Wivenhoe House

Wivenhoe House is a three-storey red brick mansion house built in 1759 by Thomas Reynolds of London for Isaac Martin Rebow, possibly to the designs of Mathew Brettingham, for a cost of £3,654. The park was landscaped by Richard Woods in the 1770s, and in 1816, John Constable painted a view of the lake. Significant alterations were undertaken in 1846 by John Gurdon Rebow, commissioning Thomas Hopper, with construction managed by local builder Henry Haywood. This resulted in a substantial re-design of the house in a Victorian Tudor style, with only some original features surviving. These include plasterwork in the north-west and south-west ground floor rooms, and two chimney pieces. Rainwater heads dated 1848 bear the initials IGR.

The north entrance front has two shaped gables, one at each end, and a range of seven windows with bar and transom details. A central projecting porch rises the full height of the building, featuring a crow-stepped gable and an upper-storey oriel window above an elaborate carved wood doorcase with a carved crest, panelled pilasters, arched entrance, and double panelled doors. The west front echoes this style, incorporating a large three-storey bay at the north end with seven-light windows, a ground-floor balcony, and a shaped gable to the south. The south front has three-storey end bays with shaped gables and five-light bar and transom windows, also featuring an upper-storey oriel window and a shaped gable centrally. All chimney stacks are constructed in an octagonal Elizabethan style, arranged in groups.

An east wing, indicated on Hopper’s plans, is a two-storey block retaining 18th-century brickwork and double-hung sash windows with glazing bars to the south and west ground floor fronts. Hopper recast the rest of this wing in the same Tudor style as the main block, incorporating shaped gables and octagonal chimney shafts, with two-light casements and wooden mouldings to the upper storey.

The interior was largely remodelled in 1847. The south-west and north-west ground floor rooms, originally the drawing room and boudoir, retained their ornamental plasterwork, some dating from the original 18th-century house, featuring bird and flower motifs. Marble chimney pieces, brought from Italy in 1847, are in the drawing room. The south-east ground floor room, formerly the dining room, boasts a fine Rococo chimney piece with a Chippendale-style mirror above. The entrance hall is entirely the work of Hopper, featuring enriched plaster ceilings, cornices, and a carved Jacobean style chimney piece. A grand staircase and staircase hall are located in the eastern part of the house. The building was known as Wivenhoe Park until it became part of Essex University in 1962.