Relhan Collection : 328 Wendy. Remains of Manor House (now Vine Farm)

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Labelled ‘Remains of Wendy Manor House’, a title that suggests knowledge of a fallen grandeur. The present Vine Farm, on the site of a medieval moated manor house, was rebuilt 1674 for Letitia, Dowager Lady Wendy (d. 1696), after she was widowed by Thomas Wendy of Haslingfield Hall in 1673 (. As the daughter of a coal magnate she was wealthy in her own right and had financed much of the rebuilding of Haslingfield Hall. She was still living close enough to that home to see it decline, but she could afford to build her new home on a grand scale and with 10 hearths. After her death it became a farmhouse again and was being demolished piecemeal, but AP Baggs (VCH) recognised surviving fragments of a C17 timber framed building that perhaps survived from Letitia’s house. Vine Farm was held by the Jackson family until 1873, including a period when it was let for tenements and was largely demolished for its building materials. Relhan drew it during this decline and shows a humble 4-square white house with a tiled roof and thatched outbuildings, an incongruously impressive exterior chimney stack and diamond-paned windows, elegant survivals of a grand house but broken before Relhan’s time. Letitia is buried with her husband Thomas in Haslingfield church (<b>185</b>).</p><p>VCH 1982</p></p>