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Notgrove Manor

Gloucestershire

NOTGROVE, not far from Cheltenham, is a rare example of a remote, little-known ancient Cotswold village which still has the same number of dwellings in the parish as were listed in the Domesday Book. It is a patchwork, made up of a secluded group of manor house, estate cottages and farm buildings. The estate and all bar three of the properties are owned by a family trust, ensuring Notgrove remains a traditional estate village.

The gabled manor house has early origins. There was a manor house on this site in the thirteenth century, but the house we see is largely twentieth century, extended in the early 1900s for Cyril Cunard. It was badly damaged by fire in the 1930s and restored for the then owners, the Andersons, and then reduced in size in the late 1960s by the Aclands, whose son and family live there now.

Harry Acland observes: ‘My grandfather bought the house and estate partly as a gift to my parents to persuade them not to emigrate. They took it on, gradually improving the estate and its buildings over the years. They also loved to garden, and had advice from Rosemary Verey. To us Notgrove is really one big friendly, rambling farmhouse with lots of people coming and going, and part of a thriving rural community.’

The community is clearly an important part of the story of this house, and Mr Acland says: ‘in this village we have always let properties to people who live and work locally. In 1969 there were twenty employed on the farm. When we took over in 2005 this was seven, and now we have one tractor driver. TB meant we had to diversify, and stock buildings were converted into two livery stables and a dog kennels; we have some holiday cottages and a glamping business. The payroll is twelve at busy times.’

A manor house revived

Notgrove is notably quiet, framed by trees and fields. There is an air of gentle continuity; the ancient church of St Bartholomew is still an active parish church, and the stables beyond are busy. Notgrove and the church were owned by the bishops of Worcester between the recording of the Domesday Book and the sixteenth century. The estate then passed through a series of owners, including two Oxford colleges, Christchurch and Corpus Christi.

In 1908 Notgrove, along with a rather run-down L-plan manor house (which had been a tenant farmhouse for many years), was bought by the ship-owner Cyril Cunard. Cunard had ambitious plans for the estate, and especially the house and garden. He engaged as his architect the Scots-born A.N. Prentice, who trained under the architects William Leiper and T.E. Collcutt, then established his own London office in 1891 and worked on several houses on the high street in the Gloucestershire village of Broadway.

The historian Nicholas Kingsley has suggested in The Country Houses of Gloucestershire (1989) that Prentice’s work had probably come to Cunard’s notice because Prentice also designed the interiors of ocean liners; or perhaps Cunard had seen his elegant manor-house style proposal for Willersley House exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1907 (although not built). In essence, Prentice, working with the Groves family – of the famous Cotswolds building dynasty – extended the house in traditional gabled and chimneyed spirit. He provided a new drawing and dining room, handsome bedrooms with fine views, and entirely redesigned the servants’ quarters.

Prentice also remodelled part of the older house to create a double-height entrance hall, and installed a timber gallery there rescued from an old building in Shrewsbury. Prentice also designed new farm buildings and added an ornamental thatched octagonal dairy beside the historic parish church.

Notgrove Manor as remodelled in the early twentieth century, with the ancient parish church seen to the right.

The house is set in its own secret valley, and seen here from the long early twentieth-century terrace.

Harry and Diana Acland in the well-used stable courtyard at Notgrove.

The ceiling of the hall.

The drawing room with its rare Morris & Co. carpet.

A detail of sixteenth-century stained glass.

An equestrian portrait in the hall.

A four-poster in the bedroom.

The principal oak staircase.

The chimneypiece in the family kitchen, with rosettes, wine and the family dog.

A comfortable window seat.

‘Notgrove is one big friendly, rambling farmhouse . . .’
HARRY ACLAND

In 1918 the estate was sold by Cunard’s widow to Sir Alan Garrett Anderson, another ship-owner and director of the Bank of England, who seems to have brought Prentice back to extend the stables in around 1920, and perhaps continue work on the house. In 1936 a bad fire damaged the oldest part of the house, and architects Bertram Hume and Raymond Erith were called in to restore it.

In 1969, David and Elizabeth Acland, who had previously been living in Sussex, acquired the estate. They adapted the house with the architect Martin Podd, with builders George Foster of Broadway shortening the principal wings and demolishing parts of the servants’ quarters.

Harry Acland recalls: ‘They also had some advice from David Mlinaric on the interiors. My mother had a good eye and had lots of fun attending country house auctions in the 60s and 70s, familiar then as people were sadly selling up older houses, and acquired good furniture and some pictures. By chance she acquired a large carpet made by William Morris & Co., which suited the scale of the drawing room and turned out to be rather rare.’

A new generation

Harry and Diana Acland took over in 2004 ‘with some trepidation’ and made some minor alterations, including the creation of a large family kitchen in the former south-facing dining room, connected with a conservatory. They generally looked to make everything lighter, creating a simpler entrance and restoring the gallery, and to re-inhabit the second floor which had been given up after the fire in the 1930s. Mr Acland notes, ‘it remains a very quirky house with no single room on the same level on the ground floor; it’s all a bit back to front and side-to side.’

‘It is something to think of the village being in Domesday – it makes me feel proud to be a small part of this long history. With the estate being owned by a family trust, we certainly see ourselves principally as guardians of the house for future generations,’ says Mr Acland.

A needlework tapestry designed by a previous owner of Notgrove, Colin Anderson (and made by the Royal School of Needlework) hangs in the hall of the house, depicting an estate plan with all the historic field boundaries and field names. Mr Acland says: ‘It was twice damaged by fires in the house and was kept folded in a drawer, and ever since I was a boy I wanted to restore and display it.’ The tapestry’s field names reflect the long and human history of this ancient place.