enlarged in the nineteenth century. When the estate was purchased by Denny it consisted of 482 acres (2 km²), two farms, eleven cottages, the village hall, parkland and woods. The purchase of the estate made the owner the Lay Rector or patron of St Nicholas' church, Little Horwood. (In the Church of England, the legal right to appoint or recommend a parish priest
is called an advowson
, and its possessor is known as a patron.)
The construction of the house was contracted to Cubitts
who had built much of the Grosvenor Estate in Belgravia
. The brief given by Frederick Denny was that the house should be reasonably imposing but compact enough to be comfortable and it was supposed to be a copy of a house that he had seen in the West Country. The house had fourteen bedrooms, five bathrooms and there were nine servants' bedrooms in the West wing of the house, which adjoined the Norfolk-thatched stable yard, in which were housed eight top-class hunters
. The thatch was laid by the brothers Farnham, famous thatchers of Rockland St. Mary. The horses were kept as it was the Denny’s main sport and even the son and daughters took part. The house is of old russety bricks, which were imported from Holland and old tiles were used for the gabled roof giving an appearance of a much older building than it was. It is believed that some fireplaces and wood-work too were recovered from other houses. At the rear of the house is a ha-ha which allows a panoramic view from the house but keeps out grazing cattle and wildlife. The house is symmetrical in layout and was featured in Country Life
(10 November 1923) who approved of the house, even though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Denny were in residence.
This was the Dennys' country residence as they had a house in London in Down Street, opposite Green Park
, and another in Grosvenor Street and the company headquarters were based in Lambeth
. The Denny family would travel down on Friday and back to London on the Monday. To start with they used the train travelling from Euston
and changing at Bletchley
on to the Varsity Line
(Oxford and Cambridge Line) and arrived at Swanbourne
station after just one stop, Swanborne station was just half a mile from the house and bordered on the estate. In the 1920s they employed three chauffeurs and four cars at Horwood. The cars were housed in the stable block, along with the hunters and other horses, and attached were three rooms for the chauffeurs. Within the thatched stable block was a house for the head groom and rooms for the stable boys. In total, Horwood House had a staff of some fifty people, including a butler, footman, lead parlour maid, assistant parlour maid, cook, kitchen maid, three under maids, between maid, two ladies maids, chauffeurs, electrician, farm bailiff and all the farm staff. There was a bothy
next to the head gardener’s house that housed five improver gardeners.
Frederick Denny married Maude Marion Quilter (born about 1868) of Bawdsey Manor
and daughter of Sir William Cuthbert Quilter, 1st Bt. in 1888. There was a huge party for the Dennys' Golden Wedding celebrations in 1938, and there were over 200 guests. The Denny family owned much of Little Horwood, and the whole estate was auctioned off when they left in the 1940s. The details of the auction can still be seen at the house.
The grounds were approached through an arched gatehouse, but this has now been by-passed for easier access. Then there is a quarter of a mile straight drive to the main house. The drive is lined with lime trees
, which were planted by the head gardener, Harry Thrower. The estate generated its own electricity before being connected to the national grid. The Dennys even had their own pet-cemetery where pets were laid to rest in small replicas of human graves complete with headstones engraved with the pet's name, which can be seen to this present day. The Dennys held a servants' ball each year; the house was thrown open, and free drink, food and music were provided. They also gave a Christmas party for the children of the village and the servants.
