Lanhydrock House: A Jacobean and Victorian Country House in Cornwall
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page17 sections
History
Lanhydrock House is a country house in the United Kingdom, near Bodmin in Cornwall, begun in the early seventeenth century by Sir Richard Robartes and developed in Jacobean and Victorian phases. The estate stands above the River Fowey and became the principal seat of the Robartes and Agar-Robartes families before passing to the National Trust in 1953.
From monastic estate to Robartes residence
Before the Reformation, Lanhydrock was a monastic farm belonging to the Priory of St Petroc at Bodmin. In 1539, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII’s confiscation and breakup of England’s monastic institutions, transferred the property into private ownership. The Glynn family acquired the estate in 1543. It later passed through the Lyttelton family to the Trenance family in 1577.
Sir Richard Robartes, a Truro merchant and moneylender, bought the estate in 1620 and began building the house. He was made a baronet in 1621 and Baron Robartes in 1625, and by 1626 he was living at Lanhydrock. After his death in the 1620s, his son John continued the building programme.
John Robartes, later the 1st Earl of Radnor, was a leading member of the Cornish Parliamentary Party. He enlarged his father’s house with three wings around a courtyard and constructed the gatehouse, completed by 1651. Parliamentary forces garrisoned Lanhydrock in August 1644 during the English Civil War, after Sir Richard Grenville, 1st Baronet, had taken possession.
The estate in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
John Robartes later held the offices of Lord Privy Seal, a senior position historically concerned with the monarch’s privy seal, and Lord President of the Council, who presides over the body advising the sovereign on matters of state. He became Earl of Radnor in 1679. The estate also developed as a designed landscape. Red deer were present by 1657, and in 1664 John received permission to enclose a deer park of 340 hectares.
Later Robartes heirs preferred other residences, and Lanhydrock declined. By 1736 it was described as extremely dilapidated and unfurnished. William Borlase wrote in 1758 that the house was neglected and decaying, while Mary Vere Robartes, heir to the estate, considered demolishing it.
Mary’s eldest son, George Hunt, removed the chapel and east wing, among other parts, by 1788. These changes produced the U-shaped plan that survives today. The exterior was painted red to imitate fashionable brickwork, and the interiors were refurnished with items that included Chippendale tables and Axminster carpets. During the same period, shutters and stoves were installed in the gallery to protect its paintings.
The Hunt and Agar succession
George Hunt left Lanhydrock to his niece Anna Maria Hunt in 1798. She had assumed the house and dispersed lands in 1788. Her marriage to Charles Bagenal-Agar produced a surviving son, Thomas James Agar, who inherited the estate. He adopted the Robartes name and arms in 1822 and took greater responsibility for Lanhydrock after reaching adulthood in 1829.
Thomas James Agar was created Baron Robartes in 1869. With his wife, Juliana Pole-Carew, he enlarged and improved the house and gardens. George Gilbert Scott, a leading nineteenth-century architect associated with the Gothic Revival, was involved in repairs and improvements between 1857 and 1864, with Richard Coad supervising the work. Scott and Coad were also involved in a later renovation commission in 1880.
Fire and Victorian reconstruction
On 4 April 1881, an exposed timber in the kitchen chimney caught fire. The blaze destroyed the south wing and part of the west wing. When the west-wing roof collapsed, its historic plaster ceiling was lost, while the north wing, the Long Gallery, and the front porch building survived intact. Juliana Robartes died a few days later, and Thomas James Agar died in 1882.
Their heir, Thomas Charles Agar-Robartes, directed the reconstruction. Richard Coad supervised the exterior and technical work, James MacLaren designed important interiors, and Thomas Lang & Sons of Liskeard carried out the building contract. The family returned to the house around 1885. Reconstruction costs greatly exceeded the original estimate, leading to disputes between Thomas Charles Agar-Robartes and Coad, and later between Coad and MacLaren. In 1886, Lady Robartes therefore commissioned George Vialls, rather than Coad, to renovate the small church beside the house.
