Hatch Court, Taunton, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The Saxon name `Hache’ referred to a gateway leading to the Forest of Neroche which lay to the south-west of the parish church. Following the Conquest the manor was held by the Beauchamp family, from whom it passed in 1361 to the Seymour family. By 1633 a manor house near the church was described as ruinous, and in 1676 the manor passed by marriage to the earls of Ailsbury (guidebook). During the early 18th century John Collins, a wealthy clothier from Ilminster, Somerset, began to purchase property in Hatch Beauchamp and North Curry. His son, also John, matriculated at New College, Oxford in 1744 and after coming down from the university established himself as a country gentleman on his estate at Hatch Beauchamp. In 1755 Collins commissioned plans for a new house from the amateur architect Thomas Prowse (about 1708-67), an associate of Sanderson Miller, with whom he advised on the design of the contemporary Hagley Hall, Worcestershire and Croome Court, Worcestershire (there are descriptions of both these sites elsewhere in the Register). A resemblance to Hagley was noted in sale particulars of 1836.

Hatch Court was visited by Edward Knight of Kidderminster in June 1761. Knight (Diary, 1876) recorded seeing a pedimented greenhouse attributed by him to `Winde’ (perhaps William Winde, about 1685-1722), a gothic shell-temple, a serpentine river which lacked water, a chapel and bastion with a fine view, a bowling green, bone house, hermitage, square summerhouse, grotto, and root house in the pleasure grounds. The second Viscount Palmerston, who visited Hatch in 1787, noted 'a summer house standing nearby which commanded all the Vale of Taunton' (Palmerston 1787), while an engraving by Thomas Bonnor of around 1785 (private collection) illustrates a cascade and the Hermitage. John Collinson described `a pleasant park,...embellished with fine plantations, gardens,...On the north side of this eminence several temples and seats are erected on the brow of the hill, which is steep, finely indented, and adorned with hanging woods...’ (Collinson 1791). By 1899 (sale particulars) only the square summerhouse, icehouse, and grotto survived.

John Collins died in 1792, leaving Hatch Court to his eldest son, John Raw Collins; his second son, Henry Powell, inherited a neighbouring property, Hatch Park, while his third son, Bonnor, inherited Belmont, a late 17th- or early 18th-century house to the north-east of Hatch Court. This house, shown on Bonnor’s view of Hatch Court published in Collinson’s History of Somerset (1791) was demolished between 1820 and 1836. When John Raw Collins died in 1807, the estate passed to his brother Henry Powell, who lived at Hatch Court until the death of his wife in the early or mid-19th century. Henry Collins made various improvements to the house, and around 1820 purchased land below the escarpment to the north of the house and mid-18th-century pleasure grounds. Collins subsequently moved to Hatch Park and Hatch Court was let to a succession of tenants before being sold in 1833. After several changes of ownership, in 1899 William Henry Lloyd, banker and Birmingham steel manufacturer, purchased the estate, undertaking extensive improvements to the house and grounds before his death in 1917.

From 1923 Hatch Court was occupied by Brigadier and Mrs Andrew Hamilton Gault, Mrs Hamilton Gault being the niece of Lloyd’s widow; in 1914 Brigadier Hamilton Gault had founded the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, with which he remained associated until his death in Canada in 1956.

In 1931 the reversionary interest in the estate was purchased by Brigadier Hamilton Gault on behalf of his wife, who continued to live at Hatch Court until her death in 1972. Today (2000) the site remains in divided private ownership.

Hatch Court is one of a group of three neighbouring estates, the others being Halswell
Park and Hestercombe (there are descriptions of both these sites elsewhere in the Register), which were landscaped in a similar style by their owners in the mid- and late 18th century.