(born 30 January 1913) whose father Harry Thrower (born 1882 in Felixstowe) was the head gardener when the house was built. There was a gardening staff of sixteen, and the position of head gardener came with a six-roomed cottage next to the vegetable garden, which was about 2 acre (0.809372 ha) and enclosed by a 10 feet (3 m) brick wall. The wage for the head gardener was £2
per week, plus the cottage, heating, free fruit and vegetables, free milk and miscellaneous perks. The wages for an ordinary gardener were 28 shillings per week. There were lean-to greenhouses heated by a coal boiler via water pipes. There was an extensive apple orchard of nearly two hundred trees, which was able to provide apples all year apart from a few summer weeks. The head gardener was also required to provide exotic fruits at the time, such as peaches, melons, grapes etc. He was also required to produce mushrooms. The beehive
s were also the responsibility of Harry. When Percy was born in the cottage he was the first child to be born at Horwood House. Harry was previously a gardener at Bawdsey Manor, which was Maude Denny's family home. Percy started work as a “pot-and-crock” boy at Horwood in the Spring of 1927, even though the house didn’t really need one, but it never occurred to either Frederick Denny or Harry Thrower not to employ him. In fact all Percy's siblings were employed on the estate at the start of their working life. Percy received a shilling
(5p
) for an 11-hour day and worked a five-and-a-half-day week. He was able to supplement his income by catching wildlife; the estate paid 6d each for moles
, magpies and carrion crows, and sometimes he would earn more from this than his wages. Percy left Horwood in 1931 to work in the royal gardens at Windsor
, where there was a staff of sixty gardeners. Mrs Denny was so impressed that he was going to work at Windsor that she instructed one of the chauffeurs to drive Percy and his father there. By 1931 the number of gardeners at Horwood had been reduced from nineteen to seven, and Harry struggled to keep the garden up to scratch. Interestingly, whilst BT had Horwood House, as their management college, the number was down to two, but they had the advantage of mechanisation. Harry Thrower died suddenly on 31 December 1939, when he was 57, from haemorrhage of the lungs brought on by smoking an ounce of pipe tobacco a day, and the effort of keeping the gardens up to standard with the three remaining gardeners. He was buried at St Nicholas' church in Little Horwood, with the inscription on his tombstone of “Highly valued friend and head gardener for many years to Mr. & Mrs. Denny of Horwood House”. Mrs. Harry Thrower was left a widow for 35 years. At first she worked in the house as a housekeeper, but later she ran a shop in Little Horwood, only retiring in 1971 because she refused to adopt decimalisation. She died in 1974.
During World War II a girls' school from the Isle of Wight
was evacuated to Horwood House, and the Dennys moved out to The Laundry in Little Horwood, which, despite the name, was almost like a small mansion. Some of the internal staff went with them, including Percy Thrower's mother.
Frederick Denny died on 18 January 1941, and his son John Anthony Denny (married Selby Loundes) died in 1943. There are stained glass windows in St Nicholas' church dedicated by Maud Denny in 1946 in memory of her husband and son. Maude Denny died on 19 October 1949.
There were other children. A daughter, Evelyn Elvira Denny, married Sir Everard Philip Digby Pauncefort-Duncombe, 3rd Bt.(born on 6 December 1885) on 16 November 1922. Another daughter Norar Denny was born in 1891 and married Robert Nichols (1893–1944), and finally there was the third daughter, Rosalinde Denny.
It then became a girls' school and later a boys' prep school The (called The Old Ride School
) and then it was bought by British Rail
in 1962, as they were going to build a huge marshalling yard at Swanbourne which would encompass the Horwood House site, but this never happened due to the Beeching
cuts, even though a huge flyover which opened in January 1962, for the Varsity line, had been built at Bletchley for its use.
In 1966 BR sold Horwood House to the Post Office
who used it as one of their College of Engineering Studies. They built extra accommodation wings, considerably enlarging the house which was completed in 1975.
In 1984 Horwood House became a Grade II listed building. BT
(previously the GPO) further upgraded the building and increased the number of bedrooms to 120, all en-suite.
It also added a swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna and updated the restaurant and public rooms. Shortly after this, it sold the house (around 1992) to Hayley Hotels, which use it as the headquarters of its conference centre business, which runs at several sites. Horwood House is also used for civil weddings.
Many thanks to Nigel Pegram for considerbale help on the pictures when Horwood House was The Old Ride School
Little Horwood
Little Horwood is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, England. The village is about four miles ESE of Buckingham and two miles north east of Winslow....
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
. This mansion is a comparatively modern house, built in 1911, the date being embossed into the gutter hopper-heads. Today it is a conference and training venue, owned and operated by Principal Hayley Group
Principal Hayley Group
Principal Hayley Group is a Harrogate, North Yorkshire based hotel and conference venue operator.Formed from a management buyout of a basic 6 hotel group in 2006, backed by Private Equity firm Permira, the company presently operates 25 locations, mainly in the UK...
