A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Azure line 



valour, prudence, piety, and munificence.' ' He 

 secured his title from George Keble the next year, 

 and dying in 1589 left the manor and parlc of 

 Apethorpe to Anthony, his son and heir.' Anthony 

 left no heir male, and Ape- 

 thorpe with his other posses- 

 sions passed in 1 61 7 to his 

 daughter Mary, wife of Sir 

 Francis Fane, who was soon 

 after created earl of Westmor- 

 land.' It remained in the Fane 

 family and was their principal 

 country residence until 1 904, 

 when the hall and estate were 

 sold to Mr. Leonard Brassey, 

 the present owner. 



Apethorpe Hall is a large, 

 picturesque, and rambling building of various dates 

 built round two courts, and thrusting a wing of 

 inferior rooms beyond the limits of the less im- 

 portant court. The oldest part of the house is 

 the block of buildings separating the two courts 

 and so much of the north side of the first court 

 as extends to and includes the north gateway. It 

 dates from the end of the 15th century or the 

 beginning of the 1 6th, and contains the hall and 

 great chamber, with some small rooms on the south 

 and north. There must have been a large kitchen of 

 the same period occupying much the same position as 

 the present, which, however, seems to be of later 

 work. The screens are entered at each end by a two- 

 story porch ; the hall, which formerly had an open- 

 timhered roof, is lighted on both its main sides by a 

 range of windows high up from the floor, while at the 

 dais end is the usual bay window with its sill brought 

 down low enough to afford an outlook. Till within 

 recent years the step of the dais, about four or five 

 inches in height, remained at the south end of the 

 hall, but was eventually removed in order to give 

 greater space for dancing. There is a shallow recess 

 in the south wall of the bay, to which has been hung 

 a fine panelled door, evidently removed from the inner 

 arch of one of the porches. Adjoining the hall to 

 the south is a cellar with the great chamber over, now 

 cut up into bedrooms. It has a projecting turret on 

 the south side, which may have contained a staircase 

 or a garderobe. This turret is crowned with an em- 

 battled parapet, the only remnant of the original work 

 of the kind, and invisible from either court. The 

 approach from the hall to the great chamber may have 

 been by way of this turret or from the south-east of 

 the hall, but no evidence remains on the point, nor is 

 it possible to distinguish the precise uses to which the 

 rooms north and south of the principal chambers were 

 put. 



The entrance gateway on the north side of the first 

 court is of three stories, and has moulded four-centred 

 inner and outer arches, with a pretty oriel window 

 over th« former, looking into the court. From the 

 gateway contemporary doorways open east and west 

 into passages running along the inner side of the 

 northern range, and at its south-eastern angle is a 

 stair-turret projecting into the court and giving access 

 to the upper floors. All the range east of the gateway 

 has been rebuilt, and there is no evidence as to the 



1 Camden Brir. (Ed. Gough), p. 168. 



' Feet of F. Northants, East. 7 Edw. VI ; Chan. Inq. p.m. 

 (Ser. 2), ccxxiii, 61, 



• Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. a), ccclxixi, 94. 



original extent of the building, but it is highly im- 

 probable that the gateway, which was the main 

 entrance, would have been in one corner of the court, 

 and it may therefore be presumed that the court was 

 of nearly the same dimensions as at present. 



The next work in point of date is the second court, 

 which seems to have been begun long after the com- 

 pletion of the hall, and to have been carried on at 

 intervals during the next five-and-twenty or thirty 

 years, up to perhaps 1530. Its north side continues 

 the line of the first court, and had towards its western 

 end an entrance for servants, stores, and so forth, now 

 blocked up. The return range on the west of the court 

 has undergone little structural alteration and preserves 

 many of its original doors and windows. It was pro- 

 bably intended for much the same purposes as those 

 to which it is still put, namely, for the bakehouse, 

 dairy, &c. Along the south side, now occupied by the 

 conservatory, there is nothing to suggest a continua- 

 tion of the 16th-century work, and this part may 

 have been open. The east side of this court presents 

 some problems not altogether easy of solution, but 

 apparently a one-story corridor was built in front of 

 the hall and great chamber in order to connect the 

 kitchens with the living rooms on the south front. 

 Over a portion of this corridor was built a room 

 opening from the great chamber, but somewhat 

 narrower than that apartment ; and afterwards this 

 room was connected with the kitchen wing by putting 

 a second story on the intervening corridor. This 

 arrangement is very unusual, as the corridor formed 

 two small and useless courts west of the range contain- 

 ing the hall and great chamber, and it was not until 

 half a century later that the inconvenience caused in 

 large houses by a lofty hall dividing the accommoda- 

 tion into two separate halves began to be felt, and led 

 to the adoption of arrangements by which the hall 

 ceased to be a room of constant thoroughfare. These 

 little courts have long since been roofed over and cut 

 into servants' rooms. 



The house thus far described, and all of it dating 

 from the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, was 

 of very considerable size, but it bears no clue as to who 

 built it. According to the descent of the property 

 given above, the Wolstons must have been the first 

 builders and the Mountjoys perhaps the second. 

 However this may be, it was a very considerable house 

 when the estate was granted to Sir Walter Mildmay in 

 the year 1550. 



It is impossible to say whether Sir Walter did much 

 building, but he certainly made alterations, and did 

 something to embellish his acquisition. He built the 

 more westerly of the two chimney-stacks on the south 

 side of the southern wing of the first court, and 

 erected the fine stone chimney-piece on the upper 

 floor, which he adorned with his arms, motto, initials, 

 and the date 1 562. He is also responsible for the 

 chimney-piece, chimney-stack, and screen of the hall, 

 and he inserted his arms in the spandrels of the 

 entrance gateway. It is not improbable that he 

 either built or rebuilt a considerable portion of the 

 south side of the first court, and added the two small 

 bay windows in its north-west and south-west angles 

 for the sake of symmetry, a matter which had not 

 entered into the calculations of the builders of the 

 hall. He died in 1 589, and was succeeded by his son 

 Sir Anthony, who married the daughter of a great 

 builder, Sir William Sharington, or Sherington, of 

 Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. Sir Anthony, how- 



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