Suggesting an estimated valuation of £6,000,000-£9,000,000 the auctioneers Christie’s left potential bidders at their 2022 ‘Exceptional Sale’ in little doubt.
see: Christie’s [video]
‘The ‘Hellier’ violin [is] a rare masterpiece executed circa 1679 by the genius craftsman Antonio Stradivari, without doubt his finest inlaid violin, previously in the greatest collections of musical instruments.’ Presently lying in a vault somewhere in Switzerland, for some two centuries this feted fiddle resided at the home of the family whose name still attaches, a property which, unlike the Hellier Stradivarius, has never once changed hands by sale.
After well over 800 years, Wombourne Wodehouse remains ‘a remarkable oasis’1 just a 20-minute bus ride from Wolverhampton city centre, wholly private ‘and lived in as much now as at any time in the past centuries’.2 This prodigious feat of continuity is all the more remarkable given the regular lack of direct heirs: an unhelpful recurrence of childless owners, and various semi-detached squires two of whom met with romantic disappointment but would each find noteworthy expression through architecture and music.
see: Google Maps
While necessitated handbrake turns in the line of descent have several times changed the name of its owner, that of the house itself has merely been quaintly tweaked. Established in a clearing on the wooded slopes above the Wom Brook in 12th century, over time its occupants became known as the Woodhouse family…
… subsequent generations of whom created ‘the late-medieval timber-framed core of the present house. By the middle of the 17th century gabled wings had been added to each end of the south side, Edward Woodhouse (d.1688) the first of the family to style himself ‘gent’.’3
But this self-improvement came at some cost, and Edward’s son John would inherit an estate significantly burdened with financial liabilities. At the time of his and his similarly unmarried brother’s deaths in 1702 several mortgages had been raised against the property. Foreclosure soon followed and before the decade was out the Woodhouse ‘had passed to Samuel Hellier (I), a London brewer and the son-in-law of one of the mortgagees’.3
The Field4
Though Samuel Hellier would establish the family vault in Wombourne’s St. Benedict Biscop church, within which he was duly interred in 1727, he seems to have had minimal involvement at the Woodhouse, unlike his lawyer son, Samuel Hellier (II) whose improvements included a new dog-leg staircase introduced within the medieval parlour, and extensive panelling. He also initiated improvements to the grounds, presumably still in development at time of his death in 1751, six years after that of his wife Sarah Huntbach, when the couple’s only son was just fifteen years old.
The continuing education of young Samuel (III) was overseen by a trio of guardians whose influence carried him to Exeter College, Oxford, for six years, much of which was spent in pursuit of his passion for music, especially that of his hero, George Frederick Handel. Proficient on both violin and harpsichord, Hellier had inherited a well-stocked library at the Woodhouse, the musical contents of which he was soon enthusiastically (and rather expensively) supplementing.
His father’s collections also included ‘particular pamphlets at one time likely to have been considered subversive’, indicative of Jacobite leanings.5 Rather more pressing for his son, however, would be a festering conflict on the domestic front, and which proved to be almost a lifelong battle.
*
‘The few remarks I shall make [of] the old Lady are these, That she has a Heart as hard as a Rock [and is] of a most Tyrannical, Cruel, uncharitable disposition.’6
The ‘old lady’ in question being his grandmother, Sarah Huntbach, who presided over what would in time be Samuel’s maternal inheritance, the estate of the Huntbach family at Featherstone, ten miles north of Wombourne. Having come of age, Hellier had at last returned from university fired with creative ideas for his Staffordshire property, and also freighted with the armfuls of music manuscripts eagerly acquired during his student days.
