Copped Hall, Epping, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The park at Copped Hall was licensed in 1293 and is recorded in 1303, on the death of Henry Fitzaucher, as a park of 60 acres (25 hectares), arable land of 100 acres (about 41 hectares), and meadow lands of 20 acres (about 8 hectares). From 1350 the manors of Epping and Copped Hall belonged to Waltham Abbey, but in 1537 Copped Hall was exchanged with the Crown for other properties.

After the estate fell to the Crown, Henry VIII visited it occasionally and Mary Tudor lived there as a house prisoner during the reign of Edward VI. When Sir Thomas Heneage was granted the manor in 1564 by Queen Elizabeth the hall buildings were in a dilapidated condition and he rebuilt it on the same site incorporating part of the earlier building. A simple map of the estate of about 1590 shows the park but gives no further details. Sir Thomas' daughter divided and sold the two manors, Copped Hall being purchased in 1623 by Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex. He was banished there following impeachment and during his life he added much to the gardens (Cassidy 1999).

In 1700 the estate was purchased by Sir Thomas Webster (Huntington Library records), who rarely visited the Hall and in 1739 he conveyed it to Edward Conyers in exchange for another property in Sussex. Conyers bought back the manor of Epping, thus reuniting the estate. In 1742 he was succeeded by his son John who took an active interest in the property. John was connected by marriage to Sir Roger Newdigate who in the mid 1740s drew detailed drawings of the old hall and provided ideas for garden improvement. Work in the grounds began in 1745 and building work on a new house, on a slightly different site from the old one, started in 1752 and was completed in 1758. The architect officially in charge of the building was John Sanderson who also provided a layout for a new kitchen garden.

Conyers died in 1775 and was succeeded by his son John Conyers II, who started refurbishing the house with the help of James Wyatt as soon as he inherited. It is probable that Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) was called in at this time (the record in his accounts of a visit to Copped is not dated but is more likely to be for John II than his father, who had already had the grounds laid out when he rebuilt the house. An engraving of the east front of the Hall in a park-like setting, dated 1781 (William Watts) provides pictorial evidence of what Brown may have done.

In 1869 the estate was purchased by George Wythes, a railway magnate. Wythes' younger grandson, Ernest James Wythes, inherited in 1887 and commissioned Charles Eamer Kempe, better known as a designer of stained glass, to extend and embellish the house, build a great conservatory, and make a new 'Jacobean' garden.

The house was substantially gutted by fire in 1917 and in 1952 the estate was sold. Following a long period of neglect, the ruinous house and its immediate grounds were purchased in 1995 by the Copped Hall Trust, set up by Alan Cox, an architect, with the aim of carefully restoring the house and the gardens for education and community use. The site remains (2000) in divided corporate and private ownership.