Thenford House

Michael Wodhull was born in Thenford, Northamptonshire in 1740. His parents were wealthy landowners and he never worked.[1] His principal occupations were book collecting and the translation of Ancient Greek texts.[1] In 1761, aged 21,[2] he began the building of a new house at Thenford, to replace the Elizabethan manor house.[1] By 1765 the house was complete.[2] 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.[1]

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 was High Sheriff of Northamptonshire.[3] In the 20th century, the house was in the possession of the Summers family, until the death in 1976 of Spencer Summers,[4] who also served as High Sheriff for the county in the year before his death.[5] 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.[6] Since that time, the Heseltines have developed the house and the estate, most notably by the planting of an important arboretum.[7][8][9][10] A summerhouse, dating from 1981–1982 is by Quinlan Terry.[2]

Nikolaus Pevsner, in his Buildings of England, notes that the house is "of fine quality but decidedly conservative for its date".[11] 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.[2][12] Historic England suggests that Woodhull is likely to have been his own architect, perhaps assisted by a local draughtsman.[12] 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 stone with limestone dressings.[12]

The house is a Grade I listed building.[12] A water tank, with a date of 1765 and bearing the initials MW,[13] and a 19th-century pump in the grounds have their own Grade II listings.[14] Ancillary estate buildings also have Grade II listings, including the Home and Manor farmhouses.[15][16]

• Bailey, Bruce; Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (2013). Northamptonshire. The Buildings Of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18507-2.
• Heseltine, Anne; Heseltine, Michael (2017). Thenford: The Creation of an English Garden. London: Head of Zeus. ISBN 978-1-784-97973-7.
• Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (1973) [1961]. Northamptonshire. The Buildings Of England. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-140-71022-9.
• Streat, Raymond (1987). Marguerite Dupree (ed.). Lancashire and Whitehall: The Diary of Sir Raymond Streat. 2. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-719-02391-0.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1900). "Wodhull, Michael". Dictionary of National Biography. 62. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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