We have seen that John Baker Holroyd, a Baker nephew who was eventually to become Earl of Sheffield, inherited the Baker estate in 1768. He sold the ‘mansion house’ the following year and there was a grand sale of all the contents of the house for which a sale catalogue recorded every room and its contents. This is ‘Tylers Green House’, which nearly 30 years later was to become the French School.

There were 5 rooms on the top floor of the house. The Bleu Garrett, the First Garrett, the Back Garrett, the Nursery Backwards and the Maids Garrett where they kept 32 buckets in case of fire.

The principal bedrooms were known by their colour or furnishings; the Red Damask Chamber which had earlier been the White Room; the Crimson Marine Chamber earlier the Walnut Tree Room; and the Wrought Work Chamber, earlier the Red Room. They all had 4-posters with goose feather mattresses, bolsters and pillows.

The main reception rooms were the Great Parlour, the small Drawing Room, the Dining Room which sat 12 at table, the Large Gallery which might have been the Music Room as there is mention of a spinet, and they played backgammon and draughts in the Little Parlour. In his Study, Daniel Baker had kept an extensive library of over 400 books ranging from religion and philosophy to astronomy (he had 4 telescopes) and gardening and the care of horses. A book called ‘The History of Highwaymen’, is a reminder of the dangers of travel and the many firearms kept in the house included travelling guns, blunderbusses and horseman’s pistols. He was a J.P. and there was a Justices Room where he would have dealt with the cases brought to him at the house, as was then the custom.

Evidence of the constant fear of fire is that there were 24 more buckets kept in the Great Hall which was later big enough to hold 60 French boys and a large assembly of nobility and gentry. There were 15 separate fire places. The Kitchen and Bakehouse were well equipped with Pewter the Best, Pewter the Worst, jacks and wheels, cranes, hooks and spit racks plus great boiling pots to cope with cooking for such a large family on an open fire. The gate bell rang in the Lower Brick Hall where 10 heraldic shields hung. The use of the particular description ‘brick’ suggests that much of the rest of the house was not, but was instead timber-framed with wattle and daub. The precautions against fire would seem to support this view.

Outside there was the Coach House where they kept the post chariot and a coach. The coachman lived above the stables. The Brew House was where the small beer and strong beer was brewed to supplement Daniel Baker’s extensive cellar. There was a ½ acre garden surrounded by a very high brick wall where they grew grapes. There is also mention of an Orchard, a ‘Necessary House’ built of lath and plaster, a large dog kennel, a summer house, a sundial and cucumber frames. The gardener’s equipment included tufting, docking and setting irons and three stone rollers. There was a water engine and a water cart.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.35, July 2014.
Photographs courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS

There is a fine wall monument to Elenor Curzon on the south wall of the chancel in Penn Church, put up by her nephew Assheton Curzon, which extols her piety, charity, friendship and affable nature.

Pevsner describes the monument as ‘Flat urn and oval medallion with profile portrait. Fine quality, unsigned’. It is about six feet high.

She was the youngest daughter of the 2nd Sir Nathaniel Curzon and Sarah Penn, baptized at Kedleston in November 1691, the same year they sold their house in Penn. She was the only one of their children who did not spend their early years in Penn. She died unmarried in 1754 and is buried in Kedleston church near her parents There is a portrait at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire (No.29 in the Family Corridor) which I suggest is wrongly labelled ‘Elizabeth Curzon by M. Dahl’, and wrongly dated 1703. Elizabeth, according to the National Trust’s own booklet was only 15 or 16 in 1703 and died two years later. The portrait seem to me to be of a young woman in her 20s or 30s and looks very like Elizabeth’s younger sister Elenor as represented in profile at Penn? I make this suggestion having noted four other examples of mistakes in dates and attributions on the Kedleston portraits, but I would welcome other views.

The sculptor may well have used the Kedleston portrait as a model for the Penn profile since her monument was not put up in Penn until 1765, eleven years after she died and nearly fifty years after her youthful portrait. Michael Dahl (1659-1743) was a Swedish portrait painter who lived and worked in London for much of his life.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.36, September 2014
Photographs courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS

A miniature appeared for sale at Dukes Auctioneers’ Spring sale, 5^th April 2023, Lot 42:  The portrait is copied from painting which now hangs in Penn House.

“After MAURICE QUENTIN DE LA TOUR (1704-1788) A PORTRAIT MINIATURE OF CHARLES EDWARD STUART the half-length portrait of Prince Charles in an unmarked yellow metal mount, engraved to the reverse: ‘Portrait of Charles Edwd Stuart, sent by him to Mrs Eleanor Curzon, sister of Sir Nathaniel Curzon, aunt to 1st Lord Scarsdale, & 1st Viscount Curzon. This Lady assisted the Pretender at different times with considerable sums of money.’, in a hinged case, 3.5cm high Provenance: A private Dorset collection of miniatures.”

