Valentines Mansion, Ilford Wednesday 20^th June

We visited Valentines Mansion on 20^th June. It is situated in Valentines Park just south of Gants Hill roundabout in Ilford. There was a guided tour of the house inside and out. Then we were free to explore the gardens, lakes and grounds and to use the cafe.

Back in the late 17^th century there was a farm at this point known as Valentines farm. A lady approached the owner and offered to buy the buildings and land and he accepted. She was Mrs Tillotson, the widow of the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he died, being a churchman, he left very little money but he was renowned for his sermons. She had them printed and sold and they were so popular that they earned her £25,000, which was a great deal of money in those days. This enabled her to buy the farm, demolish the old house and build a new one for herself and her family. At that time the whole area was undeveloped, the occasional farmhouse and a row of workers cottages in Beehive Lane nearby. The new house was surrounded by its own grounds and the rest of the estate  was farmed.

Later the house passed through a succession of owners and was heavily modified. City merchant and banker Robert Surman bought the estate in the 1720s. He was heavily involved in the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720. He owned a number of properties in Essex which he had to sell at the time of the Bubble when much of his money was confiscated by the state. (That’s an idea we could follow today). By 1724 he had recovered sufficiently to buy Valentines and created the walled gardens, dovecote and grottoes. In the 1760s owner Sir Charles Raymond, originally a ship’s captain for the East India company, spent part of his fortune renovating Valentines, giving the house its Georgian appearance. The red brick facade was replaced with yellow stock brick which was the fashion. In Regency times everything had to be symmetrical so another wing was added to the west end. There are many blocked windows but this was not because of the window tax – they were designed that way to give symmetry to the outside but were not convenient on the inside. Later a porte cochere was added to the back, obscuring the window on the staircase so it had to be fitted with coloured glass to hide the building. This meant the back of the house became the front. The front was modified, the door blocked up and the gate and drive leading to Cranbrook Road removed. A porte cochere gives cover to the people leaving their coach to enter the building.

The service wing to the west was possibly built as an orangery and later converted into a dairy and kitchen. The dairy is remarkably cold, which is great for keeping dairy products fresh but very uncomfortable to work in. The kitchen contains two large ranges. The pots are cast iron and very heavy. Even a small kettle is difficult to lift even when empty.

Sarah Ingleby, the last private resident of Valentines, died in 1906 and the council acquired the house in 1912. They also bought more land and created Valentine park. Since then, the mansion has been a home to wartime refugees, a hospital, a public health centre, and a council housing department. Finally with the help of lottery money it was renovated and used for community use, as a museum and for social occasions, weddings etc. 

Considering that much of what we see today was paid for from money earned from the East India company it is interesting to see how many local residents of Indian extraction make use of it’s facilities today.

Valentines Park is Grade 11 listed. The area around the house is known as the Historic Core and is an extraordinary survival to find in 21^st century Ilford.

The best remaining outhouse is the 18^th century dovecote. Behind it are the cafe and the walled gardens, the kitchen garden, the old English garden and the rose garden.

A dry garden has just been opened by the Queen as part of the Jubilee celebrations.

Beyond the gardens are the water features, the Horse pond which feeds the Long Water through a grotto and the Fish pond, fed by another grotto. There is lots of bird life there.

The vine at Hampton Court was grown from a Black Hamburgh cutting taken from the gardens at Valentines. The original vine no longer survives in the park but in late 2008 a cutting was brought back from Hampton Court and planted in the kitchen garden at Valentines. Thus the circle is now complete.