Heritage > Historic Houses

Knebworth House

Home of the Lytton Family Since 1490

The romantic exterior of Knebworth with its turrets, domes and gargoyles silhouetted against the sky does little to prepare the visitor for what to expect inside. The house has stood for many years longer than the nineteenth-century decoration would suggest and the stucco hides from view a red brick house dating back to Tudor times.

Knebworth was probably first a Saxon settlement. The Domesday spelling in 1085 is 'Chenepeworde', meaning 'village on the hill'. Another more romantic interpretation is 'Cnebba's camp' suggesting that Knebworth was formerly the home of Cnebba, the fifth-century Saxon prince.

Edward the Confessor gave the Manor of Knebworth to his Thane Aschil. After the Conquest, the Manor and Fort were granted by William I to his favourite counsellor, Eudo Fitzhebert, called Dapifer from his office as Steward of the Household.

During the intervening four hundred years before the Lyttons required the estate, it was owned by many distinguished men, Robert de Hoo, Thomas de Brotherton (a son of Edward I) and his son-in-law, Sir Walter Manny K.G., Sir John Hotoft and Sir Thomas Bourchier.

Sir John Hotoft was Treasurer of the Household of Henry VI. He built the tower of St. Mary's Church in the park and was buried there in 1443. He is of special interest in that his daughter, Agnes married Sir Robert de Lytton, Governor of Bolsover Castle and Grand Agister of the Forests of the Peak the first connection between Knebworth and the Lyttons of Derbyshire.

On 17th February 1490, their grandson, Sir Robert Lytton, purchased Knebworth from Sir Thomas Bourchier for £800. Sir Robert Fought with Henry VII at Bosworth and became under Treasure to the Household and a close Confidant.

In about 1500, Sir Robert began to build on to the fifteenth-century gatehouse a new four-sided house enclosing a central courtyard. Successive generations up to the present have moulded the house to their own highly individual requirements, building, demolishing, redecorating but, fortunately, never entirely obliterating the taste of a predecessor.

The house was described by Sir Henry Chauncy in 1700 as 'a large pile of brick with a fair large quadrangle in the middle of it, seated upon a dry hill, in a fair large park, stocked with the best deer in the country, excellent timber and well wooded and from thence you may behold a most lovely prospect to the East'.

It remained virtully unaltered until the nineteenth century; as late as 1805, the author of Excursion from Camerton to London and thence into Herts, was sufficiently impressed by Knebworth to place it after Haddon Hall as 'the most perfect specimen of the hospitable habitations of our ancestors which I have seen in the country'.

However, the 'perfect specimen' was not destined to survive for long. In 1810, Mrs. Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton, finding the building 'old fashioned and too large', demolished three sides of the 'quadrangle, including the medieval gatehouse, part of which she re-erected as a lodge in the park.

The principal changes to the remaining wing, put forward by her architect, John Biagio Rebecca, son of Biagio Rebecca, the painter, were the concealment of the red brick by stucco, the Gothicizing of the windows and the addition of eight towers, battlements and a porch.

Her son, the famous novelist, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who succeeded her in 1843, envisaged the house as a Gothic palace, with domes, turrets, gargoyles and stained glass. His extensive alterations were designed by H. E. Kendall.

In 1878, Robert, 1st Earl of Lytton, commissioned architect John Lee to add a third storey to part of the building and architect George Devey added a servants' wing about the same time. Lee's additions were altered by Victor, 2nd Earl of Lytton, and Devey's wing was demolished in 1950.

When the 2nd Earl, Victor, and his wife Pamela came to live at Knebworth in 1908, changes in taste were again taking place in the realm of art and fashion. They decided to make extensive alterations to the interior of the house and were fortunate in being able to seek advice from a Brother-in-law, later to become famous as Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens had married Emily, Victor's sister, and was at the beginning of his career. He and Pamela were to form a happy partnership each appreciating the other's taste and until the end of his life Lutyens was to continue to advise on any alteration made in the house or garden.

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