A 15th-century manor house, carefully preserved by one of the masters of the Arts and Crafts movement, retains a wealth of architectural history
FEATURE HANNAH NEWTON PHOTOGRAPHS CLAIRE WORTHY
Flicking through the pages of Country Life in 1974, Sir Nicholas Mander, historian and businessman, noticed an advertisement announcing the private sale of a Gloucestershire country estate. He knew immediately the house was Owlpen Manor – widely considered to be one of the most romantic Tudor houses in the south of England, with one of the earliest examples of an English domestic garden.
The property as it stands today dates back to around 1450, but an extensive archive charts a history that starts at around 1220 and involving just two families until it was abandoned in 1815. Owlpen slept through the industrialisation of the 19th century to be awoken in 1925 by Norman Jewson, the first new owner in over a century.
Sir Nicholas was well aware of Jewson’s tenure at Owlpen. As an architect-craftsman and a member of the Arts and Crafts movement, Jewson’s conservation work at the Tudor manor house was well-documented, not least by Jewson himself in his memoir, By Chance I did Rove. And, as a result of his careful work, the house looked to have barely changed since the 17th century. Excited by the opportunity to own such a significant piece of English architectural history, Sir Nicholas set about persuading his wife, who was not so keen.
The couple had already decided to buy a different house, and Swedish-born Lady Karin was not inclined to deviate from their carefully laid plans. ‘We had a flaming row before we came to see it,’ she recalls. ‘I told him, “I will only see the house on the condition that we stick with our plans.”’ But, when she walked through the door, it seemed that fate had sealed the deal: ‘There was an extraordinary feeling of homecoming,’ she says. And so they bought Owlpen and set about making it a home for their five children.
It was the 1970s, and Lady Karin recalls watching The Good Life on TV and feeling as though they were like Tom and Barbara Good. ‘We had the wonderful innocence of being very young, it was a reckless decision to buy such a huge old place, but it didn’t worry us, it didn’t even enter our heads. Although it’s big, it’s compact,’ she says, conceding that it wasn’t always easy. ‘Old houses are fragile, especially Owlpen, which is partly built from materials like ox hair, lime, loam, and stone burrowed from the hills.’
Arriving at Owlpen Manor, it’s easy to understand its appeal: the approach, along a narrow winding lane that lea
