Comparatively, the venerable viscountcy of Hereford is going through one of its seat-less phases. Created in 1550 and now on viscount number 19, the Devereux family’s title is the oldest of its rank still extant and would seem to have been a whole lot easier to hang on to than ‘the house’. Several stately piles have come and gone over time in and around their old stamping ground on the Welsh border: Nantcribba Hall has literally gone while Tregoyd and Hampton Court Castle in Herefordshire, have been repurposed. And then there’s Vaynor, a seat of the Devereuxs and their antecedents from the 15th to the mid-18th century but whose loss nevertheless remains Handed on‘s gain, being a rock-solid qualifier ticking all the boxes.
‘A substantial mansion of mellow red brick with sandstone dressings, outbuildings of the same and in the same style..a very aesthetically satisfying complex in well-preserved 19th-century parkland in a magnificent setting.’¹ And all of which might still be the domain of the Devereuxs had either of Price, 10th Viscount Hereford’s two marriages managed to produce a child.
Present-day owners the Corbett-Winders have reason to be grateful for those barren alliances, their roots at Vaynor stemming directly from Price’s curious will of 1748. Lawyer Robert Moxon was one of two executor trustees to whom residual properties – in fact, great chunks of real estate across seven counties – were left after they had administered various debts and family legacies.
Though for the most part an absentee landlord, Moxon was effectively in control of the Vaynor estate from 1749 to his death in 1785. His nephew John would in turn pass on his inheritance to sister Ann and her husband John Winder in 1793.²
‘Still remarkable for its elevated position, the probable originator of the house as it stands is George Devereux,‘ grandfather of Price.³ On an eminence with ground falling away sharply on three sides, it’s a wonder none of the inhabitants of this spot have been tempted to add a dash of crenellation.
But then with real deal Powis Castle just five miles up the road, probably wise. Instead we have this fine grade II* house, Jacobean inside and out even if the ‘neo-‘ exterior did take a couple of centuries to catch up.
It was at the commission of then owner John Winder Lyon-Winder that in 1840 County Surveyor Thomas Penson set about enhancing Vaynor with those visually uplifting gables and chimneys but ‘left well alone inside, stylistically’…’which is a tribute to him’.³ Lyon-Winder’s daughter Mrs Mary Corbett would inherit in 1868 and it’s been Corbett-Winders since her son William in 1879.
It’s quite possible that the next generation at Vaynor will be less inclined to ‘leave well alone inside, stylistically’ since both son and heir Ned and his sister Willow have separately established imaginative e-businesses promoting creative design [his | hers | and her brand new book!]
Such enterprise and flair bodes well for the future of this 4,500-acre estate but isn’t really anything new here: ‘Throughout the period from the mid-18th century, right up to the present, Vaynor has been a dynamic estate, surviving and thriving whilst some of their neighbours have failed.’†
[Vaynor’s evolution in drawings][Vintage photo images][Gardens]
¹ Vaynor Park Text description from Cadw Parks and Gardens Register.
² Pinhorn, M. Vaynor, Berriew, Montgomeryshire, Montgomeryshire Collections, 1977.
³ Haslam, R. A note on the architecture of Vaynor Park, ibid; The buildings of Wales: Powys, 1979.
† Silvester, R. and Alfrey, J. Vaynor: a landscape and its buildings, from Estate Landscapes: Design, improvement and power in the post-medieval landscape, 2008.
Excellent new pics of the East front now added here: http://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/21521/images/VAYNOR%20PARK/?sort_typ=imageUrl&sort_ord=asc#