Ankerwycke Purnish

Original titleLord Langford
Year painted1822
Museum reference numberPR162
Address and postcodeAudley, Cooper’s Hill, Cooper’s Hill Lane, Englefield Green, Surrey, TW20 0JY
Listed building numbern/a
Construction date of building depicted and major alterationsEarly nineteenth century. This building was erected by John Blagrove on the site of an Elizabethan manor. It was demolished c.1865 when a further building was erected.
History of ownership/residents and useThe Elizabethan manor house on the Ankerwycke estate was owned by the Harcourt family during the eighteenth century. In 1805 it was bought by John Blagrove who demolished it and built the house depicted here, described in Cary’s New Itinerary (1824) as ‘a gothic mansion’. Blagrove died in 1824 at which time the house was occupied by Lord Langford (sometimes Longford). In 1829 the house re-entered the Harcourt family through purchase by George Simon Harcourt who still owned it in 1842 although it is recorded as untenanted. At some point in the early nineteenth century the house began to be referred to as Coopers Hill.

The estate remained in the ownership of the Harcourt family until bought by Baron Albert Grant, a company promoter and Conservative politician who was unseated in 1874 for election offences. Grant rebuilt the house c.1865. 

In 1870 the new building was converted for use as the Royal Indian Engineering College. It returned to use as a private home of the Cheylesmore briefly between 1911 and 1938.

From 1938 through to 2006 the building was occupied by London County Council, Shoreditch College and Brunel University consecutively, at which point the site was sold for redevelopment and it is currently in use as a Retirement Village. 
Location’s present statusThe house depicted was demolished, presumably in 1865. The site is now Audley Retirement Village Coopers Hill.
Links and references