Greathed Manor,

Dormansland Dormansland is a large village and civil parishes in England, civil parish with a low population approximately one mile south of Lingfield, Surrey, Lingfield in Surrey, England. It was founded in the 19th century and is bordered on the east by ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, is a

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

country house. Designed by the architect Robert Kerr in 1862–68, it is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

History

Greathed Manor, originally called Ford Manor, was designed by Robert Kerr for the Spender-Clay family, and was completed in 1868. The actress

Joyce Grenfell Joyce Irene Grenfell (''née'' Phipps; 10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English diseuse, singer, actress and writer. She was known for the songs and monologues she wrote and performed, at first in revues and later in her solo show ...

was related to the family by marriage and often visited the house. Accounts of her time there are described in her autobiography “Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure”. In 1904

Herbert Spender-Clay Herbert Henry Spender-Clay, (4 June 1875 – 15 February 1937), was an English soldier and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party politician. He sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons from 1910 to 1937. Early ...

, MP and founder of the 1922 Committee, married Pauline Astor, daughter of the American billionaire

William Waldorf Astor William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor (31 March 1848 – 18 October 1919) was an American-English attorney, politician, hotelier, publisher and philanthropist. Astor was a scion of the very wealthy Astor family of New York City. He moved t ...

. The couple lived at the house until 1937. Greathed Manor was requisitioned by the

British Government His Majesty's Government, abbreviated to HM Government or otherwise UK Government, is the central government, central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

during both World Wars. In the Great War it became a Hospital for wounded American Army officers. In the Second World War it was used as the Headquarters of a Canadian Armoured Division in the run-up to

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

. It acted as temporary premises for the London College of Divinity between 1947 and 1957. The house was renamed Greathed Manor when the widowed Pauline Spender-Clay built a smaller house in the grounds of the original building, and requested that the new house be called Ford Manor. The original building was then leased by the Country Houses Association (CHA), which renamed the house after their Founder, Admiral Greathed. In 2008, following the collapse of the CHA, Greathed Manor was converted to a private nursing home, and is currently operated by Pressbeau Ltd.

Architecture

Kerr was an influential mid-Victorian architect who wrote ''The Gentleman's House - Or, How To Plan English Residences, From The Parsonage To The Palace'', published in 1864. Kerr's influence was greater than his talent; the architectural critic

Ian Nairn Ian Douglas Nairn (24 August 1930 – 14 August 1983) was a British architectural critic who coined the word "Subtopia" to indicate drab suburbs that look identical through unimaginative town-planning. He published two strongly personalised cr ...

described Greathed as; "over-confident, making no concessions to the landscape or anything else, without any (...) artistic sincerity, an extreme example of a justly neglected type". The architectural historian

Mark Girouard Mark Girouard (7 October 1931 – 16 August 2022) was a British architectural historian. He was an authority on the country house, and Elizabethan and Victorian architecture. Life and career Girouard was born on 7 October 1931. He was educ ...

was no more complimentary, describing the house as "appalling" and Kerr's most significant work, Bearwood House, as of a "design ..as heavyweight as (its) technology". The manor is of stone, and mainly of three storeys. Until renovations in 1912, the building had a large

porte-cochère A porte-cochère (; ; ; ) is a doorway to a building or courtyard, "often very grand," through which vehicles can enter from the street or a covered porch-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building through which originally a ...

at the front, and a

winter garden A winter garden is a kind of garden maintained in wintertime. History The origin of the winter garden dates back to the 17th to 19th centuries where European nobility constructed large conservatories that housed tropical and subtropical pla ...

at the rear.

Notes

References

* * * {{cite book , last1=Nairn , first1=Ian , last2=Pevsner , first2=Nikolaus , last3=Cherry , first3=Bridget , authorlink1=Ian Nairn , authorlink2=Nikolaus Pevsner , year=1971 , title=Surrey , series=The Buildings of England , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5b6dCBlfCLUC&q=The+Buildings+of+England%3A+Surrey , publisher=Penguin Books , location=Middlesex, England , isbn=0-300-09675-5 Country houses in Surrey Grade II listed buildings in Surrey