Thorpe Hall: a history
Thorpe Hall, Thorpe Road, Longthorpe, Peterborough
1653 - Present
Private family home
Boarding school
Convalescent home
Maternity hospital
Hospice
Wedding venue
Meeting place
Community hub
Thorpe Hall: a history
Contents
Setting the scene
3
The St John family
3
The house that Oliver built
4
Later generations
4
Enter the Bernard family
6
Over the next sixty years
7
Strong times
8
Up to the present
11
Thorpe Hall Hospice
12
A tour of the principal rooms
13
Acknowledgements16
Giving your support
17
2
Thorpe Hall: a history
Setting the scene
The St John family
Picture a handful of cottages straggling along
a narrow lane, so deeply rutted that it is hard to
believe it was the main road from Castor – once
home of the great Roman road builders – to
Peterborough. That was the village of Longthorpe
in the mid-1600s.
Oliver St John was born in 1598. His mother Sarah
was the daughter of Edward Buckley of Odell,
Bedfordshire. His father was reputedly Oliver St
John of Bletsoe, but there was some speculation
as to young Oliver’s legitimacy.
At 17 young Oliver went to study law at Queen’s
College, Cambridge. While there he tried to stir
up resistance to the King, was prosecuted and
fined £5,000 – then a huge sum. He was also
imprisoned ‘at the King’s pleasure’, but the
prosecution was dropped almost immediately
for no apparent reason, and he returned to
university.
Even Peterborough, about a mile away across
open country, was a small place. Its outwardly
splendid Abbey church, visible for miles across
the Fens, was the mere shell of a cathedral,
impoverished and decaying. Beside the
Buttercross in the market square, St John the
Baptist Church, built in happier days for the use of
the townsfolk, was also in a dilapidated condition.
In 1619, he went to Lincoln’s Inn and was
eventually admitted to the Bar in 1626 at the
age of 28. He entered into the employment
and patronage of Francis, 4th Earl of Bedford,
who was a leader of the so-called reform party, a
group highly critical of the lifestyle and financial
excesses of the Stuart Monarchs.
The village, then known simply as Thorp – a
reminder that the Danes settled there – had few
inhabitants, yet it covered an area large enough to
be divided into two manors. At the western end,
near the 13th century church of St Botolph, stood
a manor house with an ancient tower. Inside, its
wonderful murals had long ago been covered with
limewash and forgotten.
He served a term as English Ambassador to
Holland until he was recalled when war broke
out between the two nations. He did not much
enjoy his time in Holland, and his difficulties were
compounded when he came under attack from
a large group of Royalists living in exile in The
Hague. But it was in the Low Countries that he
discovered the blend of Italian classical features
and local traditional Dutch styles that influenced
the design of Thorpe Hall.
At the eastern end, on land of the second manor
that had been sequestrated (taken but not paid
for) during the Commonwealth, a grand new
‘Mansion House’ was being built. It stood on a
small rise, known as Hill Close, high enough to
protect its vaulted cellars from the floods that
covered the water meadows every winter and
prominent enough to dominate the valley.
Since the execution of Charles I, England under
Oliver Cromwell had been unsettled, and the
building of fine houses had almost come to a
standstill. But in those insecure times, when many
families had lost their homes and fortunes, one
man had the confidence, ambition and wealth to
build a house ‘in a manner little used in England
before’.
Back in England, Oliver St John became
Cromwell’s Lord Chief Justice of the Pleas. By now
he was 52, twice widowed, and had six children.
St John’s second wife, Elizabeth, née Cromwell,
was said to be Oliver Cromwell’s favourite
cousin. Certainly they corresponded frequently.
He addressed her as ‘my beloved cousin’ and
reflected on his past errors. ‘I was a chief of
sinners,’ he wrote to her from Ely, where he was
then living.
He was Oliver St John, the new Puritan Lord
Paramount of the Liberty of the City of
Peterborough.
Cromwell’s influence may have helped St John
acquire the land of Thorpe Hall. He asked to
be ‘paid in kind’ for his work in Holland, and
requested that he be given ‘the minster of
The house he built, Thorpe Hall, remains one
of the best preserved Cromwellian mansions in
England.
3
Thorpe Hall: a history
As construction progressed, the high, cubeshaped house with it distinctive roof, dormer
windows and tall chimneys, must have attracted
much interest. By August 1653 the diarist John
Evelyn saw the building in progress and wrote
that it was already a ‘stately palace’.
Peterborough’. After the devastation wrought by
Parliamentary soldiers the building was so damaged
that it was due to be demolished.
Doubtless, St John saw that the building materials
would be useful for Thorpe Hall, but he went
further. He gave the minster to the townsfolk of
Peterborough to use as a parish church in place of
St John’s, which was apparently even more ‘ruinous
and gone to decay’ than the minster.
Stone from the Abbey buildings was certainly
incorporated in part of the 2,100-foot-long
garden wall which surrounded a six-acre
garden. The decorated stones were set with
the patterned side innermost, and their ancient
carvings remained unseen until repairs brought
fragments to light. Some can be seen at intervals
in the wall at the far north-east corner of the
arboretum.
For someone described as avaricious, to give away a
valuable asset was out of character, but perhaps he
did not expect his gift to be accepted. What followed
next may have surprised him.
The clergy and many of the townsfolk feted him
as a benefactor. Symon Patrick, the cathedral’s
chronicler of the time, hailed him as ‘a great Person
of the Neighbourhood’. Then arrangements were
made to repair the former abbey church, with
materials from the buildings that were beyond
redemption sold to raise money for the repairs.
Who knows whether more stone from the old
abbey buildings may be discovered one day in
the walls of the house, four feet thick in places?
With a readily available supply of cheap Barnack
rubble, it is inconceivable that expensive Ketton
stone would have been used for anything more
than facing.
Oliver St John, supporter of the forces that had
desecrated the cathedral, had become the man
responsible for its preservation.
