A thousand Downton Abbeys vanished from Britain in the 20th century, as the minor gentry found themselves living beyond their means. Many big houses brought low left no visible trace – a garage rests on the footprint of Girtford Manor, five minutes from my house, and I play with the thought of pumps serving petrol in the exact spot where servants once offered canapés. Our long-demolished 18th-century rectory had enough rooms to house both the minister and his whole congregation. A strictly functional 1970s building occupies a fraction of the space.
Three miles up the road, passing motorists can glimpse the windowless wing of a mock Tudor mansion before a tall hedge swallows the view. Those on foot can slip through a gap, past a modest entrance lodge and a derelict stable block, with a rusted winch poised over the hayloft and a zigzag crack down one wall, through which it would be possible to feed a horseshoe.
The path bends to the rear of the “new manor house”, an unstately home that appears as an odd agglomeration of dwellings bolted together, a terrace of ill-fitting parts. Each is less grand than its neighbour, ranging left in a series of diminishing steps to the servant quarters with smaller, narrower windows, lower ceilings and minimal exterior decoration.
A mesh security fence surrounds the entire building. The ground floor is blind, with all openings boarded up. In one upstairs bedroom, a lampshade rocks to and fro, catching the breeze through a broken pane. Natural ventilation causes the floral curtain in another bedroom to twitch, as if the occupant had flicked it aside to eye the visitors. A north-facing wall, unloved by the sun, is green with algae.
Derelict for at least 15 years, this Victorian edifice was still inhabited on an April day in 1911, when the census-taker recorded 11 occupants, including six unmarried maids, a housekeeper and a butler. And it may yet be occupied again, for a London property company promises that the now-listed manor house will be embraced within a development of 4,000 houses – an estate within an estate.
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