Her grandson’s arty instincts, and related expenditure, were perhaps deemed somewhat frivolous up at Featherstone, for Mrs. Huntbach kept a frustratingly tight hold on the purse strings throughout her life. A life which, alas for Samuel, turned out to be very long one, Sarah surviving until her hundredth year, only eighteen months before Hellier’s own demise. Though the Wombourne property (and its mineral rights) gave Samuel financial autonomy he would always feel under-resourced, particularly in light of his noble ambitions for the estate.
see: Alan Terrill @ geograph
These ambitions were fired to no little extent by a remarkable (and contagious) outbreak of romantic landscaping locally, which would see the nearby great estate parklands of the Earl of Stamford at Enville Hall (left) and Lord Lyttleton at Hagley transformed with picturesque features and vistas, under the direction of Sanderson Miller and others. Hellier was keen to join in but, with rather less resources at his disposal, would take greatest inspiration from the schemes of poet William Shenstone at his smaller property The Leasowes at Halesowen. (These three estates constituted a ‘must-see’ mid-18th century Midlands circuit.)
A further practical impediment to the realisation of Samuel’s aspirations was the fact that he could not bear to spend too much time in Staffordshire, becoming increasingly allergic to its provincial mindset. “I am wasting the very Prime Part of my days in a Lonely Country House where I’ve no society, or such as my ideas cannot square with,” he wrote in 1763, now a 26-year-old knight of the realm (having been granted the honour when High Sheriff of Worcestershire the year before).
So began a decade of developments at Wombourne which, for the most part, Hellier would attempt to micro-manage remotely, finding the cultural soirees of the capital hosted by such as artist Paul Sandby – accessible from his Holborn residence – altogether more congenial. And it was at one such event that Sir Samuel encountered a young architect just striking out on his own after years understudying Sir William Chambers at the Office of Works.
see: VCH
Long before he vaulted (somewhat opportunistically) from ‘architectural nonentity’ to dazzling heights creating the jewels of Georgian Dublin, James Gandon‘s first known solo work was a modest, quirky commission courtesy of Samuel Hellier, who wanted a small but perfectly formed classical temple to his hero, Handel.7 This edifice (r) was one of a suite of features to be encountered along a highly considered, edifying amble through the nine-acre woodland behind his country house.
A grotto, a hermitage featuring a life-sized animated figure (‘Father Francis’) and a Music Room complete with working organ were other elements to be encountered en route, the civilising experience further heightened by strategically placed epigrammatic signage (highly derivative of The Leasowes).
see: VCH
And to be seen in the distance from a grand Gothic seat (left) Samuel Hellier commissioned ‘a 6-feet 4-inch golden dragon weathervane’ to be placed atop Wombourne church.8 When the church’s spire came to be rebuilt a century on the weight of this object was deemed unsafe and it was relocated to the cupola of the large stable block at the Wodehouse…
… where it remains today unlike everything else from this grand project. ‘[As he] had to build on the cheap Hellier’s charmingly gimcrack follies deteriorated quickly once later owners took less interest.’9 Their vulnerability (to the elements and the depredation of curious locals) made them high maintenance; it had fallen to his man on the ground, estate steward John Rogers to project-manage, hectored by the squire’s weekly missives [preserved among the Wodehouse muniments but excellently digitised here] giving directions and demanding updates.
Hellier also commissioned a splendid new organ for the parish church from London maker Abraham Adcock (promising to “Wombourne people .. ‘Twill make you all alive”) and it was public music-making which would give the Woodhouse a very distinctive edge against the grander stately attractions of Enville and Hagley. With an inherited and now much augmented collection of scores and instruments at his disposal (including the Stradivarius ‘almost certainly inherited from his uncle John Hellier’), Samuel evidently held ‘a strong conviction that music was a necessary ingredient in the life of the community’.10
Thus, additional to his regular estate duties, John Rogers would also be tasked not only with learning to play the organ (of which there were now several around and about) but also with talent-spotting amongst the locals (his gardener/horn player brother Daniel standing out), and organising tutoring and rehearsals.
see: Edinburgh Uni. Musical Instruments Museum
From London, meanwhile, Hellier was constantly supplying musical instruments and scores (by Handel, Thomas Arne, William Boyce et al), and handy tips to improve his little orchestra: “The principal Thing to promote Singing well is to keep the teeth clean, a maxim universally observed by all the performers in Publick.”
