A Prime Minister's Home

After attending All Saints Church this morning on Easter Sunday, I later came across an article when cataloguing Sheila Redshaw's collection of memorabilia.  I thought it would be nice to share this with you:

"Nocton.  A green and pleasant place a few miles south-east of Lincoln, it has a Hall which was the home of a Prime Minister, and a church which is his memorial and his last resting place.  About a mile away, on the edge of Nocton Fen and close to Nocton Wood, where lilies of the valley grow in great profusion, is the site of a priory founded in the time of King Stephen.

This priory, for Austin canons, was founded by Robert D'Arcy, whose father, Norman D'Arcy, a companion of the Conqueror, was first of a family which held this manor for 600 years.  In Charles the Second's time the estate was sold to Lord Stanhope, and then passed to Sir William Ellys, whose monument is in the church.  Later it passed to George Hobart, afterwards third Earl of Buckinghamshire, and the marriage of the fourth Earl's daughter brought it to the rising young politician who as Chancellor of the Exchequer was nicknamed Prosperity Robinson, and as Viscount Goderich succeeded George Canning as Premier.  He died as the Earl of Ripon in 1859, and three years later his widow built Nocton church in his memory.  It took the place of a poor church built by George Hobart, who had pulled down the old one because it was too near the Hall for his liking.

Designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in 14th-century style, and built of Ancaster stone, it is one of the most sumptious modern churches in all Lincolnshire, with a tower and spire 130 feet high, and a porch with niched figures of the Madonna and Child, St Peter, and St Paul, John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist.  The interior is dignified by an arcade on rich clustered columns, but is chiefly notable for the richness of decoration in carving, painting, and windows.  The heads of Peter, Paul, and of Our Lord are in niches on the lovely pulpit of stone and marble, and the alabaster reredos (by Italian craftsmen) shows under three gilded arches Christ carrying the Cross, with an angry man about to strike Him and a Roman sildier on a rearing horse behind; the Crucifixion, with the three women and the disciples; and the Entombment, with Mary Magdelene kneeling.  On each side of the reredos the wall is arcaded, the arches being filled with engraved figures of Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs and Saints.

Elsewhere the walls are adorned with sacred subjects.  In the chancel are canopied paintings of Apostles and Evangelists, each with his symbol, and over the chancel arch Christ appears in Glory, with a great company of kneeling angels and saints.  More unusual are the paintings on the west wall of the nave - graphic illustrations of the Israelites entering the Promised Land, the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea, and Noah with his family and the animals going into the Ark two by two, goats, asses, rabbits and snakes among them.

The windows form another fine gallery of pictures.  The east window has a central figure of St Michael with angels and a great multitude of men, women, and children round him; and 24 Elders below, casting their crowns before the Throne.  One of the side windows of the nave has figures of St Hugh of Lincoln and St Theodore, and a second has Oswald and Etheldreda.  A third window, showing St Aidan with the stag and the Venerable Bede writing, is a memorial to a descendent of William Brewster, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, and has smaller scenes depicting sunrise and sunset at sea and the Mayflower sailing the ocean.

The fine west window of the nave, with four scenes showing the gift of Isaac to Sarah, and four more of the gift of Samuel to Hannah, was the work of Clayton and Bell and is a memorial to the Countess of Ripon the builder of this church who died in 1867.

Among the monuments set up in memory of members of her family three are specially notable.  The first is of white marble with an urn to her father, Robert Hobart, the fourth Earl of Buckingham, Secretary of State for the Colonies in the first years of the 19th century and the man after whom the capital of Tasmania is named.  The second is to her uncle, Henry Lewis Hobart, vicar of this church for 33 years and Dean of Windsor as well - a white marble memorial with two kneeling women and cherubs above.  The third is the monument she raised to her husband, the first Earl of Ripon; it is under an arch between chancel and chapel, a stately altar tomb of Carrara marble bearing a figure of the Prime Minister in a long robe, his hands folded, his fine features in repose - a beautiful sculpture by Matthew Noble, the Yorkshireman who gave Liverpool, Manchester and London many fine statues.

The oldest memorial, and the only relic of the old church, is a pompous 17th-century array of marble columns, sculptured urn, helmet, shield, and Latin inscription; it is to Sir William Ellys, who built anew the Hall that Thomas Wymbish had erected in 1530, and which was visited by Hentry VIII and his fifth Queen, Katherine Howard.  Here she came with the ruthless king on a journey which was to end in charges which sent her, still a girl, to join her cousin Anne Boleyn in the chapel of death at the Tower.

Fire destroyed the old Hall in 1834, and the foundation stone of the new (handsome with mullioned windows, tall gables and chimneys, and terrace leading down to a lawn) was laid by Viscount Goderich's 14-year-old son, who was born in the most famous house in England (10 Downing Street) during his father's premiership.  He was to be for forty years associated with Gladstone.  Later in life, when he had become first Marquis of Ripon, and a Roman Catholic, he sold the Nocton estate.  He died in 1909 at his Yorkshire home, Studley Royal, and was buried there in a modern church even more sumptious than the one raised in his father's memory here.

Many fine trees surround the Hall, a veteran among them being a chestnut with a girth of about 35 feet and its great branches borne by a company of props."

Source: The Kings of England - Lincolnshire (1949) - P278/280
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