The Hendre
Encyclopedia
Monmouthshire
Monmouthshire is a county in south east Wales. The name derives from the historic county of Monmouthshire which covered a much larger area. The largest town is Abergavenny. There are many castles in Monmouthshire .-Historic county:...
's only full-scale Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
country house, constructed in the Victorian Gothic style. Built in the eighteenth century as a shooting box, it was vastly expanded by the Rolls family in three stages throughout the nineteenth century and is most famous as the childhood home of Charles Stewart Rolls, co-founder of Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....
. The house is Grade II* Listed
and is now the clubhouse of the Rolls of Monmouth Golf Club.
History of the family
The ascent of the Rolls family to the aristocracy, and to the fortune used to develop the Hendre as the finest Victorian country house in Monmouthshire, was though marriage. James James of the parish of Llanvihangel-Ystern-Llewern, Monmouthshire settled in London and acquired a valuable estate in Southwark, Surrey. He purchased several farms and parcels of land in Llanvihangel-Ystern-Llewern and Llangattock-Vibon-Avel between 1639 and 1648. In his will published in 1677 he left his estate to his only surviving child, Sarah, who was the wife of Dr Elisha Coysh, a physician from London. Their daughter married William Allen, who also bought land in Monmouthshire. William Allen's daughter and heir married her cousin Thomas Coysh. They were succeeded by their son Richard Coysh, who was succeeded by his sister Sarah (d. 1801), the eventual sole heir of the families of Coysh, Allen and James. Sarah married John Rolls (1735–1801) of the Grange, Bermondsey, and of the Hendre, Monmouthshire, sheriff of Monmouthshire 1794, bringing him much property both in Monmouthshire and London.John Rolls died the day after his wife. John Rolls was succeeded by his son John Rolls (1776–1837) of the Hendre, who was succeed by his son John Etherington Welch Rolls (1807–70), sheriff of Monmouthshire 1842 (married Mary Long, granddaughter of William Carnegie, 7th Earl of Northesk
William Carnegie, 7th Earl of Northesk
Admiral William Carnegie GCB, 7th Earl of Northesk was born in Hampshire to Admiral George Carnegie, 6th Earl of Northesk and Anne Melville.-Naval career:...
). He was succeeded by his son John Allan Rolls
John Rolls, 1st Baron Llangattock
John Allan Rolls, 1st Baron Llangattock, DL owned The Hendre, a Victorian mansion north of Monmouth.- Biography :He was the only son of John Etherington Welch Rolls and his wife Elizabeth Mary Long...
(1837–1912), sheriff in 1875 and MP for Monmouthshire, 1880–1885, created Baron Llangattock
Baron Llangattock
Baron Llangattock, of the Hendre in the County of Monmouth, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1892 for John Rolls, Member of Parliament for Monmouthshire from 1880 to 1892. He was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Baron. He was killed in action at the Battle...
of the Hendre, 1892.
John Allan Rolls's enoblement brought the family, and the house, to its social apogee, culminating in a visit from the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary
Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....
), who stayed with Lord and Lady Llangattock at the Hendre in late October - early November 1900. The Duke and Duchess were taken on motor car excursions by Charles Rolls
Charles Rolls
Charles Stewart Rolls was a motoring and aviation pioneer. Together with Frederick Henry Royce he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display near Bournemouth,...
, probably the first time that the royal couple had been in a car. This was an important event in the family's social history, confirming their elevation to the upper echelons of society.
Of John Allan's three sons, the most famous was Charles Rolls
Charles Rolls
Charles Stewart Rolls was a motoring and aviation pioneer. Together with Frederick Henry Royce he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display near Bournemouth,...
, the co-founder of Rolls Royce. As well as his interests in cars and aeroplanes, Charles was a keen balloonist, the Flight Magazine of January 1909 recording a flight from Monmouth:
"Ballooning Home. On Saturday last the Hon. C. S. Rolls gave an exhibition of the possibilities of ballooning by taking his mother, Lady Llangattock, home by balloon. The ascent was made at Monmouth in the balloon " Mercury," the occupants of the basket being Lady Llangattock, Hon. C. S. Rolls, Hon. Mrs. Assheton - Harbord, Mr. Claud Crompton, and Mr. Charles Freeman, and the balloon landed on the lawn in front of Lord Llangattock's house, The Hendre."
Lord Llangattock died in 1912, Charles Rolls having pre-deceased him, dying in an aviation accident in 1910. Lord Llangattock's heir was his son John Maclean Rolls (1870–1916, dsp.), 2nd Baron Llangattock, sheriff in 1900. He died at Boulogne in 1916 from wounds received at the Battle of the Somme. His younger brother having died four months previously, and none of Lord Llangattock's son's having had children, the direct male line ended and John Maclean Rolls was succeeded by his sister Eleanor Georgiana (d. 1961), wife of John Courtown Edward Shelley.
With the death of Charles Rolls
Charles Rolls
Charles Stewart Rolls was a motoring and aviation pioneer. Together with Frederick Henry Royce he co-founded the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. He was the first Briton to be killed in a flying accident, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display near Bournemouth,...
, Henry Allen Rolls and John Maclean Rolls and the extinction of the barony and surname in the male line, the estate passed back up the family through the closest member of the family with surviving descendants, Patricia Rolls, sister of John Allan Rolls. She had married John Taylor Harding of Pentwyn, vicar of Rockfield and Canon of Llanduff, son of John Harding of Henbury and they had four children (John Reginald Harding, Charles Allan Harding, Francis Henry Harding and George Valentine Harding). John Reginald Harding in turn married Elizabeth Margaret Saunders (daughter of Captain John Saunders of Foochow, China) and had five children. Upon the extinction of the Rolls branch, the estate came down to his son, John Charles Etherington Harding (born 1890), the first cousin once removed of the 2nd Baron Llangattock, who inherited the house, estate and surrounding farmland, changing his family name to Harding-Rolls for this purpose.