Alas, after several years collective enthusiasm for this distinctive aspect of life on the estate began to wane; another initiative, a charitable school for Wombourne’s poor, also foundered thanks, Hellier believed, to the mean-spiritedness of his local peers. And his ‘carefully thought out’ woodland walk would ultimately prove too popular for his liking, the behaviour of locals ever living down to his estimation.8 (“The Staffordshire People continue in ye Rough, uncivilized state they were in, when William ye Conqueror subdued this island.”)
Another among the sundry disappointments which crowded in upon Sir Samuel was his bachelor status. ‘He [had] experienced two fractured love affairs the second of which, ending with a horse-whipping by the irate father of the girl, marked the end of Hellier’s amorous career.’10 Unloading to a lawyer friend, Sir Samuel had once confided:
“I am in a state of Dispair [that] I will marry at all, Even if its a kitchen Wench or a Girl out of a workhouse. I am convinced one Hours Chatt with a truly Virtuous woman is preferable to a whole years enjoyment with a whore.”
In Hellier’s later years trusty John Rogers (and equally put-upon housekeeper, Mrs. Beech) would increasingly be urged to intercede with his ‘hard hearted’ grandmother on account of his declining health. “Pray inform Mrs. Beech she must not let ye old Lady rest, till She gets Some Money for me, my Physician, a Gentleman of ye first Consequence in London, Solemnly declares I must go directly to Bath, my Life is in danger, and nothing else will do any good.”
(There was perhaps a touch of humbug about Hellier’s pleading. “My appetite is exceedingly bad, so that I can eat little, or nothing, and often what I do eat I vomit up again. However a friend of mine has requested me to send for a Stubble Goose, which will be a pleasure to see them partake of if I am unable to do so. Send up your nicest you can get – not a rank Coarse Goose but one as is well fed – [and] a Partridge or two, or a hare, with it.’ A week later he reported that “the Goose and Brace of Partridges came safe .. very sweet‘.)
Sir Samuel had long felt that ‘the old Lady’ could have been more supportive, and that the limited means at his disposal had stymied his personal and creative aspirations. Concerning the Woodhouse itself, James Gandon’s additional design for a new wing had come to nothing, likewise later negotiations with architect Joseph Pickford, after which he would write (↑) resignedly, “I suppose I must Drop all further thoughts of repairing the old mansion”.11
Even when at long last old Sarah Huntbach passed away, willing her grandson as principal beneficiary of the Featherstone estate, Sir Samuel still found plenty to moan about. Despite taking pains to ensure she had a quality burial (“I shall send a Hatchment elegantly designed to adorn the hearse”) he appears not to have attended the funeral, but wished to be “informed what people say about it, and how many Thousand faults they find, and what Torrents of uncharitable abuse they bestow upon me, the County is famous for it. They are without exception the vilest, good for nothing people upon the whole earth.”
*
“Neither my friend Mr. Shaw, nor any other person in the whole County, never once paid me [a] trifling Compliment, to wish me my Health, to enjoy the little addition of Fortune which falls to me by the old Lady’s Death,” Sir Samuel wrote to Rogers in January, 1783. “Probably I am too ill beloved and very little respected – but such omissions make a great impression on me, and I take great notice of it.”
But this perceived slight by ‘Mr. Shaw’ – the Rev. Thomas Shaw, 52, rector St. John’s, Wolverhampton, and Hellier’s lifelong friend and advisor – was plainly insufficient to cause Sir Samuel to alter his will which, at his own death the following year, bequeathed Shaw the entire Wombourne estate. Soon after, the fortunate cleric would formally comply with Sir Samuel’s stipulation that he and his heirs change their name to Shaw-Hellier.
see source
Rev. Thomas Shaw-Hellier may have entertained radical change at the Woodhouse as speculative designs (↑) by architect John Plaw for a classical replacement of the old house were produced. But again these came to nothing and upon the arrival of a namesake grandson in 1802, Shaw-Hellier placed the estate in trust for him, granting own his son James rent-free residence for life. But following the latter’s death Thomas Shaw-Hellier appears to have lived most of his adult life elsewhere, a somewhat peripatetic existence dictated by his passion for the hunting field.