Updated 7/2/2023: Miles Green, F Howe

There is an impressive monument on the east wall of the north transept of Kedleston  Church on the Curzon estate in Derbyshire, erected, according to the inscription, in 1762, by his wife Mary, to a design by Robert Adam. He was the second son of the 2nd Baronet and Sarah Penn and was born in Penn and went to school at Berkhamsted. He unexpectedly inherited the baronetcy in 1727 when his elder brother was thrown from his horse whilst hunting. He also inherited the Penn Manor and proprietorship of Penn Church when his uncle, Roger Penn, died in 1731.

The figures of Sir Nathaniel, his wife and their two sons were carved by John Michael Rysbrack. The inscription records that Sir Nathaniel practiced as a Common lawyer until he was 40 and was also an MP for 30 years. He had three sons, John who died as an infant and is shown on the monument as an angel, Nathaniel, who inherited Kedleston and became Baron Scarsdale, and Assheton, who inherited the Penn estate, and was eventually to become Viscount Curzon.

The deceased is described in flattering terms as might be expected, but a very fond grandfather comes through with the words ‘The Sight of his Children’s Children having fill’d up the measure of all Earthly enjoyments…’. One of the boys is shown holding a book which has the inscription ‘The Holy Bible. The best legacy I can give you for therein are contain’d the Words of Eternal Life’. His wife Mary is described as the daughter of Sir Raphe Assheton Bart of Middleton in Lancashire.

John Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770) came to London from Antwerp in 1720 and soon became the unchallenged head of his profession until challenged by Peter Scheemakers. The Dictionary of British Sculptors records this Kedleston commission as his last monument before he retired.

We saw in a  previous article that Sir Nathaniel, the second son of Sarah Penn, was born in Penn and went to school at Berkhamsted. He unexpectedly inherited the baronetcy in 1727 when his elder brother was thrown from his horse whilst hunting. He also inherited the Penn Manor and proprietorship of Penn Church when his uncle, Roger Penn, died in 1731 and immediately set about ‘modernising’ the church he knew so well.

He may have been encouraged to do this by a fire in the chancel, because according to Sir George Grove, writing in 1886, the chancel was burned down and rebuilt ¹. There is no other record of the fire, but it does explain the very radical alterations made to the chancel by Sir Nathaniel, presumably in 1736, since this is the date above his private side door to the chancel.

Mid 17C drawing of the old Medieval chancel.

The medieval chancel was rebuilt, lengthened by about seven feet and widened to the south by three feet. This explains why you can see outside that the ridge of the chancel roof is offset from the ridge of the nave by about 1½ feet and why, inside, the new round-headed chancel arch is visibly off-centre from the nave roof above.

The three monuments to Roger Penn’s sisters, who were buried between 1719 and 1728, are not centred in the floor of the widened chancel and this is a strong indication that the chancel had not already been widened in medieval times. It would anyway have been very unusual for a medieval chancel to be widened on one side only since this would have put the chancel out of action for months which was not then acceptable. The normal practice was to build the new chancel around the old and so reduce the disruption to a minimum.

A new ‘painted’ east window, showing Christ with two disciples at Emmaus, (by “John Rowell of Wycomb“) was put in. The new chancel became a focus for the very fine 18th and 19th century Curzon and Howe family monuments, nearly all carved from white marble, which fill the chancel walls. We know what the chancel looked like when this reorganisation was completed because we have Henry Ziegler’s watercolour of c.1850 (of which there is a photograph on the cross aisle pillar in the nave). He was drawing master to Queen Adelaide and drew very accurately.

“John Rowell of Wycomb”, by Ambrose Heal, Reading Mercury, 9th July, 1932 (PDF opens in new window)

The window was replaced in 1865 and again in 1931 to accomodate changes in worship style.  See: Altar Arrangements in Penn Church, Part 4.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.40, November 2015 (revised 2021)
Original Photographs © courtesy of Eddie Morton ARPS
Edited composite photographs, Michael G Hardy.

The rebuilding of the chancel by the fourth Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the second son of Sarah Penn, described in the previous article, was only a part of radical and costly alterations to the structure of the church which he knew so well from his boyhood in Penn.

