Little Horwood
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Little Horwood is a village in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located in the Aylesbury Vale, about four miles ESE of Buckingham, two miles north east of Winslow.
The village name 'Horwood' is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'dirty or muddy wood'. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 792 the village was recorded as Horwudu.
The parish church dedicated to St Nicholas has a perpendicular style tower built of large blocks of ashlar, the remainder of the church externally dates from the restoration of 1889 by the architect J P St Aubyn. This architect's work, today, is not always viewed kindly. His Victorian Gothicisation of so many churches and houses has been described in terms ranging from vandalism to ruthless. Little Horwood church was lucky, as the interior survived relatively unscathed; and the early 16th century wall paintings depicting the seven deadly sins survived as did the Jacobean pulpit, and the decorated style chancel arch.
The manor of Little Horwood anciently belonged to the abbot and convent of St Albans, though it was seized by the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid 16th century. It was later sold to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham who remodelled the manor house, which is now demolished.
The present Little Horwood Manor, three quarters of a mile north of the village, was one of the last houses in England to be built in the informal yet commanding style made popular by Edwin Lutyens. Constructed in 1938, it has a high pitched roof, and protruding wings terminated by pavilions, also with steep pitched roofs. The mansion has a gate house and lodges constructed in the same style. This has now been sub-divided into five smaller houses.
1 mile south east of the village is Horwood House. Not to be confused with Little Horwood Manor, this mansion is again a comparatively modern house, built in the Elizabethan style by the architects Detmar Blow and Billerey in 1912 for Frederick Denny. The Denny family were Irish millionaires and owned all of Little Horwood but the whole estate was auctioned off when they left around the 1930s. The details of the auction can still be seen at the house if you are lucky enough to go there. The house is of bricks, which were imported from Holland, and is symmetrical. In 1984 Horwood House became a Grade II listed building.
The grounds were approached through an arched gatehouse, but this has now been by passed for easier access, then there is a quarter of a mile straight drive lined with lime tress to the main house. The house has had various roles since the original owners departed, it was school, it was then bought by British Rail as they were going to build a marshalling yard on the site but this never happened and then in the 1960s it was bought by the GPO as their management college who built extra accommodation wings considerably enlarging the house. BT(previously the GPO) further upgraded the building shortly before they sold it around 1992 to Hayley Hotels who use it as their headquarters for a their conference centre business, which they run from several sites. Horwood House is also used for civil weddings.
Horwood House was the birthplace of Percy Thrower whose father was the head gardener.
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