ENGLISH HOMES OLD & NEW Part 2 Lancastrian and Yorkist 1400–85

Each month of this 125th anniversary year, COUNTRY LIFE will illustrate a period in the development of the English great house, from the Middle Ages to the present day. This week, John Goodall looks at the 15th-century home

- John Goodall

ON May 20, 1612, two gentlemen arrived at the village of Ewelme, Oxfordshire, with a royal commission to value the remains of the manor house there. This once magnificent building, erected in the 1440s, had fallen into neglect and its materials were a tempting source of money for the cash-strapped James I. Soon after the visit, therefore, the site was almost completely cleared and the brick, tile, stone, timber and iron sold off. The survey is one of several documents that can be used to reconstruct a uniquely detailed impression of this exceptional lost building and—by extension—the organisation, appearance and furnishing of a great English house in the 15th century.

Ewelme Manor was a favoured residence from 1435 of William de la Pole and his wife, Alice, the granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. William, who inherited the Earldom of Suffolk, secured the favour of the boy king Henry VI and—in the eyes of hostile critics —proceeded to usurp the resources of the realm to himself. He was elevated in 1444 to the estate of Marquess and then, in 1448, to that of Duke of Suffolk. Following English reverses in France, however, his enemies struck back and, in 1450, he was brutally murdered; decapitated with a rusty sword in a parody of a nobleman’s execution. Alice survived him for a further 25 years and, as a widow, proved a formidable power herself.