see: Britain From Above
His residences would include Packwood House in Warwickshire and a house in Lincolnshire before returning to Staffordshire (and mastership of the Albrighton Hunt), but not to Wombourne. Rather, the outsized Victorian squire purchased Rodbaston Hall (r), 15 miles north near Cannock Chase, dying there in 1870. The military career of his son, Col. Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier would also necessitate protracted absence…
… lessees of the Woodhouse in his time including the Hon. Philip Stanhope, Liberal MP for Wednesbury. who would host William Gladstone there in 1888. Nevertheless, the artistically-inclined soldier – whose career would culminate as Commandant of the Royal Military School of Music – initiated two significant bouts of remodelling which would come to define the house as it stands today.
The Field4
In the 1870s Col. Shaw-Hellier engaged the services of hitherto predominantly ecclesiastical architect (and ‘confirmed bachelor’) George Frederick Bodley. ‘A three-storey porch and pretty pedimented oriel windows were added to the entrance front, and bay windows inserted into the drawing room. [The latter] was fitted out with panelling in a free late-17th century manner that incorporated a full-height chimneypiece. The room survives intact with its original furnishings.’12
And soon after retiring from the military in 1893 the Colonel became an early private patron of Bodley’s former pupil, leading Arts and Crafts architect Charles Robert Ashbee, founder of the Guild of Handicrafts. Reflecting the romantic nostalgia of this movement the detail of the entrance front of the now restyled ‘Wodehouse’ was further enlivened; most strikingly (above, right) a cavernous chapel, with a tall concave gable, and a billiard room were added to the east.
At the opposite end of the house, meanwhile, some of the gables (↑) would be replaced with a lettered parapet proclaiming ‘Domum Dulce Domum’ (‘Home sweet home’ being the Old Wykehamist’s alma mater).
see: Bates & Hindmarsh
In 1899, to the surprise of perhaps even the participants themselves, the 63-year-old bachelor squire quietly married a not-much-younger distant cousin, Harriet Bradney Marsh, spinster chatelaine of neighbouring neo-classical mansion, Lloyd House. (Though this property was put up for sale in 1901 a modern map of the Wodehouse Estate extends to its surrounding land.) But this unexpected alliance has been characterized as ‘disastrous’ and in 1907 the Colonel decided to cast off a life of convention for a final chapter of unabashed fun in the sun.13
*
‘Taormina [in Sicily] was a town with a sophisticated lotos-eating immigrant population, a resort for artists, a resting place for tubercular Englishmen, and a gathering ground for homosexuals.’14 It was here that Shaw-Hellier now retreated, turning once again to CR Ashbee to build him a new residence on a virgin hillside site among the orange groves, with spectacular Mediterranean views.
see: The Ashbee
‘In the house Shaw-Hellier rented while awaiting his own villa, to which he had transported his old English butler Harry, he kept two pianos, a pianola and an American organ, all of which he played with a most erratic vigour. He was always giving parties .. of rather frenzied gaiety,’13 often attended by bisexual Ashbee and his wife Janet, ‘who had no illusions about the old colonel’s ménage, humming with beautiful Sicilian boys’.15
see: Brewery History
see: Brewery History
Meanwhile, a world away back in Staffordshire, Wombourne Wodehouse became the residence of his designated heir, nephew Evelyn Simpson (Shaw-Hellier upon inheriting in 1910), already a man of some means whose marriage to Fanny Phillips had linked two provincial brewing dynasties.
