Relhan Collection : 259 Madingley Hall. Gateway and Hall from S

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

Madingley village was partly cleared away and emparked in the C16 when the house was built in the grounds beside the church. Further emparkment in 1743 extended the parkland around the Hall; Capability Brown removed the remaining village and landscaped the grounds in 1756. The Tudor house was built in brick 1543-7 of which the main N-S range between matching turrets survives. A false hammerbeam roof is thought to have come from Anglesey Abbey (40). It was built by Sir John Hinde, whose son Francis completed the house and ornamented it with an open loggia with Ionic pilasters. The house was surrounded by elaborate formal flower gardens, orchards and woodland (engraved by Knyff c.1705) that survived to the C18. Jane Hinde (256), heiress of Madingley, had married Sir John Cotton of Landwade and they made Madingley the main family residence for one of the leading political and cultural families in Cambs, with a great parlour and drawing room that displayed pictures brought from Landwade (242). Their grandson, Sir John Hind Cotton, held the estate 1713-1752 and undertook major building works in handsome Georgian style¸ including a magnificent saloon. In the 1750s his son, the second Sir John Hinde Cotton, again spent lavishly, principally to ornament and furnish the rooms in the most fashionable style. He was advised by the architect James Essex (never one to encourage economy) , and Essex also designed new stables and installed their gateway (260), whilst Capability Brown (an even bigger spender) enlarged and re-designed the Park, with a serpentine lake and sunken road etc as well as further clearance of the village, as Madingley Hall reached its short-lived peak. The costs of these works led to financial problems which Sir John passed to his eldest surviving son Charles (257), whose main interest was the Navy and only lived at Madingley in an interval before he was called back to fight in 1793. Sir Charles's son, Sir St Vincent Cotton, 10 years old when he inherited, was mostly interested in hunting and gambling, allowing the Hall and estate to deteriorate before he died childless in 1863. His mother Philadelphia (Lady Cotton) ran the estate efficiently and hospitably, brought up a family, and with her 2 daughters (one widowed, one unmarried) kept the Hall livable, but it lost much income to St Vincent’s extravagances, while he neglected the estate. Lady Cotton kept a diary, now in the Cambridgeshire Archives along with family letters. She died 1855, aged 92, after which her daughter Maud Susanna (Lady King), widow of Admiral Sir Richard King, kept the Hall going and lived here until her death in 1871. It was during her years that Queen Victoria rented the Hall for the Prince of Wales while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. The Hall was sold to Henry Hurrell of Harston and inherited by his son but it became semi-ruinous and parts were demolished before it was fortunately bought by Col TW Harding. He was a Leeds businessman with a strong romantic streak willing to undertake extensive building work, mostly 1906-10, employing first the London architect RD Oliver and later the Elizabethan specialist JA Gotch to achieve sympathetic repairs and rebuilding. The Hall was inherited by Harding’s son W Ambrose Harding who, after the upheavals of WW1, started repairs again in 1927. Ambrose Harding had previously owned and lived in Histon Manor (208) for 30 years, and had persuaded his parents to buy Madingley. He undertook further works on the house between the Wars and died 1942. His daughter Rosamund was life tenant, and then trustees sold the estate in 1948 to the University for use by the Extra-Mural Board, now the Institute of Continuing Education, who continue to use and maintain it in splendid state. Relhan’s drawing shows part of the building and stables that is fairly unchanged, though demolition and substantial rebuilding by Harding and the University has since taken place. Bradley and Pevsner 2014; Munby 1988; Pemberton 2020; RCHME 1968; Taylor 1997; VCH 1989