An introduction to Asthall Manor

Asthall Manor is a private home, but the people who live here like to share parts of it from time to time in order to provide a space for creativity, enjoyment and connection to flourish in a friendly environment. We are trying to imbue everything we do with an ethos of friendliness, generosity and cheerful frugality, while dreaming up enough things that people actually want to pay for to make Asthall Manor self-sustaining into the future.

So far, Asthall Manor is best known as the home of on form, a biennial exhibition of sculpture in stone. We have been delighted by the enthusiastic response to this exhibition from art lovers, garden lovers, neighbours, friends and passers-by. We are proud of its friendly atmosphere, in which visitors touch the sculptures, talk to the artists, and laze about enjoying the beauty, both of the sculpture and of the gardens.

Now, we would like to extend the spirit of goodwill which this successful exhibition has engendered to a broader range of encounters.

The Mitford sisters, their brother Tom, and their parents Lord and Lady Redesdale, lived here between 1919 and 1926, and Asthall Manor is one of the houses on which Nancy’s fictional Alconleigh is based.

Rentals

To rent our self-catering apartment, please contact Manor Cottages.

The Ballroom is a light airy space with a beautiful vaulted ceiling, and is available, at a reasonable cost, for those wanting to deliver charity fund-raising events, life-enhancing classes and talks, and small and exciting theatrical and artistic ventures. Events in the recent past and near future include concerts, a quiz, a mime performance, youth theatre and a photography course. Rates vary. Please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you have an idea for its use.

Gardens

The best time to view the gardens is during our biennial on form sculpture exhibition. They are also open once a year for the National Gardens Scheme. For the date of the next opening, see our upcoming events.

The gardens were designed by I & J Bannerman in 1998. Their aim was to allow the garden to flow into the Windrush Valley landscape beyond it. The gardens blend form and freedom, open views and secret spaces. Long tranquil walks bordered with sharp wedges of yew, vast beeches enclosing a hidden lake, orchards sloping down to the mill stream, stone tubs overgrown with roses and a formal box-bordered parterre provide a quintessentially English setting for fine art. Asthall Manor’s entrance is notable for the sculptures by Anthony Turner which adorn its gateposts.

Our vegetable garden is slowly expanding, and we hope soon to have some spare vegetables available at the roadside with an honesty box. One day, we might even have a shop or a café.

History

Asthall Manor, overlooking the swans and stumpy willows of the Windrush Valley, dates from the early seventeenth century, and probably occupies a medieval site, but it is most famous for its early twentieth century occupants, the Mitford family. Lord Redesdale, immortalized in his daughter Nancy’s fiction as Uncle Matthew, bought the property at the end of the First World War. He sold it in 1926 in order to move into Swinbrook House, a house he had built in the neighbouring village of Swinbrook.

The property was then bought by the Hardcastle family, who kept it until 1997, when the present owner, Rosie Pearson, bought the property. The present house – or an earlier version of it – was probably built for the Jones family, who occupied it until the 1670s or 1680s, followed by the Peacock family, and then, from then mid-eighteenth century and for much of the nineteenth, by the Bateman family.

The Manor was a convalescent home during the First World War, and in 1919 it was bought by Lord Redesdale, father of Nancy and the other Mitfords. It was on Asthall Manor, as well as the Redesdales’ other houses, that Nancy’s fictional Alconleigh is based. In 1926, the Manor was sold to the Hardcastle family, who retained it until 1997.

The present symmetrical appearance of the house has resulted from alterations made for the Batemans in the nineteenth century, and for Lord Redesdale in the 1920s. Lord Redesdale also converted the barn into a ballroom/library, with its huge bay window and Jacobean-style ceiling, and built the cloisters to connect this new ballroom and the rooms above it to the main house. The house was slightly reduced in size by the present owner in 1998-9.

The gardens were designed by I & J Bannerman in 1998. Their aim was to allow the garden to flow into the Windrush Valley landscape beyond it. The gardens blend form and freedom, open views and secret spaces. Long tranquil walks bordered with sharp wedges of yew, vast beeches enclosing a hidden lake, orchards sloping down to the mill stream, stone tubs overgrown with roses and a formal box-bordered parterre provide a quintessentially English setting for fine art. Asthall Manor’s entrance is notable for the sculptures by Anthony Turner which adorn its gateposts.

The eastern edge of the gardens lead down past the croquet lawn into the churchyard of St Nicholas’s, Asthall, originally built in the 11th century and ‘modernised’ in the 16th century. It is remarkably untouched and peaceful.