Cadlington House (Cadlington Hall, Murray House, Seymour House), Horndean, Hampshire

Summary

Mansion. 1829, altered c1850, with extensions of 1894. Divided into three dwellings in 2008.

Description

Mansion. 1829, altered c1850, with extensions of 1894. Divided into three dwellings in 2008.

MATERIALS: coursed flint and flint galletting, with white brick flush dressings that include a band at plinth level, single and double first-floor bands, blind arches, quoins, eaves fascia and door and window architraves and rubbed brick flat arches. Bath stone porch and verandah. Slate roofs.

PLAN and EXTERIOR: a classical, late Georgian house, L shaped in plan, originally with wide, symmetrical principal elevations of two storeys and five window bays. Windows are set back in reveals with stone cills. Upper floor windows are generally three-over-three pane horned sashes. Ground floor windows include full-height openings with paired doors with glazed panels beneath very tall overlights. The house has a low-pitched hipped slate roof with wide eaves on regular brackets and yellow brick stacks, flush with the outer walls.

A stone-built verandah of eleven bays wraps round the south, west and east elevations. It has a simple order of Greek mouldings, with slender piers of rectangular section, and matching pilasters forming architraves to the openings, and a blocking course rising at the ends. It has been extended at the east side by one bay, the five eastern bays being in-filled to the outer face and glazed. Rising above the south and east elevations is a prominent central group of chimney stacks. The east stack, in line with the external wall, is stepped symmetrically, with a cornice moulding, and is solid in mass. Double stacks to the southern elevation, set back from the external wall, are enriched with paired pilaster-like panels and a cornice moulding, and are linked by a central arch.

On the west (entrance) elevation, the return three bays of the verandah project beyond the ground floor. The central, projecting flat-roofed porch, a later addition of c1850 to the original entrance, continues the style of the verandah, has coupled pilaster-like columns in Bath stone, a recessed doorway, and double doors, each of three tall panels. The single bay addition above the porch echoes the earlier style of the house but breaks with the original design.

A further two-storeyed single-bay addition (c1850), set back to the west elevation, links to a rear block at the north side with a symmetrical (west) elevation of two storeys and five window bays that continues with the original design. The east elevation includes the return wall of the verandah (extended and filled with windows), and beyond are lower one- and two-storeyed wings projecting forward, and between, a single-storeyed billiard room, dated 1894, beneath a glazed lantern and with a large splayed bay window.

INTERIOR not inspected.

History

Cadlington House, Blendworth Lodge, old Blendworth House and three smaller houses Hook Cottage, Green Hook and Myrtle Farm, were owned and improved from c1820 to the later C19 by members of the extended Knighton and Seymour families of naval and army officers, with close connections to nearby Portsmouth, and descendants of Captain James Hawker. Their mark extended over the village where new estate buildings were built in Blendworth, to the west of the historic village of Horndean. These included a new church, Holy Trinity church (1851, listed Grade II), designed by the Habershon architectural practice who were specialists in church architecture, and its rectory, Blendworth House, probably also the work of the Habershons.

Cadlington House, the principal mansion of the three, was built in 1829 on the marriage of the son of Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour 1st Bt - who had bought old Blendworth House in 1819 - to the daughter of the owner of Blendworth Lodge Sir William Knighton 1st Bt. (private secretary and keeper of the privy purse to the Prince Regent and later King George IV). Cadlington House was altered c1850 and extended in 1894 with the addition of a single-storey billiard room. Associated with it are: a contemporary coach house and stables, gardener's cottage and orangery; a walled garden built between 1839 and 1870; a model farm built by the end of the C19; and brick and flint gateposts and estate walls that enclosed a formal garden to the west of the house. Later C19 Ordnance Survey maps depict pleasure grounds to the south and east of the house, complete with a hermitage or summerhouse, with lawns to the east of the house, laid out with encircling paths, flanked by shrubberies and specimen trees. The former access from the south, also tree-lined, was incorporated within the informal parkland.

Shared parkland was created between the three properties by merging boundaries and reordering access. For example, in 1850, Green Hook Lane, the access to Cadlington House from the south, passing Blendworth Lodge, was closed and a new processional carriage drive from the west was created as the principal approach to the house.

Of the other houses, Blendworth Lodge, a cottage ornée of 1820, was enlarged into a mansion, set in parkland, (it is extant but was seriously damaged by fire in 1917). Of the smaller houses, Hook Cottage, built in 1720, was give a Gothick frontage in the early C19. Old Blendworth House was demolished in the C19 but its stables, well house and parkland are said to survive.

Reasons for Listing

Cadlington House (Cadlington Hall, Murray House, Seymour House), 1829, altered c1850, extended 1894, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: this is a substantial late Georgian mansion, extended in the mid- and later C19, reflecting changing architectural and domestic tastes;
* Historic interest: the unusual development of the house and its grounds and shared parkland reflect the influence of the extended Knighton and Seymour families on the village and its landscape in the C19.

External Links

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