The House
The estate of Knightshayes had long been owned by the Dickinson family, merchants of Tiverton. In 1845 John Walrond Dickinson (1818-1889), MP for Tiverton (later created 1st Walrond Baronet in 1876), on inheriting through his mother the estates of the Walrond family, including Bradfield House, Uffculme, changed his surname to Walrond. In about 1860 he undertook major building works at Bradfield, turning it into one of the largest houses in Devon, and perhaps to assist in the financing of this he sold the Knightshayes estate to the Amory family in 1867. The house was commissioned by his grandson Sir John Heathcoat-Amory in 1867 and the foundation stone laid in 1869. By 1874, the building was complete, although not to Burges' original designs, and work had begun on the interior. However, unlike Burges' partnership with John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, the relationship between architect and client was not successful, Sir John objecting to Burges' designs both on grounds of cost and of style. "Heathcote-Amory (had) built a house he could not afford to decorate, by an architect whose speciality was interior design." This disagreement led to Burges' sacking in 1874 and his replacement by John Dibblee Crace. Nevertheless, Knightshayes Court remains the only example built of a medium-sized Burges country house, to the "standard" Victorian arrangement. Its virtues were recognised in its own time; "Knightshayes is eminently picturesque, executed with great vigour and thorough knowledge of detail.." The plan with hall, drawing, morning and smoking rooms, library and billiard room is conventional and the exterior is, by Burges' usual standards, restrained. A massive tower, to have been constructed over the West end, would have given the house "a more overtly romantic silhouette" but only the base was built.
The interior, by contrast, was to have been a riot of Burgesian excess but "not one of the rooms was completed according to Burges's designs.". Of the few interior features that were fully executed, much was dismantled or covered over by Sir John and his successors. Since the National Trust took over guardianship of the house in 1973, it has sought to recover and restore as many of Burges's fittings as possible, including some "sparkling" ceilings, such as that in the Drawing Room, which was discovered in 1981, having been boarded over as early as 1889. In a number of instances, the Trust has brought in Burges furniture from other locations, including a bookcase from The Tower House, now in the Great Hall, and a marble fireplace in the Drawing Room, from Burges's redecoration of Worcester College, Oxford. The presentation album which Burges prepared, and which can be seen at the house, shows what might have been. "At Knightshayes Burges was on top form. But (his) magical interiors remained a half-formed dream."
During the Second World War, the house was used as a convalescent home for the U.S. Eight Air Force.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)