Heywood House

In the early 17th century, James Ley, one of the two members of parliament for Westbury, and later Lord High Treasurer and Earl of Marlborough, and his brother Matthew Ley, also a Westbury member of parliament, acquired land at Heywood, then part of Westbury, and James Ley built a house there. His grandson James Ley, 3rd Earl of Marlborough, a Royal Navy officer, sold most of his Wiltshire property, including the house then standing, soon after inheriting it in 1638. In 1700, the house, then called Heywood Place, was bought by Thomas Phipps, of a family of Westbury cloth merchants, who had made a fortune in the City of London by trading with the East Indies and New England. H. G. G. Ludlow…

H. G. G. Ludlow's architect was Harvey Eginton of Worcester. The house is built of limestone ashlar blocks, with a Welsh slate roof and with octagonal ashlar chimneystacks. The style is Jacobean, with an E-plan footprint. There are two main storeys, and a third of attics, and five front windows across the first floor. In the centre of the front elevation is a two-storey porch, with Tudor-arched openings and hoodmoulds, with a first floor oriel window and an open parapet, and a large shaped front-facing gable, one of three. Above the porch are free-standing octagonal minarets and a square clock tower. The bays to each side of the porch have six-light casements on both principal floors, with…