Looking at the house from north gate, the
symmetrical lines of the main building are
obvious. A flight of steps approaches a centrally
placed door. Instead of a large ‘built-in’ porch
from floor to roof, as was customary in the great
houses of the time, there is a light open porch
- simply a plastered ceiling resting on columns.
It provides a balcony for the first floor, edged
with a stone balustrade which may well have
matched the barrier that once surrounded the
roof platform.
The house that Oliver built
Oliver St John employed Peter Mills, later one of
the architects who supervised the rebuilding of
London after the Great Fire of 1666, to draw up
plans for his manor house. St John knew exactly the
kind of house he wanted – a similar design to those
he had seen during his stay in Holland. The Dutch
influence is shown in the hipped roof, which fitted
all round the top of the building like a hat, instead
of the house having a ridge with end gables. A
large flat area on top was an observation platform,
surrounded with a stone balustrade and this access
via a glass cupola in the centre (both now removed).
On the west side of the house is the service wing,
and beyond that the stables. The gateways, also
designed by Peter Mills, were built around the
same time as the house and stables. The solid
piers of the north gate are topped with falcons
with half-spread wings; the ‘falcon rising’ is the
crest of the St John family.
Stone was brought from Ketton and slates from
Collyweston. In February 1653 Mills contracted
with John Ashley and Samson Frisby, two Ketton
stonemasons, for the windows of the north and
south fronts ‘as expressed and set forth in a Draught
or map of the said intended House made by Peter
Mills of London, Surveyor’. The contract is now in
the British Museum.
Later generations
Oliver St. John did not spend many years at
Thorpe Hall, and may not even have seen the
finishing touches to his house. In 1658 Oliver
Cromwell died and St John immediately went to
4
Thorpe Hall: a history
many finishing touches to the house, and also
developed the gardens and park.
London. During the following year, Cromwell’s
son Richard appointed him a member of the
New Council of State, in which members
swore to renounce the titles of ‘Charles Stuart
and all his line’, to uphold Parliament and
the Commonwealth, and to oppose the reestablishment of the House of Lords.
In a corner of the park stood the old manor
house, now demolished. Not far from it there
remains a group of medieval fishponds which
would have been used originally as ‘stew ponds’,
storing freshwater fish caught in the river until
they were needed for cooking. Francis was a keen
fisherman and rented fishing rights on the River
Nene. If he used the ponds at all, it is more likely
that he stocked them with carp.
Meanwhile, St John was surreptitiously taking
precautions in case the Commonwealth should
collapse. In order to be prepared for any change
of fortune, he tried to raise money by selling
some of his land.
Francis is also thought to have built the nearby
‘grotto’ round a spring or wellhead. At that time,
every self-respecting landowner had a grotto,
often almost ridiculously elaborate in their
mechanical effects and invariably adorned with
alcoves, statuary and trellis. In the book Holy Wells,
Beeby Thompson tells us that the stone basin of
the well was still there in the nineteenth century.
His misgivings proved justified. In 1660 King
Charles II returned to power on a wave of
popularity. St John was stripped of his position as
Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. During
the House of Commons trial of those who were
responsible for the Civil War and the murder of
Charles I, he made an impassioned speech in his
defence, quoting his gift of the cathedral to the
people of Peterborough.
Six feet deep and thirty feet in circumference, the
basin was fed by water from an underground spring.
A seat ran all the way round the wellhead, and there
were three alcoves, all covered with a mound of
earth making a domed roof. ‘The floor is slippery,’
Thompson noted, ‘and one needs artificial light.’
His life was spared, but he was banned from ever
again holding public office. When the King heard
his verdict, he expressed great regret at St John’s
escape.
An earlier eyewitness, writing in the 18th century,
mentioned ‘Hallywell spring’ and explained that
the water collected in the basin fed the nearby
fishponds. This suggests channels or culverts,
which may have been mistaken for tunnels in
the past, giving rise to stories of underground
passages – highly unlikely in such terrain!
Oliver St John became one of the most hated
men in the country. Afraid for his life, he fled
to the coast under the alias of Montague and
eventually went to Augsburg in Bavaria, where he
died on 21st December 1673.
His oldest son, Francis, succeeded him. Like
his father, Francis was educated at university
and Lincoln’s Inn. He served Peterborough in
several Parliaments, and continued to build the
collection of books for which the family became
noted. In common with other libraries compiled
at the time, a large percentage of the books were
about history or religion.
There is no evidence to support the legend that
in the Middle Ages a hermit lived in the area we
now call Holywell. Yet many springs and wells
were once declared sacred, and if people believed
that the water had healing powers it is easy to see
how such a story could have arisen. Thompson
tells us that the water was impregnated with
iron and was believed to be beneficial in cases of
rheumatism, gout and skin disorders.
When Francis took over at Thorpe Hall, he had
one nasty shock. Since Thorpe Hall had been
built on sequestrated land, generally considered
to have been stolen, it had deprived the Dean
and Chapter of the income it would otherwise
have generated. Francis had to pay a very
large fine, about £1,500, in order to keep the
property. In spite of this financial blow, he added
Francis St John was succeeded by his son Oliver,
and he in turn was succeeded by his son, another
Francis. For the first time a hereditary title came
to Thorpe Hall, when Francis was created a
baronet in 1715. But the honour only lasted 41
5
Thorpe Hall: a history
Enter the Bernard family
years. Francis had two daughters but no sons, so
the baronetcy died with him.
In spite of all Sir Francis’ careful planning, things
changed drastically in just a few years. In 1756
Dame Mary and her husband moved with their
family into Thorpe Hall, but it was not long before
their elder son, Robert, came of age and inherited all
the English estates. When his father died in 1766, he
inherited the title as well. He seems to have installed
a lady friend at Thorpe, but he did not marry.
Sir Francis inherited a fine mansion with
magnificent grounds, together with property in
other counties and valuable personal possessions.
The library was becoming famous. Writing in the
early 1700s, Philip Doddridge noted that it had
‘particularly the best editions of the classics’.
