Building record 0214900000 - DENHAM COURT

WHEN WILLIAM BOWYER BOUGHT MANOR, DENHAM PLACE (CASS 04370) WAS MANOR HOUSE & MAY HAVE BEEN CALLED DENHAM COURT. IN 1670 BOWYER SOLD DENHAM MANOR & BUILT HIMSELF ANOTHER HOUSE, DENHAM COURT (B1-2).
WEST WING IS ONLY PART OF C17 HOUSE LEFT, REST (RE)BUILT C18 & C19 (B3).
Grade II. Early and late 18th century house with C19 alterations. Main garden front late C18, brown brick with red gauged brick window heads and stone bands and cornice. Slate roof behind parapet. Three storey centre section 2:3:2 windows, the centre three window section recessed. Stone band at 2nd floor level and 1st floor level of centre 3 windows only. Pediemented doorcase with fluted frieze behind large C19 painted Roman Doric proch. 2 storey wings each side, each a large 3 window bow. Glazing bar sashes survive in wings and upper floor of centre. East front is similar, 2 storeys, 1:3:1 windows, the centre 3 windows a broad shallow bow with tripartite cambered haed ground floor sashes and sash window above. The ends have blank 1st floor windows and round arched doorway below with moulded impost and keystone. Overhanging eaves with panelled soffit. The north front is early 18th red brick now painted, with hipped slate roof. 2 storey and attic, 3 window range of sash windows with gauged brick heads. Stone cornice. Doorway with gauged brick jambs. C19 painted Roman Doric porch. To each side C18 and C19 service additions. The east side service range had a C18 brick West front, 2 storey. 10 wndow range, with floor band and nogged brick eaves. Small 1st floor and larger ground floor windows with gauged brick heads, one ground floor Venetian window. Interior has 2 ground floor early C18 rooms, one with some panels containing sporting and other paintings, the other with a marble fireplace and an overdoor with landscape paintings. C19 staircase. RCHM 1, p116; VCH III, 256 (B5).
John Chenevix Trench's research into Denham Hall located historical documents which suggest that there was a house of some form on the site in 1297. A directive from the Abbot of Westminster to his reeve at Denham gives instruction to 'raise our hall at Denham, strengthen the foundations with good oak timbers, over it with tiles as necessary. Plaster the walls and benches and cover them according to our instructions, so that there is no defect, and all this is to be done by the view and testimony of Dom Laurence de Elinton. Your reasonable expenses will be allowed on your account by this letter. Given at Westminster on the feast of St Mark the Evangelist, in the 25th year of the reign of King Edward (PRO - WAM 3434). About the same time, the baliff was told to redress the chimney on the north chamber and attend to the faults in the other chambers. In 1326 the stewart at Denham accounted for £30 5s 6d for new buildings (possibly the parlour wing which had been repaired in 1297). The Patent Rolls of 1598 contain a grant of the William Bowyer 'all that site of the Manor of Denham Court with its walls and all appurtenances, previously the possession of George Peckham Knight, in our hands by reason of debt and all house, buildings, edifices, structures, granaries, stables, dovecotes, orchards, gardens, demense lands, pasture, woods, underwood, waters, fisheries, profits, commodities, emoluments and herditainments of the aforesaid manor, which site and land are in the several tenure or occupation of Thomas and Edmund Bedell or their assigns' (PRO - C66/1451/29). The archive also contains correspondence with regard to the investigations for dry rot in central drawing room which revealed original timber framing and the stone floor (B7).
Domesday entry for Denham reads as follows - 'The Abbot of St Peter's of Westminster holds DENHAM. It answers for 10 hides. Lands for 12 ploughs; in lordship 3 hides; 2 ploughs there. 15 villagers with 3 smallholders have 7 ploughs; a further 3 possible. Meadow for 12 ploughs; 2 mills at 7s; 3 fisheries yield 3s a year; woodland, 300 pigs. The total value is and was £7; before 1066 £10.' (B8)
Peter Hand's (?) compiled history of the Denham states that the Manor was sub-infuedated in 1171 to the family of de Capella. In the 13th century it passed to Queen Eleanor and in 1290 back to Westminster Abbey. Henry VIII granted Denham to Sir Edmund Peckham and it remained in the family until 1583, when Sir George, a merchant adventurer, was runiend with Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Richard Greville as the result of a disastrous expedition. The property was let to William Bowyer, a teller for the exchequer, and in 1601 he purchased the freehold from George Peckham. Sir William Bowyer II was a keen plantsman and patron of Dryden. Dryden translated parts of the Georgics and Aenid at Denham Court in the 1690s. Dryden also wrote the 'garden of Denham Court, of Sir William's own plantation, one of the most delicious spots of ground in England.' Thomas Hamlet, a London merhcant and banker, purchased the house in 1813 but went bacnkrupt in 1840. Nathaniel G Lambert acquired the estate in 1840 and represented Buckinghamshire alongside Disraeli in palriament between 1868-1880. In 1885 the house and estate were acquired by Harold William Swithenbank. He died in 1928 and in 1936 the property was sold to Middx County Council and thence transferred to the GLC in 1964. (B8).
Two bays of the original aisled hall have become the principal reception room of the Mansion, the lower portion of the intermediate aisle posts having been removed (B8).
The house was put up for let over the summer months in 1935 and then sold. The house's furnishing were put for sale by Mrs Swithenbank on 22 October 1935. The contents of the house were sold over a 3 day period (B8).
The house became the Hillingdon Borough Council's home for children in need in the late 1950s, providing accommodation for up to 24 children (B8).
The estate was sold in May 1990 to Kajima Investment BV and the Colne Valley Golf Company Ltd established to convert the land and house into a golf course and club house (B8).
Negative evaluation by Cotswold Archaeology in June 2022 in advance of proposed building alterations and extensions. Extensive modern disturbance from services and truncation from previous alterations and extension in the area of the golf clubhouse (B16).