Suddenly the Wodehouse was a real family home, soon gaining a sizable service wing while the shortlived chapel and billiard room were now divided up into more practical domestic spaces. In 1915 the Gallipoli campaign claimed the life of the new squire’s son, Arthur. Following his own death in 1922 the Wodehouse entered into well over half-a-century as a female domain, home to spinster sisters Mollie and Dorothy Shaw-Hellier.
see: The Ashbee
‘Delightfully Edwardian, and retaining a taste for fast motoring,’ they had also inherited the Villa San Giorgio in Sicily (r) which they visited annually until its sale in 1950 (now The Ashbee Hotel).16 Previously their father had sold the ‘Hellier’ Stradivarius violin out of the family in 1911, after which the 18th-century music collections of Sir Samuel…
see: Google Maps
… later cherished and supplemented by Col. Shaw-Hellier, were all but forgotten. But in the mid-1960s the many instruments and ‘and two hundred year old music library of around three hundred volumes’ were rediscovered ‘in the stable buildings of the Wodehouse’, to the great excitement of musicologists.17 The manuscripts are today housed at the Barber Institute for Fine Art in Birmingham while the 54 musical instruments are on loan to the Musical Instruments Museum of the University of Edinburgh.
One Saturday evening in the summer of 1981, 84-year-old Dorothy Shaw-Hellier, who had occupied the Wodehouse alone since her sister’s death in 1975, made a fateful decision to drive the short distance to the estate’s walled garden to gather flowers. Emerging from the gates her car was in collision with a motorcycle whose rider luckily sustained only minor injuries but Miss Shaw-Hellier died two hours later in The Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton.
see: Google Maps
see: Express & Star
source18
The Wodehouse now passed to her first cousin twice-removed, Banbury farmer John Phillips who had already been managing the estate, visiting weekly…
… over the previous decade. His family now relocated to Staffordshire, the replacement of century-old wiring and plumbing among the early priorities of a rolling programme of renovations to the house and its ’18-acre gardens, full of unusual plants and blooms’.19 In time, the latter would be regularly opened for charity; John Phillips died in 2002, ‘three years to the day since the death of his wife of 52 years, Carolyn.’
see source
Since when the Wombourne Wodehouse has been home to the family of their son Henry Phillips who last year submitted a selection of paintings from the Wodehouse collection for auction including several works by ‘obscure but talented Wolverhampton artist’ James Shaw. Happily, these did not include his portrait of Sir Samuel Hellier (r), the man whose gift of this ‘enthralling place’20 so spectacularly benefitted Shaw’s older brother the Rev. Thomas, and whose various enthusiasms have latterly given singular historical resonance to ‘the little world of which he was its cultural engine’.10
‘Looking particularly pleased with himself in a dazzling silver coat with gold tassels set off with a lacy Vandyke collar,’9 the high-minded, well-intentioned but all too frequently frustrated parochial impresario…
see: Anneke Scott @ X
see: Edinburgh Uni.
… would no doubt be most gratified to discover that there are still plenty today who are only too glad to (quite literally) blow his trumpet…
As national Chief Acquisitions Officer tasked with sourcing timber for the Second World War effort, the 6th baron ‘was especially severe in the inroads he made into his own woods’ on his Yorkshire estate.19 Lord Bolton died in 1963. Earlier in his life Nigel Orde-Powlett had published some (now very 
In contrast to the civility of the Category A-
‘Residential property on Ilchester Place is the most expensive in the country,’ it was 
The north and south fronts received near-identical treatment (r), five two-storey bays defined by stacked pilasters being squeezed between the existing gable ends. The east front, however, was entirely rebuilt, the result being described variously as ‘delightfully provincial confusion’7 or ‘maldroit artisan Baroque’.8 Fronting three new rooms including a 5-bay hall was ‘a Classical facade of 11 bays with an overly narrow central section and a pediment which uncomfortably fails to span the full width’.(↓)1
Ultimately, the widow of the 4th Baron Holland brokered the sale of the estate to her husband’s kinsman Henry, 5th Earl of Ilchester, who soon initiated further bespoke building work on the heavily-mortgaged property. From 1875 a series of large houses ‘designed by leading architects for successful artists’ would be erected on the north side of Kensington High Street.9 Holland House itself was preserved only to be destroyed in WWII. While the surviving parkland was sold to London Corporation and remains a prized 
Handed on 