During the last year of his life Sir Francis was
appointed Sheriff of Northamptonshire –
Peterborough City and Soke were part of the
county until the middle of the 20th century. He
died in 1756, and the house passed to his elder
daughter Mary, who had married a distant relation,
Sir John Bernard of Brampton.
By 1769, only 13 years after his grandfather’s death,
Robert was deeply in debt. Arrested for an election
debt, he was bailed out by a solicitor, who paid a
guinea as ‘civility money’. Meanwhile his brokers
were spending long hours sorting out dealings with
the East India Company, involving thousands of
pounds.
Mary had two sons and two daughters, and it was
in the hope of continuing the line through the
Bernards that Sir Francis settled the bulk of his
estate on this family, in trust for its male heirs.
Manors and lands in Northamptonshire, Essex,
Suffolk, Staffordshire, Cambridge and the Isle
of Ely were to go in trust for the elder Bernard
son, Robert, while the Irish estates were to go
eventually to the second son, William.
The estates were mortgaged. Financial advisers
arranged loans, most of them in four figures. There
were court fines and fees of more than £100 a time
to lawyers and other professionals. A dispute arose
with the Dean and Chapter over their right to cut
timber in Thorpe Park. It was a thoroughly miserable
year.
Figures suggest that there were few servants at
Thorpe Hall, and consequently little attempt at
self-sufficiency. Although the house had a wellequipped laundry, washing was sent out. Judging
by the amount spent on beer, the brewery was idle,
too. Quantities of eggs, bacon, chickens and dairy
products were bought in, though the dairy had a
butter churn, cheese press and other equipment.
Presumably there was no one to work there or to
look after hens or other livestock.
Both Sir Francis’ daughters were treated very
generously in his will. Frances, unmarried,
received £10,000 plus £100 for mourning. She
was also to have the household linen, furniture
(including a ‘great Japanned Cabinet at Thorpe’),
Dresden china, some of her mother’s jewellery
and other items. Mary was left much more
precious jewellery, also a ‘cabinet or box of
inlaid Florence work of fine stones’, gold and
silver medals, miniatures and enamels. The
granddaughters would each receive £1,000 on
marriage, ‘provided they marry to good liking of
their father and mother’.
Dining out was a common occurrence, with large
amounts of wines and spirits consumed, and Sir
Robert was still buying champagne. A single wine
merchant’s bill at that time was £9. Compare this
with a gift of £1.14s made to the poor of Grafham in
1779.
Sir Francis specified that he wished to be buried
in the family vault of the chapel at Thorpe and
stated ‘I desire that my funeral may be performed
with no more than what may be judged decent
which I intimate here as my desire to obviate
any censorious reflections evil-minded persons
may perhaps be disposed to cast on my Executor
on that account’. The sole executor was Sir John
Bernard.
A leather-bound survey of the Longthorpe and
Dogsthorpe estates, dated 1770 and now in
Huntingdon Records Office, reveals that the
Bernards owned or leased a total of 119 acres of
woodland. The 27 acres of Thorpe Wood were
largely coppiced, and provided firewood, charcoal
and fencing.
6
Thorpe Hall: a history
Sir Robert Bernard died on 2nd January 1789. He
had no children, so the baronetcy, like that of
the St Johns, became extinct.
stuffed seats and upholstery matching the bed,
square table and basin (washstand), brass fender
and iron dogs to hearth’.
After Robert’s death the executors received
dozens of outstanding bills. Half a year’s window
tax (£16.0s.6d) was due, and a year’s copyhold
rent was owed to the Dean and Chapter. Amos
Pearson was owed £1, a small fortune to him, for
looking after the Hall clocks for a year.
From the kitchen came such items as a marble
pestle and mortar, a lemon net and a pair of
gold scales. A special room called a Flour House
boasted a flour bin, a flour mill and a ‘bolting
mill’ – a kind of sieve for sifting bran from flour.
Among items in the larder were pickling pots, a
wire safe to protect food from flies in the summer
and a 10 foot long double salting lead, large
enough to cure two sides of beef.
The house was prepared for closure, but first its
contents were to be sold to pay off Sir Robert’s
debts, along with all the Bernard estates in this
country. In March Dame Mary, by now living
in Portland Place, London – her home for the
rest of her life – received a bill for 12s 6d for
packing up furniture, presumably her personal
belongings. There was a further bill for six days’
work packing books.
In the loft and cellars there were no less than 30
hampers, a deal chest, saddle, side-saddle and
doeskin seat. There was also a hair drunk – a type
covered with a skin, pelt outer most, which was
much favoured by fashionable coach travellers.
The brew house contained a cooler, hop
sieve, funnel, casks and hundreds of bottles –
presumably empty. A separate wines and spirits list
in the sales catalogue ran to great length. The first
item: ‘two dozen and seven bottles of fine old rum’.
September saw the first of two sales, held on the
premises, of ‘Elegant Household Furniture’. The
first day alone raised £771.15s, and there were
four more days to come, with another sale in
October.
In the period immediately following the sale
of the contents, accounts show that a number
of essential repairs were put in hand. A glazier
named Thomas Baines was brought in two repair
12 panes of glass in the cupola. His bill came to
18s. Pay is also recorded for ‘looking after Thorpe
Hall’ for seven weeks up to Christmas. Perhaps
the executors had installed a caretaker.
The sale catalogue gives an insight into the
appearance of the rooms. There was a Blue
Paper Room, Yellow Room, Green Passage
Room and Crimson Bedroom, in addition to
the principal reception rooms and master
bedrooms. A room with masses of shelving and
partitions may have been a schoolroom. Also
specially named are the nursery, butler’s pantry
and servants’ hall.
Someone must have lost the keys in April 1790.
There is a bill for five new padlocks, stock lock,
hasps and staples, as well as for forcing an entry.
The servants’ rooms seemed to have been
remarkably comfortable. All the attic rooms
had four-poster beds, and the curtains and
linen were described as ‘fine’. One servant’s
room had a feather bed and bolster. Bedclothes
included Witney blankets and a Marseilles quilt.
