The Georgian Era

In the midst of this Georgian era of shifting land ownership, a rich man of Huguenot descent, who was already a landowner in London and Buckinghamshire, came to Heckfield looking for a property for his daughter. His name was John Lefevre. The Huguenots were Protestant Frenchmen. In the great religious wars between 1550 and 1648 the aristocratic families of Europe struggled for dominance by associating themselves with different religious parties. Henry IV, a Protestant, remained King of France by changing his religion to Catholicism. The Huguenots, however, continued to enjoy special rights and were allowed to hold fortified towns for their protection. Then the year 1660 saw the coming of age of the greatest absolute, centralized monarch of all European rulers — Louis XIV. Under him France enjoyed an age of expansion, and the French monarchy was pushed to new heights of power, but the Huguenots lost all rights concerning religion and protection and entered a terrible period of persecution.

In 1785 John Lefevre bought a small Jacobean (early Stuart) mansion called The Grove along with various surrounding land and properties. One of these properties was a farmhouse called Bakers with its accompanying fishing pond. It was here that Lefevre settled, and by 1790 his home was described as Heckfield Place. What he produced in the initial stage was a small box-like manor or hunting lodge with four major rooms on the ground floor and two upstairs floors. What remained of Bakers provided domestic offices, cellars and servants’ quarters. The old farm pond was extended to form a chain of lakes. Trees, which he loved, were planted on the sloping land around his house. It may seem strange that, having a Jacobean mansion, he chose not to use it, but instead, to expand a small country farmhouse. However, this simply pays tribute to his vision. Standing on what is now the terrace at Heckfield Place, he dreamed of a chain of glittering terraced lakes, flanked by slopes blooming with heather and framed by great trees imported from all over the world. With this new development in mind, the family chose to abandon The Grove in 1818. (In 1990 the North East Hampshire Historical and Archaeological Society began to unearth its remains in the farmland adjacent to Heckfield Place.)

In 1789 Lefevre’s daughter Helena married Charles Shaw, a barrister by profession, and the son of a Yorkshire vicar. Shaw added the name Lefevre to his own and took the arms of the Lefevres with their motto ‘sans changer’. Evidence of this motto can be seen in the LeFevre and Walpole rooms in the Heckfield Place manor house. When John Lefevre died in 1790, he left a large fortune to his daughter and son-in-law. In 1794 Charles Shaw-Lefevre II was born. He was to become arguably Heckfield’s most renowned native. He was educated at Winchester and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1819. Marrying a daughter of Mr Samuel Whitbread, the brother-in-law of Earl Grey, a British Prime Minister, he thus became connected with two influential political families. He inherited the Heckfield estate in 1823 at the age of 28, and in 1829 he entered the House of Commons as a member for Downton as a liberal. In 1831 he was returned, after a severe contest, as one of the county members for Hampshire. In 1832 he was elected for the Northern Division of the county. For some years Mr Shaw-Lefevre was chairman of a committee on petitions for private bills, and in 1835 he was chairman of a committee on agricultural distress. He acquired a high reputation in the House of Commons for being fair, tactful and courteous, and when Mr James Abercromby retired in 1839, Mr Shaw-Lefevre was nominated as the Liberal candidate for the Speaker of the House. The Conservatives put forward Henry Goulburn, but Mr Shaw-Lefevre was elected by 327 votes to 299. The period was one of fierce party conflict, and the debates were frequently heated, but the dignity, temper and firmness of the new speaker were never at fault. In 1857 he had served longer than any of his predecessors, except the celebrated Arthur Onslow (1691—1768), who was speaker for more than 33 years in five successive Parliaments. Retiring on a pension, he was made a Lord and given the title Viscount Eversley. His appearances in the House of Lords were very infrequent, but in his own county he was active in public service. From 1859 he was an ecclesiastical commissioner, and he was also appointed a trustee of the British Museum. He became warden of the church and contributed a lot of money to its restoration, as well as building the school at Hound’s Green.

Between them, father and son embarked on three great projects. The first was the house. The initial box-like house structure was not grand enough. They lived in an age when the value of a house was partly determined by the people who were within visiting distance, and the particulars of sale at the turn of the 19th century boasted the ‘many important country seats in the neighborhood including Stratfield Saye (Duke of Wellington), Bramshill (Sir Anthony Cope) and Elvetham Park (Lord Calthorpe). Such grand friends required more elaborate rooms, and their coachmen and servants still more accommodations. A large drawing room, a bigger dining room and more bedrooms were added as well as a bigger kitchen and more servants’ quarters. Marble chimney places were brought in from France for the reception rooms, and the plain brickwork of the house was decorated with quoin stones, window dressings and balustrades.

As the house became grander, their second great enterprise was the garden and pleasure park. A terrace was laid out on the northeast side of the house, enclosed by a stone balustrade, and furnished with Italian stone flower baskets and a fountain. A considerable portion of the heath (which had previously been common land) was enclosed to make the lawn on the southwest side of the house.

The third and most impressive endeavour of the family was the acquisition of land. Between 1790 and 1860, father and son bought every field, cottage and manor that they could lay their hands on, and they negotiated exchanges with their neighboring landowners until there was a consolidated estate of over 4,000 acres, reaching from Risely to the far end of Mattingly and including Hazeley Heath and Hazeley Bottom. In 1817 the father bought Putham Manor, and the following year he bought Hazel Manor. In 1886 the son bought the estate of Mark Wyeth of Hazeley Heath. The extent of their land ownership, their positions as Lords of the manor and their legal knowledge combined to enable them to bring all property on their land under their control as freeholds.

Lord Eversley died in December 1888 at the age of 94. His unmarried daughter Emma Laura succeeded him, his three sons having died in infancy. Miss Shaw-Lefevre was an eccentric Victorian, preferring to give her tea parties on the roof of the mansion. To gain access to the roof, she had to climb through a trap door, and in her Victorian dress this could not have been easy.

In 1895 she sold the property to Colonel Horace Walpole, a member of the great Norfolk family headed by the Earl of Orford. He brought with him his two daughters, Dorothy and Maude. In 1895 he completed the expansion of the property by buying the remainder of the Hawley estates in Mattingley.