Relhan Collection : 9 Abington Hall

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>After the Norman Conquest Great Abington was held by the de Veres, earls of Oxford, whose Cambridgeshire estate was based at Castle Camps (<b>338</b>). It was owned by this family until C16, with a manor house on the site of Abington Hall that was used as a dower house for widows of the earls. It was sold in the late C16 to the Bennet family, who had built a substantial house here with 24 hearths by 1664. In 1697 Thomas Western, a wealthy London ironmonger, foreclosed on a mortgage and took over the estate, which he left to his son Maximilian. Maximilian Western rebuilt much of the house and stables 1711-1713, together with much landscape gardening designed by Humphrey Repton, including an ornamental canal. After this the estate was contested in Chancery but was won back by Maximilian’s son, another Thomas Western, who was William Cole’s friend(<b>7a</b>). Later in C18 the house was incorporated into a 3-storey building of 9 bays, in red brick with stone dressings. The N porch has Roman Doric columns, and the S front, seen in Relhan’s drawing, features a ground-floor iron veranda, also thought to be by Repton, together with other Palladian features. From the 1770s the Hall was usually let to titled tenants, and was empty 1937. The British Welding Research Association then converted the building into flats, offices and workshops, and added laboratories. From 1998 it became part of Granta Park, a science, technology and biopharmaceutical park.</p><p>Bradley and Pevsner 2014; Taylor 1998; VCH 1978 </p></p>