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The driveway to Muntham Court. |
THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.
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The driveway to Muntham Court. |
THE DEMISE OF A GREAT HOUSE
Copyright Valerie Martin 2000
Part text published in the Findon News, February 2001.
Who was responsible for the demolition of this Muntham Court? It would never have been allowed today but Worthing Corporation demolished the lovely Muntham Court to make way for a crematorium. I have often heard of how during the miserable damp days of February 1961, the breakers and their machinery were active at the mansion in Findon.
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The demolition of Muntham Court. |
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Muntham Court's main staircase. |
Into most of the imposing rooms, I understand that the sun had never penetrated; so close did the surrounding downland enfold this mansion of memories. The entrance hall, with its high, narrow glass dome, black and white chequered tiled floor, and panelled walls was stripped of all the remaining finery.
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View of the demolition from the south. |
I am told that the impact of the hammers and the tumbling rumble of falling masonry resounded across the hills. The low ceilinged maids' rooms on the top floor of the mansion, with their small, oddly placed windows, gradually crashed to the ground.
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Muntham Court's destruction — from the west. |
The terrace, overlooking the formal garden and the gap in the hills where the
Findon Windmill once stood, was soon to be all that was left of this spectacular Gothic-style mansion, at one time the home of the Dowager Marchioness of Bath.|
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The demolition of Muntham Court by West Sussex County Council. The North West corner is torn down. |
In 1961, dumper trucks trundled across the once neat flowerbeds set out by countless hired gardeners over the years. Here lilies had been specially nurtured in the greenhouse to decorate
St. John the Baptist Church for the Easter services. Produce grown in the Muntham garden was also supplied for the annual Church Fête. The bleak deserted outhouses, once treated with reverence, were destined to be levelled.|
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Muntham had first saw the light of day during the Hundred Years’ War, which began in 1338 between England and France. The French often ravaged the coast of Sussex and would have kept Findon in a perpetual state of terror at this time. Thomas de Muntham arrived on the Findon scene during these years and built the very first house on the site in 1371. Nothing is known of him, except that he was the son of Johanne. The size and extent of the first Muntham property is also undetermined, but the site was to have a turbulent history of re-construction.
In the reign of Henry VI, the house at Muntham was valued at £18 — a paltry sum today, but a grand one then. It probably cost a good lot more by the time it was sold in 1743 to Anthony Viscount Montague. Over the years it had already housed many grand families, and had been rebuilt and added to substantially. Viscount Montague proceeded to redesign the original old house with the idea of using it as a hunting-box for the Charlton Hunt.
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A likeness of William Frankland in his sixties. |
I understand that Muntham came to the limelight again in 1765 when it was sold to William Frankland, the son of a governor of Bengal. He was exceptionally proud of the fact that he was a descendant of none other than Oliver Cromwell and he let everyone know the fact.
Frankland became the Lord of the Manor of Muntham and into the house he introduced every variety of old, or newly invented machinery. Among the collection, handlooms were the most conspicuous, and the whole set up was said to cost him at least £20,000 by the time he died. It must have been a fabulous sum to the villagers of Findon who were employed on his land and in his kitchens. The ingenuity of his machines created much local gossip and interest in the village.
I have heard that he hardly improved the landscape when he erected an unsightly white wooden obelisk in the grounds. This was apparently in some way connected with his mechanical enterprises but the villagers were never quite sure how.
In 1805, at the age of 85, William Frankland died, and the house changed hands several times before being sold in 1840 to Thomas Fitzgerald. One of Mr. Fitzgerald’s first tasks was to move the offending obelisk to the top of the downland behind the house where it was out of sight. Here it stood and served as a landmark standing out on the hillside. It could be seen as a beacon out to sea and faced the elements for some years before becoming dilapidated and finally disappearing altogether.
In 1850, the Dowager Marchioness of Bath appeared on the scene at Muntham. She purchased the house and felt that it did not give quite the right impression for a lady in her position. She virtually rebuilt
Muntham Court by commissioning the re-facing the whole structure in beautiful knapped flints in 1877, and completing the task in 1887.|
The Marchioness' chapel at Muntham Court where daily household prayers were conducted |
She considered that the mansion was incomplete without its own place of worship and turned part of the old laundry at the southern end of the house, into her own chapel between 1877 - 1887. The Muntham Court chapel had stained glass windows fit for any place of worship and was designed with a high false ceiling. This meant that the billiard room was sunken about 12 inches below the level of the terrace and only the sky could be seen out of the windows. Ironically, access to the billiard room from then on was via the chapel. The place for private worship was lined with fine timber panelling and great carved wooden figures, complete with altar and elegant pews to complete the scene fit for the Marchioness.
Following her death in 1892, it is likely that daily attendance at household prayers ceased and the chapel gradually fell into disuse. Her son, Lord Henry Thynne, removed the stained glass windows and for many years they were unceremoniously stacked in the carpenters' shop in the grounds. The chapel became a mere store and was piled high with sporting trophies, croquet mallets, polo sticks, tennis and squash rackets. An Uncle, who had been an early follower of African safari big game hunting, had brought back more than fifty stuffed specimen heads over the years. These varied from antelope to large fierce looking buffaloes, and now found their way to the chapel. They were duly mounted all around the chapel walls and made a macabre spectacle.
The fine grounds below the Marchioness' terrace and beyond the drawing room windows originally afforded the most charming view for her. Unfortunately, this also was not to her liking and not quite the scene she envisaged. Some time elapsed before she could decide how it should be laid out. It is said that the pattern of embroidery on the crown of a baby’s cap finally decided her. She called for her gardeners and instructed them to lay out the area with miniature box hedges. The tiny hedges were to exactly follow her embroidery design, and the area below the terrace was from then known as the Crown Garden. It can be imagined what the gardeners uttered under their breaths as they toiled with the hedges over the ensuing years.
The Marchioness was the grandmother of
Colonel Ulric Oliver Thynne, the last owner of Muntham Court. In the old mansion, his sons were born and brought up. The walls of Brian Thynne's Private Sitting Room (beyond the Dining Room), were decorated with silhouettes of the aeroplanes he had flown. Brian was the youngest son, born 29th November 1907, and kept his own aeroplane on the downs above the house (not far from the obelisk site). He brought the craft down on a flat stretch, which he called his "landing strip", but his father, who was a fine horseman, preferred it to be called the "gallops". Brian used to say that in order to land he had to descend below the electric cables on the downland — his mother was not impressed. Colonel Thynne died in 1957 and the end of Muntham Court had come.| 7th September 2005 Muntham Re-visited How sad seeing the photographs of Muntham being demolished. I had never seen them before. When some years later I returned from South Africa to
where Muntham had stood the area was so overgrown I could not work out where
the house had been until my sister pointed out that I was standing on it. I
burst into tears. Penny Charteris, South Africa. |
The area is now the site of the Worthing Crematorium. All that remains of the grand house is a broken monogrammed wall, a stretch of overgrown terracing, and traces on the north front of the cobbled drive to the main entrance. It is just possible to trace the outline of the main wall of the mansion. There are scraps of red tiling at the southern end of the house to mark the spot where the kitchen maids slaved — most of them local girls from Findon.
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Muntham Burial Mound from Nepcote Green. |
The burial mound on the downs behind the site is the last resting-place of the Thynne family and their retainers. Group Captain Brian Thynne CBE AFC, third son of the last owner, Colonel Thynne, died on 10th December 1985 in Spain and was brought home to be buried there.
Continue if you would like to read about a cat named Tanya
This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.
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E-mail: valeriemartin@findonvillage.com |
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