LANDSCAPE

Holbrook House lies two miles west of Wincanton at the edge of the low hills that fringe the historic Vale of Blackmore, now generally known as The Blackmore Vale, on the borders of Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset. Much of the countryside is still pastoral and Wincanton is home to the major tanker depot for gathering the regions milk. The land was formally important for more than its cows: in the rich fertile country, extending from Wincanton through to Yeovil to Crewkerne, flax and hemp were cultivated in great abundance, the value of which is in proportion to the skill and spirit with which it is cultivated. Such were things in 1797 when the cordage industry was making the sails for the fleet that would bring the nations its victory at Trafalgar. John Billingsley General View of the Agriculture of the Country of Somerset could advise on the cultivation of female cannabis without any mention of statuary difficulties. The fields around Holbrook were also notable for the large-scale production of turnips. All three cash crops became extinct during the nineteenth century and many of the fields reverted to pasture, though some were ploughed again under wartime Cultivation Orders in 1940 – 45. Import restrictions causes a revival of flax growing and sky-blue fields were among the colours of Southern England at war.

The soil at Holbrook is clay upon rock, of the Jurassic formation known as Forest Marble. In places in outcrops as workable stone, the closest being the quarry in the corner of the field opposite Holbrook Lodge. Bishop Rogers’ chapel in Sherborne Abbey contains the only known medieval window, which is cut from the material; it has been darkened by polishing but the natural colour is much lighter, being rippled with the white cross-sections of fossil oyster shells. The stone is a mass of such shells, fossilised together with ripple-marks of the sediments into which the decayed. The swimming pool at Holbrook sits upon a knoll because the mechanical digger was no match for the underlying geology.

A number of streams rise on the Forest Marble and the brook which may give Holbrook its name, and which cuts its hollow – a deep gully curving around the North East side of the House – goes on to join the River Cale downstream from Wincanton. This is in turn destined for the River Stour and finds the sea at Christchurch. Higher Holbrook is the dividing line between catchment areas; from the other side of the hill the spring water heads for the Bristol Channel.

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ANCIENT OWNERS

Holbrook has, through the ages, evolved from a farm into a gentleman’s residence, rather than devolving from a medieval manor. The earliest known occupier of the ground is Gile(s) Hose (1201-02) who was a tenant of a hide of land in Holbrook. By 1242 his successor was Reginald Hose. In Wyanton cum hameleto de Holebrook the owners became Richard Lovel and William Husse.

Sir John Husse owned the property in the reign of Edward III (1327-77) but the holder of real note was Sir Thomas Hungerford, from 1381 to his death in 1398. He was the Speaker of the House of Commons and was to leave his mark on another Somerset house, Farleigh Hungerford near Bath, which he converted from a Manor into a Castle. Farleigh Castle became the principle home of the family but they still owned Holbrook in 1464 when Robert Hungerford and his son, Thomas were beheaded during the war of the Roses. Roberts’s one surviving child, Mary, became ward of William, Lord Hastings, and in 1480 married her guardian’s son, Sir Edward Hastings. Their son, George, was a favourite of Henry III, who created him Earl of Huntingdon in 1529. Disappointingly, nothing connected Holbrook’s eminent medieval owners with the property, beyond the cachet of absentee landlord. Conspiracies and contributions to the state schisms have to be tracked down to other abodes.

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1551 – 1830: THE FAREWELL CENTURIES

Henry Hastings, the third Early of Huntingdon, sold Holbrook to John Farewell of Bishops Hull, near Taunton, in the second half of the sixteenth century. The date is uncertain, but after 1550 the Farewells were set to own Holbrook for nearly three centuries. In 1558, Simon Farewell and his wife Dorothy were living at Holbrook. She was the daughter of Richard Dyer of Bratton St Maur and the estate had been bought so that she would not have to live too far from her old home. By about 1750, however, the direct line had died out and the estate was in the ownership of a member of the Hallett family who assumed the Farewell name to perpetuate the connection. It was from the latter line of Farewells that Holbrook’s most famous son was born.

Francis George Farewell was born at Holbrook in 1784. His father was Reverend Samuel Farewell, the Rector of Wincanton, who died when Francis was young and the family moved to Tiverton. He became a day scholar at Blindells School until the age of thirteen, when he left to become a Midshipman in the Royal Navy. That was two years after the Battle of Trafalgar and young Farewell was to have a minor part in the creation of the British Empire. Ellis Salis painted the scene in Southern Africa at the founding of the first trading station at Port Natal by Lt. Francis George Farewell RN, August 1824.

