Clevedon Court
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CLEVEDON COURT After 1066, the Manor of Clevedon was granted to Matthew Mortagne whose family probably changed their name to de Clevedon before the middle of the twelfth century. By 1296, the manor was held by John de Clevedon. It is thought he built the house incorporating the mid-thirteenth century tower into the battlements. Edmund de Clevedon died in 1376 and his second wife Alice was entitled to a third of her late husband’s income for the rest of her life. There are four medieval court rolls relating to this period in the British Library, dated 1321, 1389, 1390 and 1397. The rolls give a fascinating insight to life in fourteenth century Somerset although there is little about the house or garden. The Dower Document which is attached to the 1389 roll, states Alice’s assets: And there is also there one dovecote that is worth per annum 5s. Item 1/3 part of the lord’s mill and worth per annum 15s 61/2d. Item one garden called west garden that is worth per annum 18d. Item 1 virgate price 10d. Item 1.3 part of pasture in the park worth 20d. Item 1.3 part of a wood on Northdon containing 10 acres price [per?] acre at present 6s 8d if sold and Item 1.3 part of a wood on Calso containing 2 acres 1 rood price [er?] acre 2s_ _ _ pasture none which [is] of no value. In the fourteenth century, the de Clevedon’s would have spoken French, the villagers Middle English while important documents were written in Latin. The estate passed through the family to Sir Thomas Lovel’s daughter Alice; she married Sir Thomas Wake of Northamptonshire. According to John Collinson in History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, 1791, Clevedon remained in the Wake family until Sir Baldwin Wake married Abigail, daughter of Sir George Digby of Coleshill in Warwickshire. However, it would appear that Collinson is incorrect. VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com Elizabeth Digby was the daughter of George and Abigail Digby of Coleshill in Warwickshire, and she married Baldwin Wake, 1st Baronet Wake of Clevedon at St. Margaret’s Westminster in 1600. Their son, John Wake was born in 1602 and it is likely that John sold Clevedon Court to his uncle, John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol in 1630, possibly on the death of his mother. [The Earl’s nephew was Baron Digby; see Sherborne]. The Manor was described as having ‘two gardens, an orchard, a fayre court a strong and large barne, and other out houses, besides 60 acres of wood and coppice.’ Digby, a hard-line Royalist, had recently been released from the Tower of London and after the Battle of Edghill and the King’s defeat, Digby travelled to Paris where he died in 1653. Clevedon was inherited by Digby’s son George, a charismatic man who wrote letters attacking Roman Catholics in 1638 and 1639, converted to Catholicism by 1657, opposed Charles I and was hiding from 1663 to 1665 before converting back to Protestantism. Although he married twice, Digby died without issue in 1667. His life was summed up by Horace Walpole: ‘a singular person whose life was one contradiction’. In 1709, Clevedon was bought by Abraham Elton, a successful Bristol merchant, and his son, Abraham. They restored the house and created the terraced gardens as shown in a contemporary oil painting which hangs in the house. The painting shows the Manor enclosed by a series of walls. The inner walls include the west façade of the house and opens on to three compartments divided by pink gravel with a further enclosure to the north with a crenellated north wall and accessed through an arch from the terrace. There is a gap in the west perimeter wall, allowing a view over the fields and presumably a ha-ha to prevent the sheep getting into the garden. The north façade looks over a larger garden with a circular bastion to the east so visitors could look over the garden and the fields beyond. Above is another terrace – now called ‘The Pretty Terrace’ – with an exedra at the east end and a summerhouse to the west. There is an inner and outer forecourt; the B3130 now runs through the latter. Beyond are three long stewponds with the Land Yeo beyond; often more than one pond was built to keep different types of fish and to keep the breeding area separate from the rest. [The land directly south of the house was also known as Tuck Mills and it had another use according to the Nailsea and District Local History Society; it was used for fulling cloth. Cloth was fulled or felted by hammering while the cloth was still damp and in 1342 John de Clevedon was responsible for keeping an account of the cloth exported from Somerset. In 1390 his son, also called John, exported 24 cloths to Gascony on the Jonet of Bristol, owned by John Cornkey. By 1400, Bristol was the second provincial city in England with cloth making and export representing 40% of the national output; Somerset produced the most. A survey of 1630 by Wake shows that this area stretched to three and a half acres although it’s not known if the Mill was still in use.] VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com Further out on the hillside an archway can be seen (although no remains have been found) and along the road a carriage pulled by horses. The building is probably Wake’s Tower, clearly marked on Sexton’s map of 1646, and whose fate is described by Collinson: …a tower formerly stood, called Wake’s Tower, from the family of Wake, who were lords of the manor, and erected it as a place of observation. This tower has long since been demolished, and in its place, about the year 1738, Mr. Elton built a summerhouse, which also is gone to ruin. The area between the Tower and the house seems to be part wilderness with several drives cut through it and part common land. In the distance is Walton Castle overlooking the Bristol Channel. To the right of Clivedon Court is what appears to be another formal garden with a fountain and a circle of grass and some further buildings. Above the grass is another wilderness with two paths, one straight, the other winding their way to a square building with a portico, presumably a summerhouse. On the Ordinance Survey map of 1902, there are numerous paths to Wood Cottage; it is now known as Queen Anne Cottage. The Octagon and Summerhouse at either end of the Pretty Terrace were added by Sir Abraham Elton IV in 1760s. J D Sedding, Garden Craft Old & New, 1892, enjoyed ‘the hanging gardens at Clevedon Court [which] afford a good example of what can be done by a judicious formation of ground where the house is situated near the base of a slope’. Although Gertrude Jekyll doesn’t mention the house by name, she describes the garden in Walls and Water Gardens, 1901. Jekyll felt that there was a ‘poverty of scheme’ on the Middle Terrace while she criticized Dame Agnes Elton’s choice of plants on the Upper Terrace: ‘But the planting at its base seems in these more horticulturally enlightened days to be quite indefensible. The foot of one of the noblest ranges of terrace walls in England is too good to be given over to the most commponplace forms of bedding’. To the rear of the house, a new formal garden was laid out in 1857 but this has since been removed along with some of the outer buildings. Although the sound of the M5 can be heard from the house and little remains of the early eighteenth-century garden, Clevedon is a fascinating place. The terraces are beautiful with the woods stretching up Court Hill while the house is filled with an eclectic collection of paintings. I could not have written such a detailed history of Clevedon without the help of Nailsea and District Local History Society, Jane Lilly and especially David Fogden – with many thanks. VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com .