A painting called ‘Jephtha’s Rash Vow’ hung in
the housekeeper’s room.
Over the next sixty years
Immediately the sales were over, negotiations
began to sell Thorpe Hall to Earl Fitzwilliam. But
it was not until March 1791 that legal
representatives visited Dame Mary and her sister
Frances in London to finalise the transfer of the
property.
The prices fetched can be judged by this single
lot, which sold for just over £10: ‘Four-poster bed,
crimson damask bed hangings, crankey mattress
[a soft, weak mattress], check mattress, large
goose feather bolster and pillows, 3 blankets,
quilt, 4 window curtains, 6 walnut chairs with
It must have been a sad day for the elderly sisters.
Dame Mary died in 1793 and Frances, who had
spent most of her later life at Welwyn in a house
called St John Lodge, died a year later aged 82.
7
Thorpe Hall: a history
Strong times
According to her wish to be buried at Thorpe
‘with decency and solemnity’, she was laid to rest
in the family vault in St Botolph’s church.
The Reverend William Strong was a man of
importance and wealth. A member of an oldestablished local family and a magistrate, he
was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria. He
lived at Stanground Manor (now demolished),
which was set in a small park between
Stanground parish church and Morton’s Leam.
The parkland is now a housing estate, visible
from Fletton Parkway.
The name of Bernard – often spelled with an “a”
– lived on for many years. The stretch of the river
near Thorpe had become known as Barnard’s
Reach, and where the park sloped down to the
water there was a boathouse which had been
used by several generations at the Hall. It slowly
fell into decay and was eventually removed.
When the railway came to Peterborough, a
branch line to Whittlesey was planned. This
would skirt the Strongs’ land – too close for
comfort. The family decided to leave.
Earl Fitzwilliam already had Milton Hall only a few
miles away, and also owned a palatial country
seat, Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, so he
was not interested in the house, though it was
used occasionally to lodge family retainers. The
land as incorporated into the Milton estate.
Thorpe Hall needed many repairs, and Strong
also wished to make some improvements.
He lost no time in engaging a Peterborough
architect called Ruddle to draw up plans.
From 1809 to 1829 Thorpe Hall was used
as a school. The Fitzwilliam archives in the
Northamptonshire Record Office contain many
letters from the headmaster, Edward Jenkins,
to the 4th Earl, which reveal a close friendship
between the two men. These letters and others
to the 5th Earl show how the school flourished as
a successful academy for the sons of well-to-do
and aristocratic families.
While this was happening, the gardener’s
cottage was restored and the first estate
servant, ‘farming man’ John Smith, was
installed in it. His wage was the equivalent of
60 pence a week. At Stanground the Strongs
had employed an average of 13 servants, for a
total weekly wage bill of around £8.17s.
Edward Jenkins and his wife Sarah lived in the Hall
with their five children, most of whom appear to
have been born there. Edward prepared boys for
entry to Eton and other public schools; the boys
followed a broad curriculum, and Edward’s wife
Sarah also participated in their education.
Some pupils remained at the school until it was
time for them to go direct to university. Among
them were Edward’s eldest son and a fellow
pupil, Henry Prittie, who went together to Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1825. In a letter to Prittie’s
father, Edward wrote: ‘I parted with Henry and
my son Edward (18 years old) last night in the
Cambridge coach – I shall be much disappointed
if they have not apartments in college’.
The Strong family had experience in farming
and soon began to use the meadows and
facilities of the estate, but initially the garden
took preference. It looks as though the
‘farming man’ may have been gardener for at
least a short while. In the month that he was
taken on, 45 loads of peat costing £22.10s
and 20 bushels of silver sand were delivered,
in preparation for planting rhododendrons. Sir
John Naesmyth of London was approached
for advice on laying out the garden. He wrote
proposing a two-day visit, for which his charge
was five guineas a day plus travelling expenses
– compare this to John Smith’s wage of 60
pence a week!
Little is known about events at Thorpe Hall after
the school closed in 1829. Although the house
was let to tenants on two occasions, it remained
mostly empty until 1850, when it was sold for
£8,000, with 70 acres of park, to the Reverend
William Strong.
Evidently Ruddle had enough on his hands
working on the house, so Arthur Hakewell
was asked to design a conservatory. Before
accepting the commission he visited the
Hall and was so impressed that he made six
etchings, which he hoped to publish. Strong
8
Thorpe Hall: a history
must have given permission, and Hakewell
wrote back in gratitude saying that he intended
to dedicate the book to him.
penthouse, a lean-to cover against a wall which
protected the vines in bad winter weather but
was removed in summer.
Hakewell sent the plan for the conservatory, and
offered to design ‘The Lodge’ for three guineas
per plan. He kept up quite a correspondence, in
one letter commending a Milanese decorator:
‘The display of Mr Galli’s exquisite taste at Thorpe
Hall would prove to be a constant source of
pleasure to Mr Strong and his friends’.
New stone arrived from quarries at Bath for
replacement columns in the centre of the hall. As
an economy measure, plaster was used instead
of wood for some of the mouldings. The screen in
the corridor, however, was made of oak.
In the Little Parlour, Mr White the painter had the
tedious job of stripping the paint from the oak
wainscot. When he had finished, a new floor was
laid and the room (now the chapel) was renamed
The Oak Room. However, the painted panelling in
the library was left as it was.
Meanwhile the first alterations to the house were
taking place. We are fortunate that Strong kept
what he called his ‘Labour Journal’, recording the
progress of the work and sometimes, too, his
frustration when materials failed to arrive on time
or were of inferior quality.
By August, Strong was getting anxious because
the plaster was taking a long time to dry out,
and a fire was lit in the new kitchen range. The
house must have looked in a sorry state; floors
were taken up, ceilings needed replastering and
there was a delay in sending locks and casements
from Birmingham. By Christmas the woodwork
was suffering from damp, and Mrs Smith was
commissioned to open and shut the windows. In
January fires were lit in the house.
