Amport House

Amport House, was the home of the British Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre (AFCC), until March 2020 when AFCC moved to Beckett House, Shrivenham, near Swindon and the site was sold. Amport House is a manor house (at grid reference SU296440) in the village of Amport, near Andover, Hampshire. It is now a Grade II listed building.[1]

Amport House
Located near Amport in Hampshire
Amport House
Amport House
Coordinates51.1950°N 1.5761°W / 51.1950; -1.5761
TypeManor house, Chaplaincy Centre
Site information
OwnerMinistry of Defence
Controlled byMinistry of Defence
Site history
Built1857 (1857)
In use1939-Present
Garrison information
GarrisonRAF Maintenance Command
Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre

History

The current house, which was built in an Elizabethan style, was constructed near the village of Amport in 1857 by John Paulet, 14th Marquess of Winchester and replaced two earlier houses built on the site.[2] The last of the Paulet family to reside at Amport was Henry Paulet, 16th Marquess of Winchester, who (facing high levels of taxation at the end of the First World War) sold the estate in lots between November 1918 and July 1919.[3] Not long afterwards the house was purchased by Colonel Sofer Whitburn DSO, who in 1923 engaged Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll to redesign the gardens.[2]

At the start of the Second World War, the house was requisitioned to be used as the headquarters of Royal Air Force Maintenance Command;[2] as well as ceding them use of the house, Sofer Whitburn is said to have donated his entire wine cellar to the Officers' Mess as a patriotic gesture.[3] He sold the house in 1943 (with the RAF still in possession); ultimately the RAF itself bought the property in 1957.[3] Later that year the Royal Air Force Chaplains' School moved from Dowdeswell Court in Dowdeswell to Amport House.[4] The School, which had included a Royal Navy chaplain staff member, became the tri-service Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre in 1996 on the closure of the depot of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department at Bagshot Park.[5]

A converted stable block of the house no longer holds the Museum of Army Chaplaincy; the museum is moving to a new site at Beckett Lodge, Shrivenham, near Swindon and is due to open in late 2020.[6] There is also a gatehouse and a pleached avenue of lime trees, believed to be the longest such avenue in the United Kingdom.[7]

Closure

In September 2016 it was announced that Amport House would be put up for sale by the Ministry of Defence as part of a programme of defence estate rationalisation.[8] A Better Defence Estate, published in November 2016, indicates that the site would close by 2020, which it subsequently did and was relocated to Shrivenham.[9] The licence for the publication of banns of marriage and the solemnisation of such marriages which had been granted to the chapel in January 2000 in accordance with the Marriage Act 1949 was cancelled in July 2020.[10]

See also

References
  1. Historic England, "Amport House (1093277)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 26 October 2017
  2. "Amport House". Doomsday Reloaded. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  3. "Amport History". Amport Village and Parish. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
  4. "Parishes: Dowdeswell, A History of the County of Gloucester: volume 9: Bradley hundred. The Northleach area of the Cotswolds". 2001. pp. 42–69. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  5. "Bagshot Park Conservation Area" (PDF). Surrey Heath Borough Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  6. "Museum of Army Chaplaincy". National Archives. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  7. "Amport House". Ministry of Defence. 19 November 2010. Retrieved 22 June 2012.
  8. "Military sites sold as part of £225m scheme to make way for 17,000 homes". Southern Daily Echo. Southampton. 6 September 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  9. "A Better Defence Estate" (PDF). GOV.UK. Ministry of Defence. 7 November 2016. p. 31. Retrieved 18 November 2017.
  10. "No. 63088". The London Gazette. 20 August 2020. p. 14162.

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