Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

Compton in the Hole

At last, from the hill that’s home to the windmill in the previous post, I got my glimpse of Compton Wynyates. This north front is not, I have to say, the most spectacular side of the house, but still gives a good impression of the character of the place – the mostly Tudor brick walls, the tall chimneys, the dormers in the roofs, the purely ornamental crenellations, the different levels. Above all, this cluster of brick wings and pitched roofs gives an impression of the way the house must have grown over the years with bits added here and there before a major revamp of the eastern part of the building – the part of the left of the picture is an addition of 1867 by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt in a style in harmony with rest of the house.

Looking at the house in its tree-lined valley one can understand what has usually made people enthusiastic about it. John Russell, in Shakespeare’s Country, noticed how the surrounding hills and trees rise up around so that ‘the house is seen as if in the bowl of an enormous spoon’. W H Hutton, in Highways and Byways in Shakespeare’s Country, called it ‘a wonderful picture of rose-tinted restfulness’. Pevsner, with his eye more focused on the ball, found in it the picturesque mode that so attracted him: ‘the perfect picture-book house of the Early Tudor decades, the most perfect in England of the specific picturesque, completely irregular mode’.

Writers are apt to get lyrical about this place, but Hutton reminds us that Camden, referring to its setting, called it ‘Compton in the Hole’ and records a local ‘rustic’ showing a visitor around, remarking, ‘Did ye ever see sich a hole?’ Some hole.

Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

Hill and mill

Having looked at Compton Pike, I decided to follow a footpath up the nearby hill towards another local landmark. I was heading towards the windmill that I’d seen on top of the rising ground behind Compton Wynyates, the country house that seemed to be hidden from onlookers – hidden, that is, apart form a tantalizing glimpse of Tudor brickwork through the gate and through the trees.

When I got to the top of the hill and recovered my breath, the mill was a surprise. It’s a stone tower mill, but, unlike the imposing stone- or brick-built tower mills one is used to seeing, it is not a very tall structure – clearly the hill gave it most of the height it needed to catch the wind in its working days. The mill is said to date from the 18th century and to have been restored twice in the 20th, but has no proper sails, only the stocks. But apparently there is machinery inside, and with sails installed maybe it would turn again. For now, though, this picturesque little mill seems destined to remain a hilltop landmark, admired by travellers along the lanes between south Warwickshire villages such as Tysoe and Brailes, most of whom probably buy their flour from Sainsbury's in Banbury or the Co-op in Shipston on Stour.

Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

A Spaniard in the works

I recently spent a day bumbling around Warwickshire wondering if I could see the wonderful country house at Compton Wynyates from the public roads or public footpaths that surround it. Years ago this house was open to the public and I remember being enchanted by its forest of raspberry brick Tudor chimneys, Gothic windows, and gables. I seem to remember that the house could be seen from the nearby road, but its owners, who no longer open their home, now guard their privacy with trees, putting a spanner in my works.

So I had to be content, for now at least, with some interesting neighbouring structures, such as Compton Pike. My first sight of this curious landscape feature was a glimpse of the very top just beyond the crest of a hill. Walking along the edge of the field reveals an elongated pyramid of local ironstone, topped with a ball finial.

Compton Pike was probably put up in the 16th century as a signalling beacon – an iron hook protruded from the finial, and this supported a flaming lantern. It may have been used in 1588 as part of the chain of beacons that warned of the arrival of the Spanish Armada. It has remained ever since as a landmark and an obstacle to farm workers with combine harvesters, one of whom was about to negotiate it when I took this picture before bumbling on with my search.