History of the mansion
The mansion began as a shooting lodge, for John Rolls (1776–1837) and the original manor house was expanded throughout the next one hundred years. The first of three expansions by the Rolls family began with the architect George Vaughan Maddox who rebuilt parts of the south wing in 1830. John Rolls's successor, John Etherington Welch Rolls, continued the mansion's development, using Thomas Henry WyattThomas Henry Wyatt
Thomas Henry Wyatt was an Irish British architect. He had a prolific and distinguished career, being elected President of the Royal Institute of British Architects 1870-73 and awarded their Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1873...
as his architect. Wyatt extended the house in the period 1837-41, creating the great hall and improving the park, including the addition of the gate lodges on the Monmouth Road, and he continued the enlargement of the south wing, both to the east and to the west between 1837 and 1858.
In 1872, the development began again with the removal of the old stables and the building of the present Coach House and loose boxes. At the same time, the core of the present house, being the Billiard Room, Smoking Room and Dining Room, were added. These final two stages of expansion were undertaken by John Etherington Welch Rolls's son, J. A. Rolls. Raised to the peerage as 1st Baron Llangattock, Rolls employed first Henry Pope, who completed the dining room wing and, secondly, Sir Aston Webb, who added the Cedar Library.
Immediately after the Second World War a private boys' boarding school was briefly established at The Hendre. Ardmore School catered to British and foreign students with a Dr Jones as headmaster.
The school appears not to have flourished as the London Gazette of 20 December 1949 lists Dr Jones, "present address(..)unknown, lately residing at and carrying on business at Ardmore Private School, The Hendre.." for a bankruptcy hearing.
Description of the mansion
"The Hendre, a handsome mansion of brick and stone, in the Norman and Tudor styles." The house is constructed of red brick, dressed with Bath stone and comprises a courtyard bounded to the west by a low wall and on the three other sides by ranges of buildings. Above the porch is carved a motto, so beloved of the Victorians, reading "Open House Open Hearth". The decoration is flamboyantly neo-Norman, "gargoyles and grotesque animal corbels (breaking) out wherever one looks." The front has two storeys and seven bays, the second, third and fourth belonging to the house of the 1820s. To the east, the scale and grandeur of the dining room range demonstrates J.A.Rolls's "escalating ambitions." Lastly, the wing added by Sir Aston Webb from 1896, comprising the Cedar Library and the later service wing, represents the house at its social and architectural peak.The interior reflects the house's expansion, as the wealth and influence of the family increased, from the small but highly decorated rooms of the 1820s, through to the Great Hall of 1858, and lastly the dining room suite and the Cedar Library of its late Victorian/Edwardian apogee.
For all its antique, neo-Norman decoration, the house was technologically very advanced, the service court including "a gas-making house and an electricity-generating house to power the mechanisms which made The Hendre in Lord Llangattock's time a throughly forward-looking estate." In his book, "Black Mountains: The Recollections of a South Wales Miner", David Barnes notes his grandfather recalling that 'The Hendre had been the first house in Monmouthshire to have a telephone when John Allan Rolls installed a Gower Bell loud-speaking telephone in the house in May 1881.'
Gardens
"The Hendre is the grandest and most important Victorian park and garden in Monmouthshire" . Although a golf-course is now superimposed upon much of the parkland, resulting in the unfortunate neglect of much of the gardens, they still remain an essential example of late nineteenth/early twentieth century garden design, demonstrating the high levels of design and landscaping, conducted mainly by Lord Llangattock towards the end of the 19th century, which accompanied the construction and enlargement of the house. The estate boasts an arboretumArboretum
An arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...
, stocked with specimen trees (including several ancient oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
s), a landscaped lake with an artificial cascade
Waterfall
A waterfall is a place where flowing water rapidly drops in elevation as it flows over a steep region or a cliff.-Formation:Waterfalls are commonly formed when a river is young. At these times the channel is often narrow and deep. When the river courses over resistant bedrock, erosion happens...
created by James Pulham & Co. and three long drives, the most impressive designed by H.E. Milner in the 1890s. In its heyday it also contained formal sunken gardens with cast-iron fountains, pavilions, a boathouse and a parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
. The walled kitchen garden is one of the best preserved in Wales, containing two original glasshouse
Greenhouse
A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...
s still in good condition. An article in the Gardeners' Magazine of 1903 described the park thus; "The Hendre stands in a finely wooded park of a thousand acres’ extent, and is reached from the county road by a long drive of about two miles (3 km). This drive was made by Mr H.E. Milner (son of landscape gardener Edward Milner
Edward Milner
Edward Milner was an English landscape architect.-Early life and career:Edward Milner was born in Darley, Derbyshire, the eldest child of Henry Milner and Mary née Scales. Henry Milner was employed at Chatsworth by William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, as a gardener and porter...
), from his Lordship’s own designs [Lord Llangattock]. It passes through plantations of the finest conifers, winding upward by easy gradients through oak wood and copse, revealing here and there broad stretches of open park bedded with bracken and peopled with herds of deer." The granary and attached barn, the stable block, the rose garden pavillion and fountain pool, the bridge and the Box Bush lodge at the park entrance are all Grade II Listed.