The centre of the ground floor was opened up
so that there was access to both stairs from
the main corridor. Large panes of glass were
substituted for the lead lights in the windows.
Much of the original glass must have been
broken, for bats had found their way in; one ‘chief
resort of these animals’ was the carved wainscot
in the first floor Drawing Room. In January 1851,
200 bats were caught. They must have done a
lot of damage, because this room needed a new
plaster ceiling, with a geometric pattern.
In spring 1851 outside work resumed. The front
of the garden pavilion was taken down and reerected in a new position. One of the falcons on
the north gateway was removed for restoration,
and the Octagon roof was repainted.
In February, Strong noted in his Journal every
variety of nectarine and peach tree planted. Five
apricot trees were dug up from Stanground and
brought over for the new kitchen garden. Stones
were fixed for a new panterre.
In March 1852 a new chimneypiece in Derbyshire
marble had arrived, and three chimneypieces
from Stanground were moved to Thorpe. Other
grate surrounds were tiled, and a grate ordered
for the Dining Room.
That Easter Dr Skrimshire, a friend of Strong’s,
offered to give him a pair of peacocks. But the Rev
William had doubts. ‘I declined,’ he wrote, ‘dreading
their gardening propensities’. We know that a Dr
Skrimshire, probably the same man, was distilling
peppermint – a cure for flatulence, headaches,
toothache and upset stomach – and lavender at
Holywell in 1850. There are also reports that the
distillery was used to make extract of henbane and
belladonna. Perhaps Dr Skrimshire wished to give
the Strongs a present as a ‘thank you’ for the use
of the distillery on their land.
At last, on 23rd July 1852, the family – the Rev
William, his wife Isabella (nee Isham), and their
two sons, Charles Isham and Harry – moved in.
Strong, already in his sixties, wrote: ‘Slept for the
first time with the family, two years having been
consumed in preparing it for our reception’.
Even so, on the ground floor only the Oak Room
and the Shell Room (now the Ante Room) next
to it were ready. The family’s first dinner party
in their new home, in August, was held in the
Library, not the Dining Room.
On May 10th, Strong noted, the grapery
was being restored. This may have been the
9
Thorpe Hall: a history
piece by piece and re-erected at Thorpe. Accounts
show that the whole transfer, including three
pounds of nails, cost less than £27.
Was it the presence of his wife and lady visitors
that suddenly made Strong aware of the
nakedness of the ‘Playing Boys’, supporters for the
St John arms in the Great Hall? He had the paint
removed and some concealing leaves added.
Since then, someone has broken the plaster leaf
from one of the figures.
Strong kept an eye on the workmen. He tells of
the dismissal of a youth who was missing when
needed to help hang a door. The boy had been
led astray, and when he hopefully turned up again
for work the following week, he was sent packing.
The next month, pheasants, canaries and pigeons
were delivered. It is not clear whether the
pheasants were to be released into the woods for
the pleasure of shooting parties, or kept till spring
for breeding. The pigeons may have been fantails
to adorn the gardens.
That winter the new ice house, with its thatched
roof, was completed. Plans show that it was
somewhere south of the stable block. In February
it was filled with ice, which was in plentiful supply
that year. The boys had been skating on the
frozen flood water.
The first overnight visitors were a Mrs Vane and
her son. She may have been on her way south to
take her son back to public school, as Strong’s
next remark is that the boys went back to school
at Harrow and Bayford.
The Library shelving was completed, and the first
paintings bought specially for Thorpe were hung.
They were typical of Victorian taste in art: ‘The
Gulf of Finland’, ‘Sebastopol’ and ‘Balaclava’.
At the huge cattle auction at Bridge Fair in
October, Strong or his agent bought some cattle.
They were put into the paddock to crop it down. In
the North garden a ‘serpentine walk’ was pegged
out.
About this time the remaining timbers of the
boathouse on Barnard’s Reach were removed.
The river was almost half a mile from the house,
but the ‘Low Grounds’ and meadow between
were part of the Thorpe Estate, and led to the
walled garden. The Nene gave access by water to
Stanground sluice, and it is possible that some of
the materials and plants removed from the Manor
were transported by boat.
The wrong tiles were delivered from Minton
for the Library. ‘The green a complete failure,’
recorded Strong. As we know that woodwork was
painted green, the tiles were presumably a bad
match.
In the journal, Strong’s handwriting started to
deteriorate, suggesting he fell ill, and soon his
written commentaries came to an end. But
activity around the estate continued. Ruddles
accounts show he was still employed at Thorpe,
and in 1856 two lodges were built for the park.
Among the papers is a catalogue advertising
garden ornaments, including no less than 246
stone urns. There are dozens in a similar style
around the garden today.
Just before Christmas, three panels of carved elm
arrived for the main staircase. There had been
difficulty in getting large enough planks, and
Strong noted that he had ended up buying back at
auction the very same elm he had felled and sold
from his own land some time earlier!
Work at Thorpe had involved a huge financial
outlay. In the initial stages alone, more than
£4,000 was spent. From the family’s notes and
accounts it is clear that they were good business
people and, although wealthy, were not wasteful.
A large ironing board for the laundry was made
from planks from the dining-room floor at
Stanground!
By 1858 the elder son, Charles Isham, was at
Oxford University, probably enjoying boisterous
undergraduate parties. An itemised bill lists a sum
due to a glazier, as well as room rent, tuition and
dinners in hall.
Although the Rev Strong did not continue his
journal, he was fit enough in December 1859
to chair a meeting in the Town Hall – probably
By now Strong had probably decided no one
would buy Stanground because of its proximity to
the railway line. He even had the lodge removed
10
Thorpe Hall: a history
his public service. His daughter Grace, who died
in 1926, is remembered in Longthorpe Church,
where we read that she was ‘for many years a
mainstay in the music in this church’.
the upper room of the Guildhall or Buttercross,
which was rented out for public meetings. On
this occasion Strong successfully formed a
Peterborough Volunteer Rifle Corps, with members
aged from 17 to 48 years.