History
Detmar Blow
Detmar Jellings Blow was a British architect of the early 20th century, who designed principally in the arts and crafts style. His clients belonged chiefly to the British aristocracy, and later he became estates manager to the Duke of Westminster...
and the interior designer Billerey. It is built on the site of the former Old Horwood, a 300 year old farmhouse previously known as Rectory House. Old Horwood was a building of late sixteenth-century construction, consisting of two storeys and an attic, with walls of timber and brick, which a Colonel Daucy occupied for a period and local folklore suggests that his ghost haunts the present house. It was extended in the later seventeenth century, and enlarged in the nineteenth century. When the estate was purchased by Denny it consisted of 482 acres (2 km²), two farms, eleven cottages, the village hall, parkland and woods. The purchase of the estate made the owner the Lay Rector or patron of St Nicholas' church, Little Horwood. (In the Church of England, the legal right to appoint or recommend a parish priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
is called an advowson
Advowson
Advowson is the right in English law of a patron to present or appoint a nominee to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice or church living, a process known as presentation. In effect this means the right to nominate a person to hold a church office in a parish...
, and its possessor is known as a patron.)
Holland, Hannen & Cubitts
Holland, Hannen & Cubitts was a major building firm responsible for many of the great buildings of London.-History:It was formed from the fusion of two well-established building houses that had competed throughout the later decades of the nineteenth century but came together in 1883: this was...
who had built much of the Grosvenor Estate in Belgravia
Belgravia
Belgravia is a district of central London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Noted for its immensely expensive residential properties, it is one of the wealthiest districts in the world...
. The brief given by Frederick Denny was that the house should be reasonably imposing but compact enough to be comfortable and it was supposed to be a copy of a house that he had seen in the West Country. The house had fourteen bedrooms, five bathrooms and there were nine servants' bedrooms in the West wing of the house, which adjoined the Norfolk-thatched stable yard, in which were housed eight top-class hunters
Field hunter
A field hunter, or a fox hunter, is a type of horse used in the hunt field for fox hunting. It may be of any breed, but should possess stamina, a level head, and bravery. The horse should have a safe jump, so as not to get caught on any of the solid obstacles found in the hunt field...
. The thatch was laid by the brothers Farnham, famous thatchers of Rockland St. Mary. The horses were kept as it was the Denny’s main sport and even the son and daughters took part. The house is of old russety bricks, which were imported from Holland and old tiles were used for the gabled roof giving an appearance of a much older building than it was. It is believed that some fireplaces and wood-work too were recovered from other houses. At the rear of the house is a ha-ha which allows a panoramic view from the house but keeps out grazing cattle and wildlife. The house is symmetrical in layout and was featured in Country Life
Country Life (magazine)
Country Life is a British weekly magazine, based in London at 110 Southwark Street, and owned by IPC Media, a Time Warner subsidiary.- Topics :The magazine covers the pleasures and joys of rural life, as well as the concerns of rural people...
(10 November 1923) who approved of the house, even though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Denny were in residence.
Family home
Green Park
-External links:*...
, and another in Grosvenor Street and the company headquarters were based in Lambeth
Lambeth
Lambeth is a district of south London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated southeast of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...
. The Denny family would travel down on Friday and back to London on the Monday. To start with they used the train travelling from Euston
Euston railway station
Euston railway station, also known as London Euston, is a central London railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden. It is the sixth busiest rail terminal in London . It is one of 18 railway stations managed by Network Rail, and is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line...
and changing at Bletchley
Bletchley railway station
Bletchley is a railway station that serves the southern districts of Milton Keynes , and the north-eastern parts of the Buckinghamshire district of Aylesbury Vale....
on to the Varsity Line
Varsity Line
The Varsity Line is an informal name for the railway route that formerly linked the English university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, operated successively by the London and North Western Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, and British Railways...
