Relhan Collection : 200 Haslingfield Hall. View from S showing moat

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

1814Haslingfield Hall (now Manor) stands in a 3-sided moat on a site that had been occupied as a moated manor house, the administrative centre of Scales manor in Haslingfield, since the Middle Ages. High status C12 pottery was found in archaeological excavations in 2003. The Lords Scales, were a powerful noble family in medieval England, much involved in the Wars of the Roses on the Yorkist side. The 7th Baron was killed while defending the Tower of London from Lancastrians 1460. When Dr Thomas Wendy bought the Haslingfield estate he built his new house with a central hall flanked by two projecting turrets, with E and W wings. The elaborate chimney-piece with classical details dated 1555 (205), later removed to Bourn Hall by the Lyells, illustrates the architectural style this Hall achieved. Sir Thomas Wendy (1615-1673 (187), great great nephew of Dr Wendy, married Letitia, daughter of coal magnate, Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton Park, Nottingham. Letitia brought the money to enable considerable work to the Hall and purchases of further land and houses in Haslingfield and surrounding villages. The couple expanded and modernised Haslingfield Hall, encasing the timber building in brick and adding an extra brick storey. They added a rusticated gateway, a dovecote and other outbuildings and converted the medieval moat to a decorative 3-sided garden water-feature where the Wendys kept swans. This was the home recorded by Relhan, of which the E wing, dovecote, granary and stretches of the brick boundary wall along the High Street and Broad Lane survive (2020). It was also they who enclosed the garden SE of the house with the surviving brick walls and pilasters. The new Hearth Tax recorded 25 hearths for the Hall, making it one of the largest houses in the County. Sir Thomas filled it with collections from his travels in Europe and built up a considerable library that he bequeathed to Balliol College Oxford, where he had studied. He also brought home a Danish savant, Simon Ertman, who helped to found the parish school and has a fine memorial of black marble and alabaster carved with globes and astronomical instruments in the church. Many architectural features, including the staircase (55), panelling etc were taken to Bourn Hall but 2 stone fireplaces and their chimney survive in Haslingfield. Sir Thomas died childless in 1673, leaving most of his estates to his nephew Thomas Stewart, son of his sister Susan and Thomas Stewart of Barton Mills, Suffolk (192, 193). In the later years of Thomas Stewart and the widowhood of Lucy Hatton (193) the Hall was neglected and possibly deserted. Meanwhile, Sir Thomas Wendy’s widow Letitia moved to Wendy where she built herself a handsome house (328) and lived there until her death in1696. After Lucy’s death in 1728 most of the Haslingfield estate passed to Sir Roger Burgoyne, 6th Baronet of <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton,_Bedfordshire'>Sutton, Bedfordshire</a>, a powerful landowner and Whig politician who was grandson of Margaret (sister of William and Francis Wendy), and Sir Roger Burgoyne 4th Baronet. In 1733 Sir Roger sold the estate to Balthazzar Lyell at Bourn Hall (49). Apparently the Hall, already dilapidated, was demoted to a home for tenant farm-workers for about 80 years, until the period when Relhan recorded it. He was able to draw it first in 1814, when it was fairly complete and the grounds and elements such as the room where Queen Elizabeth stayed appear neat and orderly if rather bare. However, Bourn Hall was now owned by a glamorous couple, for Henry Lyell’s daughter Catherine had married John Richard West, 4th Earl de la Warr (52) and their son George, the 5th Earl, married Elizabeth Sackville, founding the Sackville West dynasty. It was they who rebuilt Bourn Hall (56, 57) 1817-1819 in the form we recognise today, and took choice items (55, 206, 207) from Haslingfield to upgrade it. When Relhan recorded the Hall again in 1819 (201) far more had been demolished and material had also gone to construct Cantelupe Farm (also owned by the Lyells), and two C16 and C17 barns were removed from the Hall's outer enclosure. By 2020 the estate had been reduced to land within the moated area and the Hall had been demolished except for the substantial E wing, still approached down an impressive driveway and still with handsome stone fireplaces. The house and gardens have been restored as an historic but comfortable family home. Views drawn c.1814 (168, 200, 204) show the Hall before partial demolition by the Sackville Wests, whilst those drawn 1819 (167, 201-203) record what survived.Davis 1968; Stringer and Coles 2009; VCH 1973