Wyfold Court

Wyfold Court
Wyfold Court
Shown in Oxfordshire
Geography
Location Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire, England
Coordinates 51°32′09″N 1°01′08″W / 51.5359°N 1.0188°W / 51.5359; -1.0188Coordinates: 51°32′09″N 1°01′08″W / 51.5359°N 1.0188°W / 51.5359; -1.0188
Organisation
Care system National Health Service
Funding Public hospital
Hospital type Mental health
History
Founded 1932
Closed 1993

Wyfold Court is a country house at Rotherfield Peppard in south Oxfordshire. It is a Grade II* listed building.[1]

History

The house was designed by George Somers Leigh Clarke for the Lancashire cotton magnate and Conservative politician Edward Hermon and was built between 1874 and 1884.[1]

Wyfold Court has a 14 window range of non-uniform material, mostly of stone mullion and transom windows with "elaborate carved hoods".[1] The building is built of scarlet brick with blue brick diapers (geometric patterns) and yellow stone details.[2] Its style combines the Flamboyant period of French Gothic architecture with a touch of Scots Baronial.[2] The front façade has towers with corner turrets, gargoyles and traceried windows; its garden front has mullioned bay windows and brick gable (facing roof walls) with crocketed heraldic beasts.[2] Indoors, the main corridor is rib vaulted with staircase hall and a multi-storey wide bay window with stained glass of royal coats of arms.[2] In the 1970s critic Jennifer Sherwood summarised its architecture as a "Nightmare Abbey".[2]

Hermon's only daughter was Frances Caroline Hermon who married Robert Hodge. Hodge secured a seat in the Commons at the 1895 general election as MP for the Southern or Henley Division of Oxfordshire.[3] He was created a baronet as Sir Robert Hodge of Wyfold Court in July 1902[4] and later ennobled as Baron Wyfold in May 1919.[5]

After his wife died in 1929, Hodge had little use for such a large house and, in 1932, he sold it to the Government who converted it for medical use as Borocourt Hospital.[1] It joined the National Health Service in 1948.[6] In 1981 Silent Minority, a documentary film made by Nigel Evans for ATV, highlighted the conditions of mental patients at the Borocourt Hospital and at St Lawrence's Hospital in Caterham.[7]

After the introduction of Care in the Community in the 1980s the hospital reduced in size and closed in 1993.[8] It has since been returned to residential use.[9]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Historic England. "Borocourt Hospital (1180805)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 18 June 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Sherwood & Pevsner 1974, p. 738.
  3. ↑ "New Members of Parliament". The Times. 29 July 1895. p. 13.
  4. ↑ "No. 27457". The London Gazette. 25 July 1902. p. 4738.
  5. ↑ "Baron Wyfold". Cracrofts Peerage. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  6. ↑ "Borocourt Hospital, Reading". National Archives. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  7. ↑ "Deception row over hospital TV film". Glasgow Herald. 10 June 1981. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  8. ↑ "Borocourt Hospital, Reading". National Archives. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  9. ↑ "Wyfold Court". Britannia. Retrieved 5 October 2018.

Sources

  • Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Rotherfield Peppard: Penguin Books. pp. 737–738. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.
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