page_title: Compton Wynyates
section_title: Neglect
hierarchical_section_title: Compton Wynyates / Neglect
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the interior of the room with wooden panelling in the background, a man standing to right and a couple looking at him from outside the room, a dog seated at centre; plate LXXV. 1841 Hand-coloured lithograph
context_page_description: Compton Wynyates is a Tudor style country house in Warwickshire, England, a Grade I listed building. The Tudor period house is constructed of red brick and built around a central courtyard. It is castellated and turreted in parts. Following action in the Civil War, half timbered gables were added to replace damaged parts of the building. Today, set in its topiary gardens and green lawns, its appearance of idealized English country life contrasts sharply with the story of the family that has lived there for over five hundred years, a story inextricably linked to the history of the house as both have prospered, declined and prospered simultaneously.
  The Compton family, who still live today in this private house, appear in records as resident on the site as early as 1204. The family continued to live in the manor house as knights and squires of the county until Sir Edmund Compton decided, c. 1481, to build a new family home.
context_section_description: Following the restoration of the monarchy, the Comptons too were restored to their estates. As Compton Wynyates was now the minor family house, it tended to be the country home of the heir. Minor alterations were made but usually in sympathy to its Tudor origins.  The 5th Earl of Northampton c. 1730 added a wing between two towers on the east side of the house in the classical style, which was not in keeping at all.  By this time though, the family fortunes were running low and, as a result, Compton Wynyates began to suffer neglect.  In 1768 the Comptons found themselves in such penury that the entire contents of the house were sold, never to be recovered.  The then Lord Northampton, living at Castle Ashby, ordered Compton Wynyates to be demolished. However the family's land-agent ignored the order and merely had the windows bricked up (to avoid the window tax). And so the house remained largely forgotten.
caption: Hall, Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire (1841; hand-coloured lithograph)
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