Thomas Charles Agar-Robartes became the 2nd Baron Robartes after his father’s death and inherited the Viscount Clifden title in 1899. His eldest son, Captain Thomas Charles Reginald Agar-Robartes, was killed in 1915 while serving with the Coldstream Guards at the Battle of Loos during the First World War. His younger brother, Francis Gerald Agar-Robartes, inherited the titles and the Lanhydrock estate in 1930.
Transfer to the National Trust
Agricultural uncertainty led the family to sell substantial areas of land during the 1920s. In 1934, the Agar-Robartes family incorporated its Cornish landholdings into the Lanhydrock Estate Company. Francis Gerald Agar-Robartes transferred Lanhydrock House and approximately 160 hectares to the National Trust in 1953, helping preserve the house and its Victorian collections. The National Trust is a charitable conservation organization that owns or manages historic buildings, gardens, and landscapes in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. After the death of his brother Arthur Agar-Robartes in the 1970s, a further 121 hectares entered National Trust ownership through a death-duty arrangement.
The house opened to the public in stages from 1954. Lanhydrock House received Grade I listing in 1951, England’s highest category of statutory protection for a building of exceptional architectural or historic interest. The historic park and garden entered the national register in 1987, while the adjacent church has held Grade I status since 1969. The Long Gallery’s seventeenth-century plasterwork ceiling became the focus of a conservation project beginning in 2024, aimed at cleaning and restoring one of the few parts of the house to survive the 1881 fire.
Remains
House and seventeenth-century fabric
Lanhydrock House is built principally of granite and slate and contains 49 rooms. The original house was arranged on four sides around a central courtyard and was constructed mainly from grey granite. The surviving seventeenth-century fabric includes the north wing, the front entrance and porch, and the original gatehouse. The east wing and chapel were demolished in the eighteenth century, leaving the U-shaped arrangement visible today.
North wing and Long Gallery
The north wing contains the Long Gallery, an elongated reception and display room approximately 29 metres long. Its historic plasterwork ceiling is decorated with relief figures representing Creation. The gallery survived the 1881 fire with the north wing and remains one of the house’s early elements. Its plasterwork entered conservation in 2024 for cleaning and restoration.
Entrance and gatehouse
John Robartes inserted the entrance into Richard Robartes’s house. It is now incorporated into the shop area, and an inscription above it reads “1636: ILR: L,” referring to John Lord Robartes and Lanhydrock. The gatehouse was completed in 1651 and was originally intended as a hunting lodge. Its walls contain rough, massive granite blocks marked with the dates 1636 and 1642.
Post-fire interiors and service spaces
The rebuilding after the fire created much of the house’s present Victorian appearance and included a new service or kitchen wing behind the south wing. Richard Coad handled the external and technical reconstruction, while James MacLaren designed interiors including the dining room in the Aesthetic style, which emphasized artistic design and visual harmony, an Elizabethan-style teak staircase, and a Rococo fireplace in the prayer room. The rebuilding used original materials. Service rooms, nurseries, servants’ bedrooms, reception rooms, and family bedrooms survive as a record of Victorian domestic arrangements.
St Hydroc’s Church and burial chamber
St Hydroc’s Church stands northwest of the house and remained associated with the Priory of St Petroc until 1539. The church contains a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, and a three-stage tower with battlements and nine bells. Eight bells date from the late nineteenth century and are regularly rung, while the ninth dates from about 1599 and is used infrequently for tolling.
The building may incorporate elements of an earlier church or chapel. Its oak benches were replaced with pine benches after 1808, and a pulpit was installed on the north side. Between 1886 and 1888, the chancel, the eastern part containing the principal altar, and the vestry, a room used by clergy and for church administration, were enlarged. A marble floor mosaic and a white-alabaster altarpiece were added during the same work. The church’s Robartes family crypt, a burial chamber, was used between 1626 and 1741 for members of the Robartes and Carminow families, the clergyman Walter Snell, and two loyal servants.