Up to the present
By the early 1860s Charles had left university and
was living at home, perhaps being groomed for
estate management, and fox-hunting every day
possible in the season. His sporting diary describes
being caught in the rain in Ferry Meadows, and how
Mr Fitzwilliam was thrown and broke his collar bone
only a few days after his second whip, Goodhall, had
done the same thing.
Both Charles’s sons followed military careers. The
eldest, William, inherited Thorpe Hall, but after
the First World War he decided to put it up for
auction. No buyer came forward; England was in
recession, the housing market was sluggish and
Thorpe Hall was very expensive to run.
By 1926 a firm of estate agents had been given
authority to sell off any removable parts of the
house or garden for which a buyer could be
found. The following year a London antiques
dealer and collector, Edward Meaker, bought both
house and park for £11,500 – not much more
than Strong had paid the previous century.
There were grouse shoots in Perthshire and
pheasant shoots locally. It seems that destroying
rooks and their nests had also become a local sport
– but not for trespassers. A man named Sismey was
jailed for a week for rook-shooting on the estate.
Charles married two years before his father’s
death in 1866. His mother died in Southsea 12
years later; there is a memorial to her on the
south wall of the nave of Longthorpe Church.
Over the following decades Charles has left us
detailed weather reports and an excellent rainfall
chart, as well as a bee-keeping diary which reveals
his considerable knowledge of the subject. He
noted a recipe for bee syrup, and another for an
insecticide.
Meaker was, however, too late to save the
panelling, doors and fireplace from the St John
Library (now the Parlour). These had been
bought as a package by Lady Baillie, the new
owner of Leeds Castle, who had embarked on an
enormous project of renovating and upgrading
Leeds. Thorpe Hall’s loss has been Leeds Castle’s
gain. The empty room in which they were
installed is now an elegantly furnished delight –
known as the Thorpe Room.
There was a very respectable income from
fenland farms, which were showing a 10 per cent
profit. Nevertheless, Charles sold some of his
land, including the Bluebell Inn in Stanground,
and in 1886 the Manor and 11 acres of land went
under the hammer. It sold for £1,700 and 13
years later was burned to the ground.
It is not clear whether the stone chimney piece
in the Library was in place when Meaker arrived.
Of Continental origin, it resembles a smaller
canopy in the Queen’s Bathroom at Leeds and
Lady Baillie may have supplied it as a swap
for the marble one. Unfortunately there is no
documentation for any part of the transaction.
Charles was active in local politics. The base he
had kept at the Manor made him eligible for the
post of Lord High Sheriff of Huntingdonshire
and Cambridge, to which he was appointed in
1876. In 1886 he and others took on the railway
company, asking for aid for a new infant’s school
for Stanground.
The Meaker family were at Thorpe Hall for only
10 years. Sadly both parents died, leaving the
property in trust for the children, who were still
under age.
Then came the Second World War, and the
house was requisitioned for use as a hospital.
Fortunately the Meaker Trust insisted that
plasterwork and woodwork must be protected,
and the gardens cared for.
He died in 1914 after a long and busy life. A
memorial in Peterborough Cathedral, bearing
his crest, a coat of arms and motto, recognised
11
Thorpe Hall: a history
volunteered to join the First Aid Nursing
Yeomanry. She later served with the Polish
section of the Special Operations Executive, the
highly secret organisation created by Winston
Churchill to co-ordinate Resistance activities in
German occupied Europe. What she witnessed
with the SOE made her determined to relieve the
suffering of a devastated continent.
Thorpe Hall receives regular mentions in the
minutes of the Medical Board of Peterborough
District Hospital, recorded by Dr William Marshall,
whose daughter Sheila was a nurse at Thorpe Hall
for many years and a founder nurse when the Hall
became a Sue Ryder home.
From the minutes we learnt that in June 1941 the
Management Committee visited Thorpe Hall and
asked the sister in charge to consider how extra
staff and a houseman could be accommodated
without reducing the available bed space below
100. However, on 21st August 1941 it was agreed
that Thorpe Hall should take 23 patients, both
men and women.
In 1953 she used £1,000 of her own savings as
a living memorial to the millions who died in the
two World Wars, to provide homes and care teams
for the sick and disabled in any part of the world
where need and opportunity presented itself.
In 1959 she married war hero Group Captain
Leonard Cheshire, who died in 1992. She was
created a Life Peer in 1978. By the time Baroness
Ryder died in 2000, her charity had helped more
than half a million people of 50 nationalities.
On 13th November 1941 the Air Raid Procedure
was put into place, following a warning of
intensive raids. Ambulances were to be diverted
to Thorpe Hall, the most urgent for surgery.
By 1942 more than 1,000 patients had passed
through Thorpe Hall’s doors.
Once Lady Ryder had bought Thorpe Hall, a great
deal of work and money was needed to repair,
equip and update the building to the standard
required to meet health and safety and other
regulations. In total, the purchase and renovation
cost some £3 million.
After the war Thorpe Hall became a maternity
home. Thousands of babies were born within its
walls and, locally, many people boast of being
a ‘Thorpe Hall baby’. Thorpe Hall’s days as a
maternity hospital came to an end when the now
defunct maternity unit at Peterborough District
Hospital was opened in 1971.
The building, now Grade 1 listed, was basically
sound and, thanks to the Meaker Trust’s
insistence on preserving the plasterwork and
woodwork, removal of the protective covers
revealed much of the original beauty.
Thorpe Hall lay empty. In 1976 it was sold to
Peterborough City Council. Many possible uses
were discussed, including a museum and meeting
venue, but nothing ever came of these ideas.
Eleanor Beddows, the first Matron at Thorpe Hall
when it became a Sue Ryder hospice, cajoled
local businesses to donate goods so that the
house was ready to receive the first patients.
