This year we are giving our monthly guided walks a theme.
In January we took a route around many of the buildings in Nonington designed by George Devey.
George Devey (1820 – 1886) was an English architect notable for his work on country houses and their estates, especially those belonging to the Rothschild family. He worked in Nonington – completely rebuilding St Albans Court in 1875-8 for William Hammond, a wealthy landowner and banker. Here Devey genuinely started from scratch, designing an entirely new house that nonetheless suggests it has been built out of the ruins of a previous one. It is constructed mostly of red brick that sits on lower courses of stone. This rises and falls like a rubble wall, suggestive of ruins and carefully intercut with the precise and beautifully laid red brickwork. Devey also designed a number of cottages and almshouses on the estate for estate workers. They are notable for their tall chimneys, hung wall tiles and stone footings and served as prototypes for the suburban houses which sprung up across Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.
In February, the theme was Fredville and Frogham.
The 18th century Fredville mansion was surrounded by parkland and could only be reached by a coach road with entrances in lower Holt Street and at Frogham. Each entrance had a gate lodge for a gate-keeper to live in and these gate-keepers were often the widows of estate workers and their employment as gate-keepers was a form of pension. Both lodges are now private houses and look almost as they did a century ago whilst the coach road is now a Public Right of Way from lower Holt Street to Frogham which takes you past the “Step Tree” and several other of the remaining chestnuts which were once part of Fredvilles renowned avenues of trees.
Frogham, sometimes Frogenham, is a small hamlet in the parish of Nonington. Most of the houses in Frogham were within the Manor of Fredville, while the farmland to the south and east of the hamlet beyond the Barfreston to Womenswold road was within the Manor of Soles. Frogham’s name may derive from “frogga hamm”:-the frogs [water] meadow.
In March , we walked to Goodnestone and back looking for signs of Spring. The daffodils and primroses were beginning to emerge along the Serpentine Walk.
The Nonington Post 