(Oxford and Cambridge Line) and arrived at Swanbourne
Swanbourne railway station
Swanbourne is a disused railway station that served the villages of Swanbourne, Little Horwood and Mursley in north Buckinghamshire, England. It is on the disused Varsity Line, roughly at the centre of a triangle drawn between the three villages....
station after just one stop, Swanborne station was just half a mile from the house and bordered on the estate. In the 1920s they employed three chauffeurs and four cars at Horwood. The cars were housed in the stable block, along with the hunters and other horses, and attached were three rooms for the chauffeurs. Within the thatched stable block was a house for the head groom and rooms for the stable boys. In total, Horwood House had a staff of some fifty people, including a butler, footman, lead parlour maid, assistant parlour maid, cook, kitchen maid, three under maids, between maid, two ladies maids, chauffeurs, electrician, farm bailiff and all the farm staff. There was a bothy
Bothy
A bothy is a basic shelter, usually left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge. It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are to be found in remote, mountainous areas of Scotland, northern England, Ireland, and Wales....
next to the head gardener’s house that housed five improver gardeners.
Bawdsey Manor
Bawdsey Manor stands at a prominent position at the mouth of the River Deben close to the village of Bawdsey in Suffolk, England, about 118 km northeast of London....
and daughter of Sir William Cuthbert Quilter, 1st Bt. in 1888. There was a huge party for the Dennys' Golden Wedding celebrations in 1938, and there were over 200 guests. The Denny family owned much of Little Horwood, and the whole estate was auctioned off when they left in the 1940s. The details of the auction can still be seen at the house.
Tilia
Tilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The greatest species diversity is found in Asia, and the genus also occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but not western North America...
, which were planted by the head gardener, Harry Thrower. The estate generated its own electricity before being connected to the national grid. The Dennys even had their own pet-cemetery where pets were laid to rest in small replicas of human graves complete with headstones engraved with the pet's name, which can be seen to this present day. The Dennys held a servants' ball each year; the house was thrown open, and free drink, food and music were provided. They also gave a Christmas party for the children of the village and the servants.
Gardens
Horwood House was the birthplace of Percy ThrowerPercy Thrower
Percy John Thrower MBE was a British gardener, horticulturist, broadcaster and writer born at Horwood House in the village of Little Horwood in Buckinghamshire....
(born 30 January 1913) whose father Harry Thrower (born 1882 in Felixstowe) was the head gardener when the house was built. There was a gardening staff of sixteen, and the position of head gardener came with a six-roomed cottage next to the vegetable garden, which was about 2 acre (0.809372 ha) and enclosed by a 10 feet (3 m) brick wall. The wage for the head gardener was £2
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
per week, plus the cottage, heating, free fruit and vegetables, free milk and miscellaneous perks. The wages for an ordinary gardener were 28 shillings per week. There were lean-to greenhouses heated by a coal boiler via water pipes. There was an extensive apple orchard of nearly two hundred trees, which was able to provide apples all year apart from a few summer weeks. The head gardener was also required to provide exotic fruits at the time, such as peaches, melons, grapes etc. He was also required to produce mushrooms. The beehive
Beehive
A beehive is a structure in which bees live and raise their young.Beehive may also refer to:Buildings and locations:* Bee Hive, Alabama, a neighborhood in Alabama* Beehive , a wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings...
s were also the responsibility of Harry. When Percy was born in the cottage he was the first child to be born at Horwood House. Harry was previously a gardener at Bawdsey Manor, which was Maude Denny's family home. Percy started work as a “pot-and-crock” boy at Horwood in the Spring of 1927, even though the house didn’t really need one, but it never occurred to either Frederick Denny or Harry Thrower not to employ him. In fact all Percy's siblings were employed on the estate at the start of their working life. Percy received a shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
(5p
British Five Pence coin
The British decimal five pence coin – often pronounced "five pee" – is a subdivision of pound sterling first issued on 23 April 1968 in preparation for the 1971 decimalisation of the currency. At that time it had the same value, size and weight as the existing shilling, and it may be...