Through her enthusiasm and determination,
she also enlisted many volunteers to help out
wherever needed.
Thorpe Hall Hospice
During the next decade, Thorpe Hall became
derelict, a victim of vandals, arsonists and the
elements.
Then, in 1986, Lady Sue Ryder acquired the Hall
for use as a Sue Ryder hospice.
Thorpe Hall became a 20 bed hospice, providing
specialist palliative care for adults from across the
region. The 20 beds were split across eight rooms
on two floors with shared bathrooms.
Sue Ryder was born in 1923 into a large family
of Yorkshire land-owners. Two early influences
determined her life: the example of her muchloved mother’s voluntary social work, and
witnessing the widespread social misery caused
by the Great Depression.
Specially trained medical and nursing staff
control patients’ pain and other symptoms while
offering emotional and spiritual support.
Around 60% of patients are able to go home after
a short stay, pain and symptom free, to spend
When war broke out, she left school and
12
Thorpe Hall: a history
to the central area, now known as the Marble
Hallway, and replaced them with a wall. In his day
a pair of large marble console tables stood in
the passage, with rococo gilt pier-glasses above
them.
precious time with their loved ones. Some may
return nearer the end of their lives for further
symptom control or end of life care.
The emphasis at Thorpe Hall Hospice, in line
with Sue Ryder’s philosophy and now adopted
by palliative care experts the world over, is on
personalised, holistic care, with every patient
given what they need whether that’s medication,
the chance to talk, the comfort of knowing loved
ones are receiving support or simply a lovely cup
of tea.
The Great Hall
Despite its grand name, this room was where
Oliver St John would have received the lowliest of
people. Above the fireplace is his coat of arms - in
his day they would have been a blaze of colour.
The leaves and vines were added by the Rev
William Strong, who used the room as a dining
room and did not want his family to be exposed to
the nakedness of the figures. The bear’s foot crest
on the fireplace belongs to the Strong family.
The former service wing of Thorpe Hall houses
a Day Centre which is open five days a week to
people who have progressive and/or neurological
conditions such as multiple sclerosis and
Parkinson’s disease. As well as some clinical care,
it offers companionship, activities and outings in
a relaxed social setting.
The fireplace is of limestone, part of it polished
to achieve a polychrome effect. Most of the
wainscot panelling is original 17th century,
except on the west wall which is 19th century, as
is the ceiling.
In 2015, Thorpe Hall is set to undergo another
transformation. While the Day Centre will remain,
the in patient unit will move to a brand new,
purpose-built building in the Hall’s former orchard
on the north side of the west wing. The single
storey building has been designed in keeping
with the Hall and within the strict regulations
governing the listed Hall and gardens.
The original stone floor was of octagons and
lozenges, the latter in a darker stone. The Rev
William Strong had it taken up and re-layed in
the service wing, replacing it with the present
wooden floor. Unlike the south side of the house,
the windowsills here are the full thickness of the
walls. This was to accommodate windows to light
the cellars, which run only under the northern
half of the house. In Charles Isham Strong’s
time the room was adorned with large cases
containing his collection of stuffed birds.
The former patient rooms will house office and
administration staff and become the base for new
community services. A number of options for
the use of the ground floor and other rooms are
currently being explored.
The hospice remains part of the national Sue
Ryder charity, which relies on voluntary funding
and support for much of its income.
The Parlour
This room housed Oliver St John’s library, and was
also used as a reception room where he gave
audience to visitors who were not considered
important enough to be formally greeted in the
first floor Great Chamber – the room above the
Great Hall.
A tour of the principal rooms
The North Passage and Marble Hallway
Entering the house by the main door, you find
yourself in the North Passage. This was originally
a part of the Great Hall to the left, separated only
by a screen of columns which corresponded to
a medieval ‘screens passage’. The wall to the
right was adorned with pilasters, probably to
correspond with the columns opposite.
The fireplace is a replacement for the original, sold
to Leeds Castle in 1926 along with the panelling,
and is probably of early 16th century Belgian or
German origin. Originally the fireplace was not
in the middle of the wall but about two-thirds of
the way along it, near the west end – perhaps to
The Rev. William Strong moved the columns
13
Thorpe Hall: a history
letters, kept his most secret papers and met his
secretary and confidante, John Thurloe, to discuss
Cromwell’s latest activities.
enable Oliver St John to sit near the fire to receive
visitors while keeping them at a distance.
In Charles Isham Strong’s day, the Library was
where the family gathered after dinner. Here his
daughters and his son Charles would sing while
another daughter, Grace, accompanied them
on the grand piano. They also played games
here. A ‘long table-drawer’ contained Flora Lotto,
Happy Families, chess and bezique. Charles’s wife
Katherine particularly enjoyed a poetry game, in
which each person recited one verse of a poem.
The room’s status is reflected in the lavish
décor. The panelling is of oak, but William Strong
recorded that he had it stripped of paints, so it
may originally have been enriched with trompe
l’oeil painting. A motif of swags of fruit appears in
wood, in plaster and in pale apricot marble.
The panels in here closely resemble those that
were once in the Parlour, reaffirming that all the
rooms along the south side of the ground floor
were conceived ‘en suite’ as a single apartment.
The original doorway from the Ante Room has
been blocked to accommodate the chapel’s altar.
The free-standing bookshelves included many
ornithological volumes (ornithology was one
of Charles’ passions). Today the books in the
Strongs’ library are owned by Cambridgeshire
County Council Library Services, and most of the
546 volumes are on loan to Ayscoughfee Hall in
Spalding.
The servants’ hall
Archaeological investigations suggest that the
area to the left of the main door, now housing
lavatories, lifts and a modern staircase, was once
a single room that ran from the west wall of the
house to the north passage and served as the
Servants’ Hall.
The Ante Room
This was once known as the Shell Room
because of the scallop shell motif included in its
magnificent 17th century moulded plaster work
ceiling, which gives some idea of the quality of
workmanship that would have originally existed in
all the rooms. The decoration of swirling acanthus
leaves with garlands and distorted human
figures is closely based on the type of antique
‘arabesques’ which were enthusiastically revived
during the Italian Renaissance.
