Overstone - A Brief HistoryPosted by Administrator on 15/07/2009 19:29:22  Overstone is a Grade II listed building on the outskirts of Northampton. It had 119 rooms (at the last count) and is surrounded by a 40 acre park and grounds which contain three lakes, the old carriage block, walled garden and farm buildings.
Designed in 1860 for Lord and Lady Overstone by William Milford Teulon, the building work took until 1866 to complete. Lady Overstone passed away on Nov 6th 1864 so did not see her great project finished. The stone for the external walls came from quarries at Little Casterton near Stamford, and that for sills, copings, carvings and other finishes from Ketton. This house demonstrates the earliest known example of 'cavity wall insulation', being built double throughout. There was a central heating system 'Mr Price's Apparatus', gas lighting and a service or butler's lift.
The massive oak timbers came from the forest of Arden. And each of the risers were intricately carved with fruits and flowers, each one unique.
A Brief History of Overstone
Originally Overstone Hall, the estate was acquired in 1832 by Lewis Loyd for the princely sum of £117,000. On his death in 1858 it passed to his son, Samuel Jones Loyd, by then Lord Overstone, who was ennobled for his services to banking and government finance.
Lady Overstone persuaded her husband that a much grander country seat was more in keeping with their status and the new Overstone House was built. It was designed by William Milford Teulon and according to The Builder of 1862, was "a mixture of Elizabethan and Renaissance features". Other descriptions insisted that the inspiration was Italianate. Both Pevsner and Girouard were disparaging: "defeats description...gross display of many styles" and "drearily asymmetrical". In any case, Lord Overstone, noted for his artistic taste, hated the House and refused to live in it after it was built, preferring to stay with his daughter at Lockinge in Berkshire.
Harriet Sarah Loyd, who later became Lady Wantage, inherited the estate in 1883. She and her husband used regularly to stay there during the winter hunting season until his death in 1901. It was then leased successively to a Field Marshall, Lord Grenville, and to the Australian shipping magnate Malcolm McEacharn and his wife. The latter regularly entertained in lavish style, the only ones really to have used it in the manner for which it was designed. McEacharn later moved to Cannes, where he died in 1917.
On the death of Lady Wantage, the farms and many of the tenanted cottages were sold to the farmers and occupants, but the Mansion plus 70 acres went for £9000 to Sir Philip Stott, the architect. He donated the use of the House and grounds to the Conservative and Unionist Party for use as a college in 1923. He condemned the scheme in 1928 as 'an abject failure' and sold the property to the Charlotte Masons Schools Company in July 1929 for conversion to a girls' Public School under the auspices of Henrietta Franklin, daughter of another eminent Victorian Banker, Samuel Montagu. The School occupied the Main House, Carriage block and stables and farm buildings for fifty years until July 1979 when the financial imperatives of maintaining a crumbling Victorian estate became too much. The estate was sold as a single lot by tender to speculators for £701.000, who later sold the House and 70 acres to the New Testament Church of God for £100 000 in 1980.
On April 16th 2001, a fire was started in one of the upper rooms, probably the dormitory best known to old girls as 'Gallery', situated at the top of a fire escape on the eastern side of the building. Approximately 60% of the building was gutted within 12 hours, destroying all of the best-loved features of the House, including its truly extraordinary, breathtaking wooden staircase and magnificent library, along with the elegant parquet flooring which graced the public rooms and corridors.
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