Sausmarez Manor - The Regency House

The Regency House

John's heir, his eldest son Matthew, was Seigneur from 1774 to 1820. His main contribution to the estate was the building of the walls which enclose the potager, (vegetable garden) the orchard and the tennis court and the restoration of the old barn facing the Tudor house and to the south-west of it. Then he died he was succeedeed by his brother Thomas who, like his father, was both Controller and Procureur, though for an even loner period of fifty-five years.

Thomas, who had been a fiery youth and who in 1790 had fought a successful duel against his cousin Robert le Marchant, a son of the bailiff of that day, the repercussions of which provoked considerable discussion in fashionable London circles, settled down to have an enormous family. His two marriages brought him twenty-eight children. Though some of these died in infancy, he still had many who were not yet of age when he moved into the Manor. He therefore found the Andros house too small for his needs, and was obliged to build on to the back of it. His plans for it show it to have been a pleasant addition. It had a large breakfast room on the first floor and several bedrooms on this and the two upper floors. A central passage separated it on each floor from the Queen Anne house. On the ground floor, what is now part of a kitchen was originally used as the Procureur's office.

Little (it is impossible to say how much) of this Regency house, began in the last year of George III's reign, remains. Some of the doors and one of the bedroom windows are still clearly identifiable as is part of the roof. But the greater portion of it was pulled down by Thomas's youngest son, General George de Sausmarez who, having bought his brothers' shares of the property, became Seigneur and in 1873 began building the last and final additions to the family home with typical mid-Victorian gusto.