Zulu power had been established there in about 1812 and Haydns Victorian Dictionary of Dates gives 1823 as the year Lt. Farewell, with some emigrants, settled. The Dutch had already attempted to colonise Natal but it was formally annexed as a British possession and became a Crown Colony in 1856. Not that Francis Farewell lived to see the Union Jack proclaiming sovereignty over Natal – he split his time between their and Cape Town. At the end of 1829 he was back in Natal and, though he had been on friendly terms with the local black people, who knew him as Feban K Mjoji, there was a bout of unrest and Farewell was killed in a skirmish.

In the 1830’s Major General Henry Shrapnel (1761 – 1842) was living at Holbrook in semi-retirement. He was a Colonel-Commander of the Royal Artillery and was now receiving recognition for his invention of the case-shot with bursting charges and bullets, which had turned high explosive shells into fearful anti-personnel weapons. The Duke of Wellington had testified to their effectiveness in 1808 but it was not until 1837 that General Shrapnel received a letter from Windsor Castle informing him of King William’s readiness to confirm a Knighthood upon the inventor. Sadly the King died, nothing more was heard of the proposal and Shrapnel’s last years were marred by disappointment.

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1836: HOLBROOK IN LINE FOR A RAILWAY

In 1836, Parliament approved the building of the Bath and Weymouth Great Western Union Railway which, had it been built, would have proceeded the Somerset and Dorset line by three decades. It would have had a considerable impact upon the quietude of the Holbrook grounds, for the proposed route came out of Wincanton below West Hill and passed the Holbrook lands at Furze Wood as it gradually turned south-westwards in a broad curve that went through Higher Holton and then crossed the Wincanton turnpike on the western edge of the village. Plans issued to each parish, showing the lands that would be compulsorily taken (and were for inspection of all persons concerned, at all reasonable hours of the day, such person paying for each inspection the sum of one shilling) – but despite all the preparations the scheme ran out of money and was abandoned.

The next owners were George Wyndham in the early 1840’s and Charles Barton by the end of the decade.

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1846: BARTON AND THE LODGE

In 1846-48 Charles Barton extended Holbrook House and built the stables and the Lodge. The location of the latter, on the road side due south of the House, shows that in late Victorian times the entrance of the property, its driveway, was still from its historic location which was a little to the north west of the modern roundabout. It was an unfenced track way which is shown on the first edition of the ordnance survey map, published in 1811, where it is depicted as starting to the north of Holbrook House, at Higher Holbrook. It then passed through the middle of the Holbrook House collection of buildings, to the east of the dovecote (which was, incidentally built in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century) and between the main house and outbuildings that were removed in 1903. There was, until 1846-48 no lodge at the turnpike road and the track way went straight across, still unfenced, over the fields to Stubbles Farm in the next valley and then beside the barns on Hungerhill and down into Higher Holton and Holton Village.

The lodge was dominated by its great range of four chimneys, built as a mock-Tudor flourish that was totally disproportionate to the size and needs of the tiny building and blamed for a continual damp problem. The lodge was locally known as Chimneys until, after becoming unstable, they were removed in 1875. The lodge’s former exaggerated look probably led Sir Nikolaus Pevsner to suggest it may have been the work of the architect Eden Nesfield.

Holbrook’s Victorian grounds were to the south-west of the house, on either side of the present drive, where the red chestnuts and mock oranges can still be seen. They extended to the site of the old kennels and a fine large Georgian style carved seat which is almost the length of a normal house.

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1903-45: THE ANGERSTEINS

In 1903 the 174 acre Holbrook Estate was purchased by John Angerstein, a descendant of the Russian born Lloyds underwriter John Julius Angerstein, whose collection of exceptionally important art formed the nucleus of the National Gallery. Between 1903 and 1984, the Holbrook Angersteins set about its last major enlargement under the architect Sir Reginald Bloomfield who was particularly fond of working on English country houses which were surrounded by impressive grounds – believing that a house was only as good as its setting; in this option he was firmly encouraged by John Angerstein who was inspired by Gertrude Jekyll’s Wood and Gardens, Wall and Water Gardens and Gardens for Small Country Houses; the woodland walks, ponds, waterfalls and bog garden were all designed during this period.

