The history of Wimpole Estate

Early History and the Chicheley Family

Wimpole is located near the junction of two significant Roman roads. This, and its proximity to London, have been important factors in its growth and survival. There is evidence of settlement in and around Wimpole from the Bronze Age. After the Norman Conquest, ownership of Wimpole passed from Edith the Fair (c. 1025–86) to Alan Rufus of Brittany (c. 1040–93). There are archaeological traces of a medieval village and ridge and furrow farming within the later, designed landscape. The medieval parish church was largely demolished and rebuilt in 1748, but it retains a chantry chapel founded for the soul of William Standon (d. 1410).

From the 12th century, the estate changed hands several times before being acquired in 1428 by Henry Chichele [Chicheley] (1364–1443), Archbishop of Canterbury. His descendants accumulated more manors and land in the county.

Sir Thomas Chicheley (1614–99), politician and MP, married Sarah (d. 1654), the daughter of Sir William Russell, 1st Baronet of Chippenham, director of the East India Company and treasurer of the Virginia Company. Around 1640, they began to build a new, seven-bay house which still stands as the core of the present Hall. Sir Thomas also enclosed the land around the house and inserted an avenue to its south.

The late 17th and early 18th centuries

In 1686, having overspent, Sir Thomas sold Wimpole to Sir John Cutler (1603/7–93), a grocer, financier and MP. Cutler’s daughter, Elizabeth (d.1697), who had married Charles [Bodville] Robartes, 2nd Earl of Radnor (1660–1723), inherited Wimpole. He reputedly spent £20,000 turning Wimpole into one of the most spectacular houses of the age. Although almost none of his changes in the house survive, some of his alterations to its surroundings are still evident. He expanded the park, built an orangery, a service wing and a stable block, and envisaged a great garden, under the direction of royal gardeners George London, Henry Wise and, perhaps, William Talman. Robartes sold the heavily mortgaged estate to John Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1662–1711), one of his creditors, in 1710. He bequeathed Wimpole to his only child Henrietta Cavendish-Holles (1694–1755).

The Harley years and Wimpole’s hey-day

Henrietta married Edward, Lord Harley (1689–1741) (who became 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer in 1724) at Wimpole in August 1713. His father, Robert, established the South Sea Company, whose profits were derived from operations that included trade in enslaved people, in 1711. The couple made Wimpole the centre of a wide circle of political, literary and artistic friends.

Architect James Gibbs designed (in several phases) a library for Harley’s enormous collection of rare books and manuscripts, which would become the British Library’s founding collection. Gibbs also designed the chapel featuring illusionistic murals by Sir James Thornhill, exemplifying English Baroque taste. In the 1720s, garden designer Charles Bridgeman introduced ponds, woods and axial avenues, including the three-mile-long approach that leads south from the Hall. Debt forced Lord Harley to sell Wimpole to the Lord Chancellor, Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke (1690-1764), in 1740 and most of his collection was sold at auction.

The Earls of Hardwicke

Philip Yorke was a prominent lawyer and politician who served as Lord Chancellor and was granted the earldom of Hardwicke in 1754. As Attorney General, he issued the 1729 ‘Yorke-Talbot Opinion’ with Solicitor General Charles Talbot, stating that runaway enslaved people from the West Indies were not free upon arrival in Great Britain or Ireland, nor could they gain freedom through baptism, allowing slavers to enforce their return to plantations.

At Wimpole, under architect Henry Flitcroft, Hardwicke rebuilt the north and south fronts in red brick with Portland stone dressings. Harley's cabinet rooms became one ground floor gallery for Hardwicke’s picture collection. The tables in the Long Gallery and the altar table and torchères in the Chapel, may have been acquired then. Flitcroft also rebuilt the parish church. Outside, the royal gardener Robert Greening softened and naturalised Bridgeman’s formal landscape.

The first earl’s heir, also Philip (1720–90), amassed another huge collection of books and manuscripts, but made minimal alterations to the house. It was he, however, together with his wife, Lady Jemima Campbell, 2nd Marchioness Grey and 4th Baroness Lucas (1723–97) in her own right, who commissioned Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to create a much more open parkland with serpentine lakes and meandering belts of trees. Brown also built the ruined Gothic Tower on a hill to the north of the house as an ‘eye-catcher’ in the landscape.

Philip, the 3rd Earl (1757–1834) was a politician and keen agriculturalist with an interest in neo-classicism inspired by the Grand Tour he made as a young man. In 1790, he commissioned Sir John Soane to redesign the house's interior in the neo-classical style, creating the Yellow Drawing Room and Bath House. The model Home Farm to the north of the estate was also built at this time. Outside, between 1801 and 1809, Humprhy Repton ‘naturalised’ the park still further. His ‘Red Books’ for Wimpole, so-named for their red leather binding, survive in the library. 

The 4th Earl, Vice-Admiral Charles Philip Yorke (1799–1873) carefully regulated the estate finances and took an interest in Cambridgeshire’s agriculture. During his tenure, changes included a new servant wing, a giant conservatory (replacing the orangery), and a stable block by Sir Henry Edward Kendall, now the first historic building visitors see upon entering the park. To great excitement, he entertained Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Wimpole for two days in 1843. The Hardwicke estates totalled over 19,000 acres in Cambridgeshire when his son, Charles Philip (1836–97), the 5^th Earl, inherited. A gambler, he accumulated debts of over £300,000 and had to relinquish the estate to his major creditor, the Agar-Robartes Bank, in 1894.