In 1733, the nave roof was raised again, by another three feet, and extended out over the south aisle. The arch between the nave and the chancel was widened, replacing the medieval lancet with the present round-headed chancel arch, and three towering gentry pews blocking the chancel were moved into the south aisle. This was a period when the sermon was all-important. A good view of the preacher was essential and because high box pews were the fashion for gentry families, the preacher had to be placed on the highest level of a three-decker pulpit in order to be visible. The Bible was read from the middle level and the Clerk led the responses for a largely illiterate congregation from the bottom level. Henry Ziegler’s watercolours of c.1850 showed us what it looked like.

There is still visible evidence on the wall of the nave of the gable roof of a 2-storey medieval porch at the centre of the south aisle which must have remained because there was still enough head room to retain the ‘Little Gallery over against the South door…. being built at the charges of the young men that had learned to sing Psalms’ in 1709.

The present single-storey south porch and vestry were added. In October 1733, the congregation paid for a second wooden gallery over the west door to the tower, to cater for an increasing population. It has since been replaced by the organ.

The newly extended roof over the south aisle had the big disadvantage of blocking the three high- level, southern clerestory windows of the nave, which left the nave in need of more light, particularly near the new public gallery. An 1819 drawing in the British Museum confirms that a larger three-light round-headed window replaced the original smaller 15th century window of which the displaced white clunch stones are still to be seen in the wall. The drawing also shows that the long two-light brick round-headed window, which is still there, was added at a lower level.

The fine medieval tie beams and arch braces of the roof, resting on their stone corbels, were left in place and the heightened roof of the nave allowed the whitewashed Doom, by losing only a few inches of its periphery, to be moved up to its present position in the roof space above the tie beam over the chancel arch. They must have known it was worth keeping.

The Lady Chapel was taken down to window-sill level and rebuilt in brick on the medieval base. There were probably lancet arches between the Lady Chapel and the chancel and the south aisle which were removed at this stage.

© Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.41,  January 2016
Photograph © courtesy of Eddie  Morton

There is a very fine marble memorial in the Lady Chapel of Penn Church to Roger Mather, who was Vicar of Penn for 11 years. The inscription reads, ‘Near this place lies the body of the late Reverend Roger Mather, Clerk eleven years Vicar of this parish, to whom Asheton Curzon Esqr. was Pupil, Patron and Friend. He died the first day of September MDCCLXVIII‘

Assheton Curzon (1730-1820), was Sir Nathaniel Curzon’s second son, a grandson of Sarah Penn. He was given the manor of Penn on marriage in 1756, and he was to hold the proprietorship of Penn church for over sixty years, later becoming Viscount Curzon.

The portrait below, by Arthur Devis (1712-87) was painted in c.1754. Assheton Curzon was then 24 and Roger Mather was 35. Mather was a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, a Doctor of Divinity and Oxford’s Public Orator for many years. Assheton Curzon also went to Brasenose where Roger Mather was Tutor to both him and his elder brother. In 1754 he was returned as MP for Clitheroe and he employed Mather to teach him the art of public speaking.

Just as his father’s generation had appointed their Berkhamsted School teacher, John Bennet, as Vicar of Penn, so Assheton Curzon, as soon as he became the Proprietor of Penn church, exercised the same patronage for Roger Mather, who already held the Rectorship of St Mary’s in Whitechapel. The Penn vacancy was held open for him for three years until he could take it up.

Arthur Devis, a Lancashire painter of the Tory squirearchy, was at the height of his popularity. He specialised in informal small-scale portraits in domestic surroundings, known as conversation pieces. The figures have a somewhat doll-like appearance which was very fashionable at the time. This portrait is very unusual in that it uses the idea of a spotlight focusing on the two actors on a stage thus emphasising the aspect of public speaking in which they were engaged.

The sculptor of the monument is regrettably not recorded. The photograph illustrates that it was originally placed on the wall near the centre of the Lady Chapel, a mark of great respect since many of the Penn and Curzon family were buried nearby. It was moved in 2000 to permit the new Millennium arrangements which we see today. I watched two expert Polish craftsmen dismantle it into six separate components and reassemble it further along the same wall. They thought that the grey marble, which weighed 400 lbs, was probably English ‘dove grey’, no longer quarried, and the white marble was Italian ‘Carrara’, from a great quarry near Rome used by Michelangelo.

Assheton Curzon with his Tutor, Revd Dr Roger Mather c. 1754, by Arthur Devis. The portrait was still owned by a descendant of Assheton Curzon when it was sold by Christie’s in 1981. This is a copy of a small colour print from Christie’s catalogue which is framed in Penn House.

© Miles Green,Penn Parish Newsletter No.37, December 2014
Photographs courtesy Eddie Morton ARPS