John Julius seems, after death, to have contributed one macabre memento to the Holbrook collection of keepsakes. It was the custom at that time for plaster casts to be taken of freshly deceased eminent and interesting persons – the latter category including those who hanged – and a plaster face was found beneath the office floor of Holbrook in the 1960’s. Yellowed patches of crazed patina indicate an early nineteenth century date and John Julius Angerstein would appear to be the obvious candidate.

The John Angerstein who came to Holbrook set about its last major enlargement and rebuilding, in 1903-4, in a style that is late Victorian rather than that of the Edwardian reign which had started. His architect was Sir Reginald Bloomfield (1856-1942), who was particularly fond of working on English country houses that were surrounded by impressive grounds. He was constantly distracted by the possibilities for garden design and firmly believed that a house was only as good as its setting.

He formalised the south front of Holbrook, raising the lawn, terracing it above the tennis court, and buried the outer wall of the basement so that the height of the house was reduced to what he considered to be the right proportion with its width. A Tudor stone mullioned window, cut from Ham Hill near Montacute, which had provided token light for the basement, was filled with Edwardian mortar, and was henceforth six feet underground. Similarly, useless are the great doors at the southwest corner of what is now the cellar – these merely open into a shoot beside the hardcore of the present car park. They were originally the side doors into the under region of the house but changes to the south front, which had until this time been the side with the driveway and entrance hall, meant that they had to be covered to avoid unduly cluttering the revised reception zone.

The Holbrook library featured aspects of the family history, with the Annuals of Lloyds Registrar, a number of maps of Russian and almost endless supply of the catalogue of Angersteins Gallery of paintings. Several copies were auctioned in July 1945, when the contents of the house dispersed, but twenty packets of engravings failed to find a buyer and were left in the building. They had been with the actual twenty-two copper plate blocks from which the prints were taken.

Until that sale in mid 1945, spread over six days in the first summer of peace in Europe, the house exuded elegance with a plethora of inlaid mahogany, down to the butlers tray and stand. Paintings were everywhere, mostly copies of the family treasures that had been sold to the nation, hanging from the heavy brass rails that still run beneath the high ceilings of just about all the downstairs rooms. The front hall had marble busts of foxes; just as obvious were cluttered assortments of stuffed birds, animal heads and horns – the principle hunting trophy was the stuffed otter in its own large case: still a species of the Stours upper tributaries until the 1960’s. The Edwardian hot-house were for vines and by 1945 two white and one black variety had entwined to fill its south facing glass.

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1931: PLANS APPROVED FOR ROAD TO LATTIFORD

The straight length of modern carriageway in the cutting that carries the main road from Holbrook to Lattiford was gouged out by huge machines in 1975 as a by product of the bigger scheme to re-route the A303 through fields to the south of Wincanton. Such a spur road was, however, a serious proposal in 1932 when Somerset County Council decided as the first priority in its list of new roads to construct the Holbrook House – Lattiford Road with a carriageway 20 feet in width. By January 1932 everything seemed to be going ahead for what would have been the first length of new-style arterial road in the district. The council had resolved to complete the acquisition of the lands required from Mrs Angerstein for the construction of the new road from Holbrook House to Lattiford; to instruct the County Surveyor to make provision in the estimates for the financial year 1932-33 for the construction of the necessary kerbed footpath in front of Holbrook House; to pay all legal charges and expenses and land agents charges incurred in connection with the matter; and to seal, and authorise the Clerk to sign, any necessary documents. The project had such high priority that compulsory purchase powers were approved. Mrs Angerstein raised no objections but H Perry of Holbrook Farm and G Barnes of Hatherleigh Farm opposed the scheme as did Wincanton butcher J Bartlett, who was the owner of Lattiford Farm. They would wear down the council’s resolve and the half mile of road would remain unbuilt for another half century. North – South traffic continued to branch off via Holton village and the road which skirted Holbrook from West Hill was little more than a country lane which carried only local traffic between Wincanton and Castle Cary.

1946-1998 TAYLOR YEARS

A rare illness forced Geoff and Jimmy Taylor into the country – leaving behind his position as a head buyer for the Firestone Factory. They fell in love with Holbrook and bought it for �7,500. Having bought the property they decided to turn it into hotel.