Clophill House

The next owner of which we have record was Frederick Hargreaves-Smith, an army officer formerly of Hythe in Kent, who bought the house in 1913 from Mrs A. A. W. Thomas and others, heirs to Thomas Adcock under the terms of his will of 1886, for £750. She was the widow of his son John Whitteridge Adcock. Mary Phillips reports that it was they who opened up the terraces of the garden to create the current lawns, where previously they had been filled with trees and shrubs. It was probably them that added the steps between the terraces of the garden. Mrs Phillips reports that Mrs Hargreaves-Smith nearly bought a sundial from the Phillips antique shop in Hitchin, long before the Phillip's themselves came to Clophill, and writes with approval how they furnished the house with antiques. After the war, in 1919, they sold the property to Walter Merton. He was of German origin but had come from Queens Gate in London and, Mary Phillips writes, "feelings were too strong in 1920 for friendly relations with the neighbourhood." It must have been very unpleasant for them as they only stayed a year.

In 1920 the house was bought by Frederick Hancock who ran it as a guest house for a group of ex-army officers who had invested in a large poultry farm on Bedford Road. These included a Captain Skipworth, whose wife was the sister of Mr Chapman, the owner of Campton Manor nearby. A Captain Rothwell lived at Clophill House with his young daughter. He was a widower and eventually married Mrs Tanqueray-Willaume, daughter of the Tanquerays who lived at Ivy House just along the High Street and herself a widow with three young daughters. They moved out of Clophill House to Oakley House after the poultry farm business folded so Mr Hancock sold Clophill House and moved to Fermbreck on the Bedford Road.

The buyer, in 1924 was Cecil Laura Soundy. He was a Biggleswade shopkeeper and bought the house for his wife when they married in 1923. The Soundy's added a second bathroom as ensuite to the Master Bedroom and dug up the grass tennis court to make the top lawn. They had intended to lay a hard court but ran out of money. She was much younger than him and it seems things did not work out as the economy went into the Great Depression. They tried to sell for several years, including putting it up for auction where it didn't reach its reserve. They finally sold, at the end of 1935, to Mary Phillips, wife of Amyas Phillips of Phillips Antiques in Hitchin.

The Phillips's took great delight in Clophill House and in 1936 launched a major programme of restoration on the house, stripping away much of the changes wrought by the Victorians and restoring the house to its more open Georgian form. They brought the house and gardens pretty much to their current form. They also purchased the cottage at 2 Mill Lane bringing it back into the fold of Clophill House for the first time in 300 years.

We were fortunate, in 2007, to get the opportunity to talk with Ron Grummet, then aged 93 and living at 54 High Street, who had done much of the building work for Mr Phillips. Much of the work he was able to describe was done later in the Phillips period, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as the rebuilding of the two front windows in the Library, the rebuilding of the top parapet and the installation of the railings at the top of the garden (which Amyas Phillips had imported from Italy). He reported that Mr Phillips was very particular about him using the correct bricks and mortar, yet actually the new brickwork is easy to identify as being quite different from the original brickwork in type and style. He recalled the men who came to fit the oil tank in the garden in 1936, wearing shirts and ties, and ruefully that he had had to do most of the work so they wouldn't get dirty.

He told us that when the windows were being replaced he and his fellow brickie, Tommy Ellis, had slept in the room to guard the house while its windows were missing. Amyas Phillips was very proud of his garden at Clophill and drove a large Rolls Royce, needing his gardener to open the gates and check for traffic before he could drive out onto the road. During the war Phillips was Captain of the local Home Guard platoon, who were drilled in the gardens at Clophill House. Many of them carved their initials into the brickwork by the kitchen and stables, as did the gardeners apparently, for the walls are literally covered in scribed initials. Mr Grummet told us how he had removed the iron gates on Mill lane corner early in the war. In her history Mary Phillips describes them as "extremely ugly" and notes with glee the horror of the neighbours when they were removed and the old gateway bricked up.

In 1938 their friend Edward Wenham published his book "Old Furniture for Modern Homes" and illustrated it with photographs of the interior of the now-restored Clophill House as of January 1939. We have two copies of the book (one that we searched for based on Mary Phillip's note in her history, and finally found; the other it turned out we already had a copy that Katie's family had bought many years previously).
Shortly after Amyas Phillips died in 1963, Mary Phillips sold Clophill House and moved back to Hitchin with her son Jerome. She finally died there in 2007 aged 100. It should be stated that she did a huge amount of historical work on Clophill and its surrounding area and freely shared her knowledge publishing a book "The Clophill Story" and several articles as well as leaving a detailed history of the house for subsequent owners. She was well known and liked in Clophill and maintained an interest in it long after she had moved away until her health no longer permitted. We have added to her history and, by discovering new information not available to Mrs Phillips, have been able to correct some of the errors in her work, however we pay tribute to the fact that all of our small work is based on the huge and solid foundation she laid for us.