Boyle Farm

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Boyle Farm was the earlier name of the 'Home of Compassion', a mansion on the banks of the River Thames in Thames Ditton, Surrey. The house was built on the site of Forde's Farm by Charlotte Boyle Walsingham in the late 18th century. Although the estate has been sold and divided into expensive building plots over the past century, some of the farm buildings and outhouses remain. There is a small island in the Thames, which the Home of Compassion almost overlooks, called Boyle Farm Island.

Boyle Farm as today's Home of Compassion

[edit] History

The foundation stone to Boyle Farm, formerly known as Forde's Farm, was laid by Hon. Charlotte Boyle Walsingham, the then new owner in 1786. Mrs Walsingham, a widow, was a close friend of the author and diarist Horace Walpole who also took a great interest in gothic architecture and made several diary references to Boyle Farm. From Walpole's letter 312 To The Earl Of Strafford (Strawberry Hill, July 28, 1787):

'...Mrs. Walsingham is making her house at Ditton (now baptized Boyle-farm) very orthodox. Her daughter Miss Boyle who has real genius, has carved three tablets in marble with buoys, designed by herself. Those sculptures are for a chimney-piece; and she is painting panels in grotesque for the library, with pilasters of glass in black and gold.'

Although the builder and architect are unrecorded, he may have been Walpole's chief architect, John Chute, who was responsible for several similar gothic villas of that period. Mrs. Walsingham's daughter, Charlotte Boyle, who inherited the farm in 1790, was particularly skilled in verre eglomisé. Her 28 black background and gold leaf glass panels -- one signed "C. Boyle November 2nd 1786" -- still exist in the first-floor library. The carved frieze and door surround bearing her monogram are also her work and this room has been regarded as one of the finest of its period in Surrey.

Miss Boyle married Lord Fitzgerald in 1791 and adopted the title 21st Baroness de Ros in 1806. Their eldest son Henry, who inherited the farm, was noted for his lavish society lifestyle and held "The Dandies' Fete" on 30th June 1827 in the grounds for 450 guests. This was described in 'The Summer Fete' by Thomas Moore (1779-1852):

Accordingly, with gay Sultanas,

Rebeccas, Sapphos, Roxalanas--

Circassian slaves whom Love would pay

Half his maternal realms to ransom;

Young nuns, whose chief religion lay

In looking most profanely handsome;

Muses in muslin-pastoral maids

With hats from the Arcade-ian shades,

And fortune-tellers, rich, 'twas plain,

As fortune-hunters formed their train.

Sir Edward Sugden Bt, the highest-paid member of the English Bar and noted for his legal textbooks, purchased Boyle Farm in 1834. Sir Edward was MP for Weymouth. On his appointment as Chancellor of England, he was raised to the peerage as Lord St Leonards. During his time at the Boyle Farm mansion, he had the gothic castellation largely replaced by an over-tall gabled roof with attic rooms above a cloak of early Victorian stucco in a loose gothic perpendicular style. Upon his death the estate passed to his son Hon. Rev Frank Sugden, who lived quietly at the farm for six years.

The estate went to auction in July 1890 and was purchased by Herbert Robertson of Hampton Court. Within three years he had the Victorian stucco and external detailing removed, refacing the mansion with a classical pediment of well laid red brick, with fitted brick window surrounds all under a complex hipped gable roof of green slate.

However the property remained unoccupied and some 11 acres of the grounds were subdivided for building plots and sold. The house and stables, together with the outbuildings, were purchased by a Church of England religious order, renamed and dedicated as the 'Home of Compassion' in 1905. The stables, renamed 'The Priory', were converted to staff accommodation and the house adapted as a nursing home. The present chapel was built in 1925 of stock brick with stone windows and is still prominent in Thames Ditton High Street.

In the 1960s, the religious order ceased on the death of the last surviving Sister, but the Home of Compassion has continued to care for the frail and elderly as a registered charity run by Trustees, led by Rosalind Goodfellow.

The house remains the finest mansion on the Surrey bank of the Thames between Windsor and Ham House.