A modest manor

Rippington Manor, Cambridgeshire The home of Peter and Gay Johnson A delightful 16th-century manor house is revealed to have an unexpectedly complex history and an unusual story to tell. John Goodall explains

- John Goodall

ST BARTHOLOMEW’S, Great Gransden, offers striking architectural testimony to the long-standing prosperity of the village it serves. The church is large with a tall tower that peers enticingly through the boughs of the trees in the graveyard. A first-time visitor might reasonably expect that it would stand partner to an equally substantial manor house. In fact, the reverse is true.

What has been confusingly and variously known in the past as The Priory, Great Gransden, Reppington and Rippington Manor is a diminutive building. It stands next to the churchyard and overlooks a large garden with high brick walls that falls away to two ponds and their feeder stream, Home Dole Brook. No less surprising than the relatively small scale of the building is the fact that its fabric—which substantially dates back to the 16th century —has undergone such limited and largely cosmetic alteration.

As a landholding, the manor of Rippington, which historically stood in Huntingdonshire, was probably first constituted in the late 12th century. It was carved out of the property of the de Clare family, Earls of Gloucester, and formed part of the marriage settlement of Maud, wife of Ralph, Earl of Chester. She later conveyed it to the Augustinian priory of Repton, Derbyshire (from which the name ‘Rippington’ derives). There is no detailed evidence of how this estate was managed by the priory, but a rent from it was attached in the early 15th century to Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the consequent annual obligation of the owner of the manor to pay what eventually became £10.66 to the Master and Fellows in perpetuity was only finally terminated in 1986.