231 - The Grove, Craven Arms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2023
Summary
Today it is the site of a small industrial estate, but Victorian timbered and brick lodges of Tudorbethan style still arrest the eye of the motorist on the A49 Ludlow road. These, and the remains of fine parkland, were the setting of a château-style brick mansion with stone detailing, surrounded by extensive formal gardens, that was built in 1878 for John Jones, an iron master and banker. The house’s architect might have been Samuel Pountney Smith of Shrewsbury who, in 1873–4, had been restoring the chancel of Holy Trinity Parish Church at Wistanstow. Jones had purchased the estate of 2,124 acres in June 1870 from the Lloyd family, the main house at The Grove, in 1795, having been home to Thomas Lloyd. It had later been let to Edward Urwick prior to its sale to Jones.
John Jones’s daughter and heiress, Harriet (d. 1940), married Henry David Greene QC (1843–1915) in 1879. He was the son of Benjamin Buck Greene (1808–1902), Governor of the Bank of England, and scion of the Bury St Edmunds brewing family, and she conveyed the estate to that family. Greene was Conservative MP for Shrewsbury from 1892 to 1906.
The main lodge on the Shrewsbury to Ludlow road – a gabled and timbered building with brick in-fill – was designed for the Greenes by Cyril B. Tubbs in 1886. The family also created the Craven Arms approach – carried by a bridge over the Quinny Brook to another similarly Tudoresque lodge at the outskirts of Craven Arms, at approximately the same time. The timbered Tudor style was evidently something of which the Greenes were fond and it extended to the exceptional village hall that the family built at Wistanstow.
At The Grove, Mrs Greene was responsible for the enlargement of the formal gardens, after circa 1905, with a new rose garden and rock garden. Following her death, the executors offered The Grove for sale in 1947. The property, described as the Quinny Brook Estate, comprising 1,217 acres, was offered for sale again in June 1955 when it was noted that the sale included the site of ‘Grove House, in course of demolition’.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 625Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021