The wainscot is a simplified version of that in the
Great Hall, indicating that the two rooms were
originally conceived as a matching pair. Such a
lavish room for the servants may seem unusual,
but in St John’s time senior servants were more
like medieval retainers than simply domestic
staff.
The panelling, simpler in style and of lesser
quality, appears to date from around the turn of
the 18th century. To the left of the stone fireplace
is a ‘jib door’ which conceals a cupboard formed
by William Strong out of what was originally a
servants’ door. In the Strongs’ time the room
served as a study.
At some time in the 18th century, the
easternmost bay of the room was subdivided to
create two small rooms, with a passage between
them leading to the North Passage. According
to the inventory of 1789, one of these rooms
was used as a store for tableware and glassware.
In the northern of the two rooms, traces were
found of a sink (probably of lead or lead-lined
stone) that would have been used for rinsing
glasses and dishes.
The Chapel
Despite its comparatively small size, this was once
one of the most important rooms in the house:
Oliver St John’s closet. In the 17th century, the
closet served the function of a private study, as
well as a ‘sanctum sanctorum’ where the owner
would keep his most treasured possessions. Here
St John would have done all his business, written
This reduction in the size of the Servants’
Hall reflects the declining status of servants
in the 18th century. This decrease continued
throughout the 19th century until, by the
Edwardian era, servants were as far as possible
kept out of sight.
14
Thorpe Hall: a history
dated at 1654. It is a fine example of a scroll
stair with pierced work. The exceptionally wide
handrails are of oak; so are the newel posts with
their large, intricately carved finials. Between
each pair of newel posts is a panel which started
out as a solid sheet of elm. The deeply cut
pattern is of swirling acanthus leaves, ‘pierced’
right through in places.
Because of the risk of fire, the service wing
housing the kitchen was originally separate
from the main house. But sometime in the 18th
century the narrow link building was built to
connect the house to the service wing via a door
in the middle of the west wall of the Servants’
Hall.
The Rev William Strong substantially altered
the Servants’ Hall in the 1850s, replacing the
two small rooms with a butler’s pantry and
further reducing it in size by adding a passage
which ran along the south side of the link
building to connect it with the service wing.
The link building became Thorpe Hall hospice’s
reception and Coffee Shop.
The gardens
No one knows how much of the present garden
was finished in Oliver St John’s day, but it is
thought that the general layout to the east of the
house has been little changed, though the stone
edging of the flower beds was added around
1850.
The main staircase
Now Grade 2* listed, the gardens are open to the
public.
This magnificent piece of woodcarving has been
15
Thorpe Hall: a history
Acknowledgments
Thorpe Hall would like especially to thank Audrey Purser for allowing us to use the information she
included in the first edition of the History of Thorpe Hall. As she wrote, by far the greater part of the
information comes from documents, wills, family papers, diaries and accounts, as well as from personal
observation.
Further historical detail was found in:
Victoria County History for Northamptonshire
Peculiarities of Water and Wells, Beeby Thompson
History of the English House, Gotch
Charles I, Charles Carlton
Burke’s Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies
Fairbairn’s Book of Crests, James Fairbairn
Lives of the Stuart Age, ed. Edwin Riddell
The Correspondence of Philip Doddridge, G.F. Nuttall
Notes of the Northants Antiquarian Society, Sir Giles Isham
Stanground – A History, J. Brewster
The Correspondence of Lord Fitzwilliam of Milton and his Steward, 1697 – 1709, Hainsworth and Walker
The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell, Maurice Ashley
Memoirs of the St. Johns, Mark Noble
A Brief Historical and Architectural Guide to Thorpe Hall, Justin Ayton
Minutes of the Medical Board at Peterborough and District Memorial Hospital, Dr William Marshall
Full details concerning coats of arms, entitlement, genealogy etc can be obtained, on payment of a
search fee, from Rouge Croix Pursuivant of Arms, College of Arms, Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V
4BT.
© 1994 Audrey Purser.
First published by Sue Ryder Care Thorpe Hall 1994.
Second edition published 2005.
This edition published by Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
Call: 01733 225 900
16
Giving your support
The continuation of Sue Ryder, Thorpe Hall Hospice relies on your support. There are lots of ways you
can get involved:
• take part in a challenge – run, walk, bike, hike, climb or row in return for sponsorship
• organise a fundraising event of your own – a retro disco, a neighbourhood bake sale, a dress down day
at work…
• ask your local shop to put a collecting tin on their counter
• encourage your community group or school to fundraise for us – host an Easter egg hunt, a summer
barbecue or a fun day
• ask your workplace to choose Sue Ryder, Thorpe Hall Hospice as their charity partner and raise cash
alongside your colleagues
• volunteer – in our shops, at Thorpe Hall or at an event
• donate your unwanted items to our network of shops
• shop in your nearest Sue Ryder store
• donate by giving us a call on 01733 225 999. We can also talk to you about regular donations
• leave us a legacy
• share your Thorpe Hall experience with us
• follow us on Facebook and Twitter and help us spread the word
For dedicated support, advice and materials call our fundraising team on 01733 225 999, email or sign
up online www.sueryder.org/get-involved
Thorpe Hall Hospice,
Thorpe Road
Longthorpe
Peterborough
Cambridgeshire
PE3 6LW
/ SueRyderThorpeHallHospice
@SRThorpeHall
Sue Ryder provides incredible hospice and neurological care for people facing a frightening, lifechanging diagnosis. We do whatever we can to be a safety net for our patients and their loved ones at
the most difficult time of their lives. We see the person, not the condition.
For more information about Sue Ryder
visit: www.sueryder.org
call: 0845 050 1953
email: [email protected]
Sue Ryder is a charity registered in England and Wales (1052076) and in Scotland (SCO39578). Ref no. 03862 © Sue Ryder. January 2015
17