) for an 11-hour day and worked a five-and-a-half-day week. He was able to supplement his income by catching wildlife; the estate paid 6d each for moles
Mole (animal)
Moles are small cylindrical mammals adapted to a subterranean lifestyle. They have velvety fur; tiny or invisible ears and eyes; and short, powerful limbs with large paws oriented for digging. The term is especially and most properly used for the true moles, those of the Talpidae family in the...
, magpies and carrion crows, and sometimes he would earn more from this than his wages. Percy left Horwood in 1931 to work in the royal gardens at Windsor
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
, where there was a staff of sixty gardeners. Mrs Denny was so impressed that he was going to work at Windsor that she instructed one of the chauffeurs to drive Percy and his father there. By 1931 the number of gardeners at Horwood had been reduced from nineteen to seven, and Harry struggled to keep the garden up to scratch. Interestingly, whilst BT had Horwood House, as their management college, the number was down to two, but they had the advantage of mechanisation. Harry Thrower died suddenly on 31 December 1939, when he was 57, from haemorrhage of the lungs brought on by smoking an ounce of pipe tobacco a day, and the effort of keeping the gardens up to standard with the three remaining gardeners. He was buried at St Nicholas' church in Little Horwood, with the inscription on his tombstone of “Highly valued friend and head gardener for many years to Mr. & Mrs. Denny of Horwood House”. Mrs. Harry Thrower was left a widow for 35 years. At first she worked in the house as a housekeeper, but later she ran a shop in Little Horwood, only retiring in 1971 because she refused to adopt decimalisation. She died in 1974.
During World War II a girls' school from the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
was evacuated to Horwood House, and the Dennys moved out to The Laundry in Little Horwood, which, despite the name, was almost like a small mansion. Some of the internal staff went with them, including Percy Thrower's mother.
Frederick Denny died on 18 January 1941, and his son John Anthony Denny (married Selby Loundes) died in 1943. There are stained glass windows in St Nicholas' church dedicated by Maud Denny in 1946 in memory of her husband and son. Maude Denny died on 19 October 1949.
There were other children. A daughter, Evelyn Elvira Denny, married Sir Everard Philip Digby Pauncefort-Duncombe, 3rd Bt.(born on 6 December 1885) on 16 November 1922. Another daughter Norar Denny was born in 1891 and married Robert Nichols (1893–1944), and finally there was the third daughter, Rosalinde Denny.
The Old Ride School
The house has had various roles since the original owners departed after only a generation of occupancy. The estate was broken up in 1936 when it was sold by the Denny Family. The estate was auctioned off by the firm of Hampton & Sons of London on Monday 16 November 1936 at the Bell Hotel, Winslow, Buckinghamshire. However many of the lots failed to reach their reserve but Mr Denny accepted offers on some of the lots on November 18 at the auctioneer’s office at 6 Arlington Street, St James, London. The auction and the later offers raised a total of £29,755 which included the house and grounds at £20,000 although some lots were withdrawn. It is known from the auction details that the Horwood House telephone number, at the time was Winslow 26.It then became a girls' school and later a boys' prep school The (called The Old Ride School
The Old Ride School
The Old Ride School was an independent school, at Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire, later at Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire.-History:...
) and then it was bought by British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
in 1962, as they were going to build a huge marshalling yard at Swanbourne which would encompass the Horwood House site, but this never happened due to the Beeching
Richard Beeching
Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching , commonly known as Doctor Beeching, was chairman of British Railways and a physicist and engineer...
cuts, even though a huge flyover which opened in January 1962, for the Varsity line, had been built at Bletchley for its use.
College
Post office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
who used it as one of their College of Engineering Studies. They built extra accommodation wings, considerably enlarging the house which was completed in 1975.
In 1984 Horwood House became a Grade II listed building. BT
BT Group
BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...
(previously the GPO) further upgraded the building and increased the number of bedrooms to 120, all en-suite.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Jan Halstead and Patrick Mills for the considerable help on Harry Throwers grave pictures.Many thanks to Nigel Pegram for considerbale help on the pictures when Horwood House was The Old Ride School