Thenford House,

Thenford Thenford is a village and civil parish about northwest of the market town of Brackley in West Northamptonshire, England, and east of Banbury in nearby Oxfordshire. The 2001 Census recorded the parish population as 74. At the 2011 Census the ...

, Northamptonshire, England is an 18th-century country house built for

Michael Wodhull Michael Wodhull (1740–1816) was an English book-collector and translator. Life The son of John Wodhull (1678–1754) of Thenford, Northamptonshire, by his second wife, Rebeccah (1702–1794), daughter of Charles Watkins of Aynhoe, he was born ...

, the bibliophile and translator. Wodhull's architect is unknown. The style is Palladian although with earlier Carolean echoes which led Pevsner to describe it as "decidedly conservative for its date". Construction took place between 1761 and 1765. Since the 1970s, the house has been the country home of Michael Heseltine who has constructed a notable

arboretum An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, man ...

in the grounds. Thenford House is a Grade I listed building.

History

was born in

, Northamptonshire in 1740. His parents were wealthy landowners and he never worked. His principal occupations were

book collecting Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given collector. The love of books is ''bibliophilia'', and someo ...

and the translation of Ancient Greek texts. In 1761, aged 21, he began the building of a new house at Thenford, to replace the

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...

manor house. By 1765 the house was complete. In the same year Wodhull married Catherine Milcah, daughter of a Warwickshire vicar. Wodhull died without heirs in 1816 and the Thenford estate passed to his wife's sister. By descent, the estate passed to the Severne family who owned the house until the end of the 19th century. In 1861

John Edmund Severne John Edmund Severne (24 April 1826 – 21 April 1899) was an English Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1885. Severne was the son of John Michael Severne of Wallop Hall, Westbury near Shrewsbury and his wif ...

was High Sheriff of Northamptonshire. In the 20th century, the house was in the possession of the Summers family, until the death in 1976 of

Spencer Summers Sir Gerard Spencer Summers (27 October 1902 – 19 January 1976) was a British Conservative politician. Biography Summers was born in Flintshire, Wales, in 1902, and educated at Wellington School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a dire ...

, who also served as High Sheriff for the county in the year before his death. Michael Heseltine and his wife Anne bought the house and 400 acres of gardens and farmland from Sir Spencer's widow in 1976, and moved into the house in 1977. Since that time, the Heseltines have developed the house and the estate, most notably by the planting of an important arboretum. A summerhouse, dating from 1981 to 1982 is by

Quinlan Terry John Quinlan Terry Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 24 July 1937) is a British architect. He was educated at Bryanston School and the Architectural Association School of Architecture. He was a pupil of architect Raymond Erith, with whom ...

Architecture and description

Nikolaus Pevsner, in his Buildings of England, notes that the house is "of fine quality but decidedly conservative for its date". Both he, and Historic England suggest that the style is more of the 1650s–1680s, rather than that fashionable at the time of the house's construction in the mid-18th century. Historic England suggests that Woodhull is likely to have been his own architect, perhaps assisted by a local draughtsman. The house is built to a double pile plan, of two storeys with attics and basements. Side pavilions are joined to the main block by screening walls. The roof is topped by a cupola. It is constructed of

Hornton Hornton is a village and civil parish about northwest of Banbury in Oxfordshire. Churches The oldest parts of the Church of England parish church of Saint John the Baptist are the nave and the arcade of the north aisle, both of which were bu ...

stone with limestone dressings. The house is a Grade I listed building. A water tank, with a date of 1765 and bearing the initials ''MW'', and a 19th-century

pump A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic energy. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they u ...

in the grounds have their own Grade II listings. Ancillary estate buildings also have Grade II listings, including the Home and Manor farmhouses.

References

Sources

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External links

;Attribution {{commons category, Thenford House Houses completed in the 18th century Grade I listed houses Grade I listed buildings in Northamptonshire