Formal gardens and park
The estate covers approximately 360 to 367 hectares, or about 890 acres. Its grounds rise to around 130 metres and include formal gardens, a landscape park, wooded areas, and a planted hill. A formal geometric garden beside the house was established in 1690 and recorded in the Lanhydrock Atlas of 1694 to 1697. It contained a bowling green, flower garden, pheasantry, kitchen garden, pear and fruit orchards, and a natural or wild garden. The garden was removed when the east wing was demolished, allowing parkland to extend up to the house.
An upper garden was created above the house around 1860. After 1858, Richard Coad developed the geometric garden now found on the east and north sides of the house, using designs begun by George Truefitt in 1854. Low embattled parapets, obelisks, terraces, water features, gravel paths, a promenade toward the gatehouse, granite steps to the church, and seating form its principal elements. The garden was simplified around 1933, when the first magnolias were planted. The forecourt now contains a circular lawn bordered by a gravel path, evergreen magnolias, and summer-flowering Schizophragma integrifolium.
Geometric garden
The geometric garden is defined by 23 clipped columnar Irish yews, Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’, and rose beds planted mainly with ‘Octavia Hill’, ‘Bright Smile’, ‘Escapade’, ‘Wheelhorse Classic’, and ‘Margaret Merril’. A bronze urn forms its focal point. Francis Gerald Agar-Robartes acquired the urn from Lord Hertford’s collection at the Château de Bagatelle in Paris. It was made by Louis Ballin, a French goldsmith who worked for Louis XIV.
Parterre and church paths
The Parterre, a formal garden of level beds arranged in ornamental patterns, lies northwest of the geometric garden and north of the house. Box hedges contain intricate beds planted with seasonal flowers, while six clipped columnar yews stand to the south and east. On the higher terrace toward the church, flower borders are planted directly into the lawn. A second bronze urn, also acquired from Lord Hertford’s collection and made by Louis Ballin, provides the garden’s focal point.
A wall bounds the Parterre on the west and contains two openings. One passage leads by steps to St Hydroc’s Church, while another path runs past the church toward the upper garden. Below the wall, a raised bed contains ‘Headbourne’ agapanthus hybrids, fuchsias, and clematis. The north to south church path includes a ‘Sango-kaku’ Japanese maple and deciduous western azalea hybrids. Camellias, Rhododendron arboreum var. roseum, and Magnolia kobus × loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’ grow near the church, with a tree-like Magnolia hypoleuca in a corner of the churchyard. Further north are hydrangeas, Magnolia campbellii ‘Charles Raffill’, Rhododendron fictolacteum, and Rhododendron rex.
Upper garden and Herbaceous Circle
An arched entrance, partly concealed by Magnolia kobus × loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’, leads into the upper garden. From 1933, Francis Gerald Agar-Robartes planted many magnolia species there, and some now reach 25 metres. The Borlase stream runs through the garden and supplies water to Lanhydrock House. Its banks support candelabra primulas, Astelia, arums, Rodgersia, and Kirengeshoma.
Beyond a magnolia clearing in the northern upper garden lies the Herbaceous Circle, a garden planted chiefly with flowering non-woody plants. Lady Clifden laid out its southern semicircle before 1914, and it became a complete circle in 1972 after the ruins of a greenhouse and shed were removed from the northern half. Its plants flower from late summer into autumn. Oaks and sweet chestnuts were planted at the northwest corner after the destructive storm of 1979 to protect the garden.
Former croquet and tennis area
North of the geometric garden is an area formerly used for croquet and tennis, with the tennis court on its eastern side. It contains two copper beeches, a young cork oak, Magnolia delavayi, and rhododendrons including ‘Mother of Pearl’, ‘Hugh Koster’, and ‘Pink Pearl’. William Ewart Gladstone planted the larger copper beech in 1889, and Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, planted the smaller one in 1905.
