Clophill House

Some time between 1719 and 1738 Thomas White rebuilt Clophill House to give it it's current frontage. The house was sold after the death of Henry Gaskin in 1717 and came into the hands of Thomas White at some point after that. White appears to be resident in Clophill by 1720 so it is reasonable to assume he was living at Clophill House. In 1733 White took on the tenancy of Clophill Mill, so that later date is also possible with the house in unknown hands during the interim. Anyway in 1738 Thomas White insured his rebuilt property so the work had by then been completed.

White's first rebuilding of Clophill House was to remove the roof and front wall of the old shop and to build a new frontage with a new first floor above and an attic above that, leaving the front of the house looking much as it does now. The main house would still have only been one room deep for the stair well and drawing room part with its mansard roof were not to be added until much later. Until that time people had to pass from the front hall into the panelled room and then through a now bricked up doorway into what is now the dining room. At the first floor in the Green Bedroom there is a scar clearly visible in the front wall, to the right, where the door would have been to connect the room with the rest of the house. The front room - what is now the dining room with its three windows - would have been somewhat smaller as it would have held the stairwell behind the centre window of the house. The foot of the staircase is still present in the cellar below the library and it would have extended up to the attic, where it would have ended in what is now the corridor between the front and rear attics rooms. These attic rooms are original to the 1719 rebuilt structure, as is the hallway between them the sides of which show the beams from the slice of roof that was removed to make it into a corridor after the stairwell was removed.

Around 1742 White made further changes by renewing the timbers to the old farm house, presumably to make this into the kitchen wing. Dendrochronology has dated the new beams to 1740-1. This was when the high wall was built in the garden, separating the formal garden from the servants' part. In the ceiling of the Yellow Room, over the bed, can be seen the scar in the plaster where a dormer window that would have overlooked the main gardens must have been. The Whites did not want their servants to share in their garden, however this is not to say that the servants were treated badly, as the following change illustrates.

Looking at the front of the house we see the ten Georgian windows with arched brickwork above them yet square frames within. This was a later fashion and the original windows would have been similarly arched, as per early Georgian fashion in window design. We know (having repaired them) that the existing windows are very old, early Georgian, so White must have replaced his first set with a second set later to keep up with fashion. What happened and why can be seen from looking at the Kitchen wing from the side in the vegetable garden. We see two large Georgian sash windows that are out of keeping with the rest of the structure which has been modified to accommodate them. The ceiling has been cut away in one of the rooms to fit the window in and the other window is now mounted in a bay that is much later. Originally it too would have been set in the wall, as the scar in the wall above the lead roof of the bay indicates its position.

Looking at the windows more closely we note that they are early Georgian single sash windows with arched tops, exactly as would have been fitted at the front of the house. Only one of the sashes (the upper one) has counter weights in the box sides where later Georgian windows have counterweights on both sash panels. We can only conjecture that White, having fitted his house with highly modern sash windows - then a new innovation in British architecture that had come from Holland only thirty years previously when William of Orange took the throne as William III with his wife Mary as co-regent after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. White then found that the technology was rapidly changing so he re-fitted the windows at the front of the house with the improved design and salvaged two of his original set to use in the servants' wing to give more light to the rooms.

White, however, was evidently not satisfied with his new house. The arrangement of the rooms in the main part was inconvenient. It made sense to add a new stair hall in the angle of the L of the main part of the house, so as to connect to all the rooms, and to make this part of the house more square by adding an entra room at each level. At some point after 1750 the rear wing of the house, with its mansard roof, was added. The bannisters on the stairs can be dated according to style, as fashions in banister design changed every few years - this places them at around 1750-5. Dendrochronology has dated the timbers in the ceilings to the range from 1750 to 1770, however we know that White died in 1755 and that the Reynolds' came to live at Clophill shortly thereafter. It seems much more likely that it was White that built this part before he died, though the attic room was probably intended as a nursery as the nice bannisters extend all the way up and the upper stairwell is lit by a long window, features that one would not expect in a part of any house of that period reserved for servants.

The stair window is also interesting. Viewed from the outside it looks as though it has three sashes in height. Viewed from the inside and from above we see that the 'top' sash is infact a deliberate optical illusion by spacing the mullions of the top most part of the window further apart to look as if they were projected forwards. It is a clever trick by the joiner. It should also be noted that these windows are quite different to those of the front of the house. The mullions and transoms are much thinner and more delicate in design.