<p style='text-align: justify;'><p> Relhan drew the hall and separate tower block from the path that ran to the church. The Cheyne family inherited Manchettes Manor house in 1418 and built the original 5-bay, C15 timber-framed house which was retained within the red brick building of c.1635-7, built for Sir Thomas Willys (<b>214</b>) and his son Richard. It had an E facing loggia and a symmetrical S front of 7 bays with shaped Dutch gables. Richard’s son Thomas became a baronet in 1640 and moved from Herts to the modernised Fen Ditton Hall. In 1733 the estate was bought by Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, who left it to her daughter Mary Godolphin, wife of the Duke of Leed<b>s</b> and resident of Wandlebury (<b>9</b>). She let the estate to tenants then sold it to Thomas Panton (Keeper of the King’s Horse) who lived in the Hall but did not stop its deterioration, leaving the W half of the house in ruins. After his death it was sold to Thomas Garner c.1811, then to Joseph Truslove (the surveyor who drew up Fen Ditton’s Enclosure map), in 1821. It was sometime in this period that Relhan drew it, before half was pulled down and the stone mullions he shows were replaced with wooden sash windows. Subsequently, the reduced estate was bought 1842 by John Haviland, Regius Professor of Physic, then sold by his family to Gonville and Caius College 1897, for use by academic tenants. AHM Jones, Professor of Ancient History, bought the Hall in 1960, divided it into 2 and undertook many repairs which uncovered parts of the medieval building. It was sold to Professor Howell, Head of Architecture, in 1974 and is currently occupied by the Middleton family. There were docking areas on the river at Fen Ditton and Relhan shows a brick tower house, a traditional look-out feature for trading sites in flat E Anglia, a clue to the source of wealth of the Willys family. It was demolished in C20, but the great barn beside the wharf, once a granary and wool hall, remains. There had been a formal C17/18 water garden in the meadow S of the hall, and traces of its long shallow ponds survive. Relhan’s view shows the main S and E ranges of the irregular U-plan house, with a building range without a roof, possibly the range finally demolished 1821. The interior fittings of the W wing were dispersed amongst the villagers and were reused in local farmhouses and cottages.</p><p>Bell 2013; Bradley and Pevsner 2014; Davis EM pers comm; Middleton M pers comm; RCHME 1972; VCH 2002</p></p>
