Lost Heritage

Location		Crondall
Year demolished		1954
Reason		Surplus to requirements, replaced by a new house
See all images:		Gallery
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Itchel Manor can be traced back to the medieval period. It appears in the Domesday Book (1086) as property of the Bishop of Winchester, indicating an early ecclesiastical connection. By the 13th century it was held by the Giffard family – notably Walter Giffard, who became Archbishop of York in 1265 – and a license of free warren was granted on the estate. In 1279 the manor passed to Walter’s brother, Godfrey Giffard, the Bishop of Worcester, who used Itchel as a residence on journeys to London. A deer park was established and later enlarged in the 14th century, underscoring the manor’s status as a minor seat of nobility or clergy. During the late 15th and 16th centuries the Giffards remained lords of Itchel; John Giffard (d.1563) and his family are commemorated in Crondall church, reflecting their local prominence.

In 1579 the last Giffard heir, George Giffard, sold Itchel to Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton. The Earl – a notable Tudor nobleman – absorbed the manor into his nearby Dogmersfield estate and later died at Itchel in 1581. His grandson, Thomas Wriothesley the 4th Earl of Southampton, disposed of the property a century later, selling it to Dr. Robert Mason around 1660. Mason, an MP for Christchurch and Winchester, held the manor through the late 17th century. The residence at this time is described as a Tudor manor house – likely a rambling, timber-framed building typical of the era. No fortified elements are recorded; the lack of any surviving medieval masonry suggests the original house was an “entirely domestic house probably mainly of timber” rather than a castle or palace. Indeed, one of its handcrafted relics – a carved medieval oak door – survives today, attesting to the Tudor mansion’s character and workmanship. Mason’s family inhabited the old Tudor house until the end of the 1600s, when a major change was imminent at Itchel.

Georgian rebuild in 1701

Around 1701 the old Tudor mansion was torn down and completely rebuilt by the new owner, the Bathurst family. Little is recorded of the Bathursts themselves in local history, but the house they erected was a substantial statement of early Georgian taste. Constructed in the last years of William III or early Queen Anne’s reign, the new manor was a brick-built house in the fashionable style of its day. Contemporary accounts describe it as having characteristics of the Charles II/Queen Anne style, suggesting a symmetrical façade of mellow red brick, sash windows and perhaps stone quoins or classical door surrounds. The layout likely followed the compact H-plan or rectangular block typical of c.1700 country houses, a deliberate departure from the sprawling, half-timbered Tudor building it replaced. This 1701 house formed the core of Itchel Manor for the next 250 years.

Ownership changed again mid-century when the estate was purchased by a certain Squire Linwood. Linwood’s tenure is less documented architecturally, but local lore casts him as a villainous character. By 1773 Itchel Manor had passed to Henry Maxwell, under whose stewardship both the house and grounds were modernized. Maxwell took the early Baroque/Queen Anne mansion and changed its character to a fully Georgian aesthetic. This likely entailed updating the façade and interiors in line with late-18th-century taste – refitting rooms with classical moldings and sash windows, and refining the house’s appearance to Georgian symmetry and elegance.

Maxwell’s influence extended to the landscape as well. The grounds at Itchel were said to have been laid out in this period by Lancelot “Capability” Brown, although no archival evidence has been found to confirm his involvement. Whether or not Brown himself advised, the estate was landscaped to reflect contemporary tastes: the medieval deer park was partly naturalized into pastoral parkland with avenues of trees and ornamental water features. Itchel was even referred to for a time as Ewshot House, a rebranding credited to Henry Maxwell’s wife. Finding the name “Itchel” unpleasant, she prevailed upon her husband to adopt the name of the local tything, Ewshot, for the manor. Thus through the late 18th and early 19th century many maps and documents label the property as Ewshot House, though villagers never stopped calling it Itchel.

18th- and 19th-century alterations

Under Maxwell and subsequently the Lefroy family, Itchel Manor continued to evolve. Maxwell died in 1818 and, having no direct heirs, bequeathed Itchel Manor to his wife’s nephew, the Rev. John Henry George Lefroy. With that inheritance the estate reverted to its former name of Itchel and the Lefroy family began an extended stewardship. The Lefroys were a prominent Anglo-Irish family, and they maintained Itchel through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Several generations resided here, including the scientist Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, born at Itchel in 1877, who later gained fame for his work in entomology.

During this long tenure, the Georgian house was expanded and altered to suit Victorian tastes and practical needs. Period descriptions and surviving images from circa 1900 show a large, rambling residence of thirteen bays or more, with a complex roofline. Victorians added extensions and made functional upgrades: a substantial slate roof was installed over the old tile, and ancillary structures like conservatories and glasshouses appeared. By the early 1900s the manor presented a mellow Georgian front of red brick and sash windows, augmented by 19th-century wings and porches. Internally it had grown into a maze of rooms – by the 1930s there were twenty-six bedrooms, eight bathrooms and innumerable ground-floor rooms, a reflection of accretions over time. The estate around the house was equally well-appointed: a 1937 letting advertisement boasted of pleasing gardens with conservatories, a rockery, two tennis lawns, a cricket ground and even a swimming pool, all set in seventeen acres of wooded parkland. It was the picture of an English manor in full Victorian maturity, blending Georgian elegance with Victorian comfort.

Yet by the mid-20th century, such an enormous house had become a white elephant. After the Second World War the upkeep of Itchel’s aging fabric and extensive grounds proved difficult. The Lefroys, still the owners, faced the fate of many aristocratic houses in that era. Rather than see Itchel Manor fall into decay or be converted to institutional use, Rodney Maxwell-Lefroy decided the old mansion – a cumbrous house of impractical size – had no viable future as a family home. In 1954, after protracted discussions with the local planning authorities, permission was obtained to demolish the historic house and replace it with a new residence on a nearby site within the estate. The old Itchel Manor, built in 1701 and enlarged over two centuries, was thus pulled down. A lone fragment of the past – a medieval carved door from the original Tudor house – was salvaged to be displayed in the new house’s lobby, a tangible link to Itchel’s continuity.

Surviving estate structures

Although the house itself was lost in 1954, parts of the Itchel estate remain as architectural witnesses to its long history. The walled garden, once the centre of the manor’s productive life, still stands, with mature trees such as cedars, cypresses, oaks and beeches planted by earlier generations. The stable block, considerably altered, survives as a private house, its fine gauged brickwork hinting at the high quality of the early 18th-century rebuilding. Traces of the landscaped park can still be read in the rolling pastures and veteran tree avenues, recalling both the medieval deer park and later Georgian embellishments. These fragments, together with archival records and memorials in nearby Crondall church, preserve the memory of a manor that for centuries shaped the character of its Hampshire setting.