History of the House

Twelve different owners have held the Hylands House Estate since the house was built around 1730 for Sir John Comyns. It has undergone several phases of major remodelling in over 270 years since then, and this article looks at some of the work undertaken and the owners who commissioned it.

Sir John Comyns was MP for Maldon for many years, and Chief Baron of the Exchequer. His architect is unknown, but was probably local. The new house was large, but unassuming, built of red brick with stone details around the door and windows, with a front range of 7 windows, a basement and two storeys. Such a house would have been well suited to the needs of 'an able and upright judge'.

The grounds were planned in the formal, geometric style of the day. The fencing behind the house divided the gardens from the paddock. The estate comprised a park of 100 acres surrounding the house and another 300 acres of farmland. Access to the house was via two gates, on the Widford and London sides. To the south of the house ran a road from Writtle to Ingatestone, now no longer in use.

The Comyns family owned Hylands (or Highlands as the land had been called since medieval times) for three generations until 1797.

The house was bought at auction in 1797 at the Black Boy in Chelmsford for £14,500 by a Danish merchant, Cornelius Kortright, who enlarged and modernised his property. He took the advice of Humphry Repton, the famous landscape gardener and architect; unfortunately Repton's 'Red Book' of notes and watercolours about the house is lost (last recorded in the house in 1839), thus depriving us of valuable information about the house and park at that time.

The old Georgian house was retained as the core, but covered in white stucco - Repton disliked red brick which Repton felt 'put the whole valley in a fever'. A single-storied east wing was added, containing a large, bow-windowed drawing room and conservatory (only half of Repton's proposed double-winged villa). A portico of four Ionic columns completed the fashionable Palladian facade, set against a landscape of meadows and cultivated fields.

The park was enlarged up to the river Wid to the north, and this vista was remodelled with various Reptonian features - a narrow artificial lake, clumps of trees, a walled garden and gracefully curving approach roads.

In 1815, the house was bought by a French merchant banker, Pierre Labouchere. He completed Repton's intended symmetry with a west wing. He was a great patron of the arts, especially collecting the works of the Danish neo-classical sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen. In addition, he was a pioneering horticulturalist and built a 300-foot-long heated conservatory in the flower garden, and forced exotic fruit in the walled kitchen garden.

Upon Labouchere's death in 1839, the house was acquired for £50,000 by John Attwood, a Victorian entrepreneur, ironmaster and MP for Harwich. Attwood set about creating a grand country seat, enlarging the park to its greatest extent (590 acres). Employing the architect J B Papworth, he rebuilt the east wing, and part of the west wing, from their foundations in order to create a suite of grand reception rooms, with a second storey for bedrooms and bathrooms. Over the original central block, he added a third storey. The portico was dismantled and rebuilt with a wider passageway to shelter carriages.

Attwood also remodelled the interior. Only the Entrance Hall remained largely intact in its neo-Classical early nineteenth-century form.

Outside, Attwood built new servants' quarters between the house and Labouchere's stable block. A mile-long brick wall now screened the enlarged park from the London Road.

In 1854, Attwood's luck ran out. Found guilty of election bribery in 1847, his career and speculations failed, and the estate was put up for auction. After four years without an owner, the house - in a reduced park - was sold to Arthur Pryor, a brewer. Pryor, known as 'the squire', also financed the building of Widford Church.

Few changes of significance were made by Pryor and the succeeding owners, Sir Daniel Gooch (1905-1920), David Hodge (1920-1922) and Mr & Mrs Hanbury (1922-1962). Under Mrs Hanbury the ha-ha (garden boundary walled ditch) was built in its current form, rhododendron borders added, and the boundary wall was rebuilt to accommodate a wider A12 road. The house was put on the market after the death of Mrs Hanbury in 1962. A memorial garden in the grounds contains the ashes of three of the Hanbury family. Already in need of repair, the house suffered further in a fire which damaged the west wing.

Chelmsford Borough Council bought Hylands in 1966 and opened the 433 acre park to the public. The following year the house was listed as a Grade II building of special architectural and historical importance, and was upgraded in 1975 to Grade II*. Attwood's separate servants' block and some of the garden features were demolished but permission to demolish the main house was refused.

From 1985 to 1987, with a grant from English Heritage, the Council restored the exterior of the house to its neo-classical form. Attwood's third storey was removed, the wings were lowered in height, new hipped roofs were added, and the portico was rebuilt. Wet and dry rot, as well as furniture beetle, was eradicated and the house properly ventilated to prevent re-infestation. However, many original features, such as mahogany doors, pelmets and shutters were salvaged for future restoration.

Nick Wickenden
Chelmsford Borough Council