Heywood House

Sir James Ley built Heywood House around 1603. The year Queen Elizabeth I died and James I came to the throne. The house was Jacobean and similar in style but less ornate than the elaborate building we see today.

Sir James became Lord High Treasurer of England to King James I, and then to Charles I who provided a pile of financial difficulties to resolve; for his pains, Sir James was created the 1st Earl of Marlborough.

Although the house has changed relatively little throughout its 400 years, its occupants reflect a diversity of events in English history. Heywood House has been home to four earls, two barons, two knights, several Members of Parliament, a Governor of Jamaica, a President and Governor of Bombay, wealthy clothiers, a Director of the East India Company and a High Court Judge.

The house moved from residential to institutional when it became a hospital for wounded soldiers during the Frist World War. It was then left unoccupied for 12 years until it was restored to health by a local businessman and steam roller magnate.

The next owners turned it into a school; then it became the Finance Headquarters of the National Trust, and finally it was converted into the business center of today. From inception, the financiers at Heywood House have played their part in its survival.

Historical research shows that it was in 1837 that the original Jacobean house was given its first new wardrobe. The house was deemed too small for Victorian eyes, and the philanthropist Henry Gaisford Gibbs Ludlow commissioned the young architect Harvey Eginton, to set to. Eginton fresh from his work on Worcester Cathedral, directed an extensive programme of refurbishment, embellishment, extensions and additional buildings; these works are commemorated by a plaque with his name and date in the elaborate front porch.

From Henry Ludlow, ownership passed to his nephew, Henry Lopes, later Baron Ludlow of Heywood and the building works continued. New servants’ quarters were built, a chapel, library, palm house, domestic offices; the auction catalogue of 1920 mentions twenty nine bedrooms. The auction included 1,368 acres from Clanger Wood in the north to Westbury Hill and the White Horse.

There were pleasure grounds, ornamental water with islands, a walled kitchen garden full of fruit trees. an ice house, coach house , stabling and garage, coach pit to wash down vehicles and horses, a pump house fed by gravity from Brittle Springs on Westbury Hill to serve the estate, glass houses, carnation houses, melon houses, a bothy, dairy, a game larder, butchers shop and three lodges. A good number of these buildings and features are still in Heywood House ownership today.