Hampstead in Hertfordshire: A trip to Stansteadbury

My local history group recently went on a trip to Stansteadbury in Hertfordshire, organised through the excellent Invitation to View scheme.

Stansteadbury is a rambling manor house with multiple alterations from many different ages. It could almost be a different place each time you look, depending on which front you are facing, a concoction of Tudor, 19th and 20th century on one side, and classical Georgian box on the other. It truly has a bit of everything, but resolves into a pleasing amalgam of five centuries of organic growth and development.

Pevsner in his Hertfordshire volume likened Stansteadbury to a Hampstead villa relocated to the rolling Hertfordshire countryside. Perhaps he was suggesting that a house susceptible to so much fashionable alteration over time might be more suited to a smart London address than a place in the country. Nevertheless, Stansteadbury fits comfortably in its rural setting, just a few miles from Harlow but hidden alongside the A414 (which was laid out across part of the park).

Many houses in Hertfordshire and the surrounding counties were the creations of wealthy Londoners - lawyers, politicians, bankers - who wanted to establish themselves in country seats not too far from the capital. Stansteadbury was definitely one of these, being a monastic estate granted by Queen Elizabeth I to Edward Baeshe, politician and naval administrator. (Baeshe’s second wife was the daughter of Sir Ralph Sadler of Sutton House in Hackney.) Queen Elizabeth visited at least three times in the 1570s.

By 1678 the house had been sold to Paul Field, a London lawyer. In the 18th century the house was leased from the owners of nearby Briggens Hall, now a hotel.  By 1802 Stansteadbury was the home of Captain Robert Jocelyn. In the 19th century it came into the hands of the Trower family who remain there today.

In 1700 a view of Stansteadbury showed a double avenue approaching the house from the east, though that is now gone. The house is surrounded by outbuildings, walled gardens and parkland scenery (the licence to empark 300 acres was granted to Edward Baeshe in 1577).

The house is full of stories. The south side of the house was originally a forecourt, but this was replaced in the early 20th century by a terrace according to a design by Lutyens’ nephew, Derek Lutyens. On the west side is an entirely new wing, dated 1929, built  by William Trower for the domestic staff in the house - not realising of course that the era of houses such as this having extensive domestic staff was shortly to come to an end. During the Second World War Jeremy Bentham lived here - a consequence of Stansteadbury being the store for the UCL library collection which includes Bentham’s preserved body (his ‘auto icon’).

The lawyer Anthony Trower commuted daily from here to his London office, being in a line of London lawyers who made Stansteadbury their home. According to his obituarist,

“Each morning he would walk across his fields to the railway station, and leave his gumboots in the signal box, where he kept his shoes for work. He always sat in the same seat on the same train, opposite the same man; half way through the journey they would swap newspapers - and not once, it was said, did they ever exchange a word.”

Afterwards we visited St James’ church, now owned by the Churches Conservation Trust and adjacent to the house. The church contains its original box pews, but no electricity (Christmas services are still by candlelight). A memorial brass of particular relevance to our local history group was that to William, son of Joyce Frankland. His early death in a horse-riding accident led to Joyce Frankland, another wealthy Londoner, establishing a school in our village to his memory.