Compton Wynyates is a Tudor country house in Warwickshire, England, a Grade I listed building. The Tudor period house is constructed of red brick and built around a central courtyard. It is castellated and turreted in parts. Following action in the Civil War, half-timbered gables were added to replace damaged parts of the building.
The Compton family, who still live today in this private house, appear in records as resident on the site as early as 1204. The family continued to live in the manor house as knights and squires of the county until Sir Edmund Compton (who died ) decided, , to build a new family home.Wynates is the birthplace and burial place of Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, considered to be the second Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Edmund Compton's house
Edmund Compton constructed the house of bricks that have a glowing raspberry colour of striking intensity. Edmund's four-winged house around a central courtyard is recognisable by the thickness of the deep walls that form the core of the existing mansion. This new fortified house was fully moated, and parts of the moat form a pond in the garden today. There was also a second moat (probably dry) and second drawbridge. However fortifications were not the only consideration for the new mansion—dark brick diapering and decorative mouldings add variety to the façade. Over the entrance the Royal Arms of England are supported by the dragon and greyhound of Henry VII of England and Henry VIII. The architect or mason builder is unknown.
William Compton's house
thumb|left|300px|A 19th-century romanticised view of the gate house at Compton Wynyates
Edmund died young and as a consequence his son William Compton became a ward of the Crown, as was the custom. At the court of Henry VII the eleven-year-old orphaned William Compton became a page to the two-year-old Prince Henry and thus began a close friendship, which continued after the prince succeeded as Henry VIII. As a result of this lifelong friendship, Henry VIII gave William, who was also to become a military hero, many rewards, amongst them the ruinous Fulbroke Castle. Numerous fittings at Fulbroke were brought to embellish Compton Wynyates, including the huge bay window full of heraldic glass, which looks into the courtyard from the great hall; also from the castle came many of the mullioned windows with vine-patterned ornamentation.
It was at this time () that the great entrance porch, chapel and many of the towers were built. In fact this was the start of the many additions over the next ten years that were made to the house with no thought to symmetry, height or regularity. The house was simply extended wherever space within the confines of the moat permitted. The brick fluted and twisted chimneys also date from this time and are one of the house's most notable features.
Unlike many other houses of the period, Compton Wynyates has not been greatly altered over the centuries. This is because in 1574 its owner Henry Compton, 1st Baron Compton, began work on one of Britain's finest houses, Castle Ashby. The Comptons continued to lavish money on this new mansion for the next century or so, as a consequence of which Compton Wynyates has survived almost intact as the perfect Tudor mansion, spared the constant improvements of successive generations.
thumb|alt=Floor Plan |Compton Wynyates Floor Plan. A: Chapel; B; Parlour; C: Staircase; D: Hall; E: Kitchen; F: Larder; G: Scullery; H: Porter's Lodge; J: Porch; K: Cellar
Royal visits
The Comptons, as loyal and rich subjects of the Crown, frequently played host to the reigning sovereign of their time. The frequency with which they entertained state visitors was a barometer of their wealth, and this was an era in which a one-day visit from the monarch could, and frequently did, bankrupt the host.
King Henry VIII stayed many times at Compton Wynyates, and his bedroom window still retains the king's arms in stained glass combined with the arms of Aragon, the home country of his first Queen.
The 2nd Earl was killed at the Battle of Hopton Heath in 1643 fighting for his cause, and in the same battle his son and successor, James 3rd Earl of Northampton, was wounded,
There is a legend that the widow of the 2nd Earl remained hidden in the attics of the vast house tending to Royalist wounded, undetected by the Cromwellians, until their escape was possible.
During the night of 29 January 1645, the Comptons made an abortive attempt to recapture their home, but were repelled after four hours fighting. The Compton family fled into exile abroad and did not return until the restoration of the monarchy. By this time, though, the family fortunes were running low and, as a result, Compton Wynyates began to suffer neglect. In 1768 the Comptons found themselves in such penury that the entire contents of the house were sold, never to be recovered. The then Lord Northampton, living at Castle Ashby, ordered Compton Wynyates to be demolished. However the family's land-agent ignored the order and merely had the windows bricked up (to avoid the window tax).
Today
The house today remains essentially the mansion that Edmund Compton and his son William completed within a thirty-year period during the reigns of the first two Tudor monarchs.
The 6th Marquess of Northampton (1885–1978) cared greatly for the house and spent a few months each year at Compton Wynyates. It was he who installed the electricity and water supplies; however his principal home always remained Castle Ashby.
A dead-end public footpath runs from the village of Upper Tysoe about away, ending at a tall locked gate a few yards short of the estate church, where walkers are instructed to return the way they came. There is no access to the public road a short distance further on.
Cultural references
Compton Wynyates has occasionally been used as a filming location, including: The Black Tent (1955); Carry On Camping (1969), (Coincidentally these establishing shots are said to have come from the earlier Black Tent footage); Candleshoe (1977); Death on the Nile (1978); the 1980s television show Silver Spoons; An Instance of the Fingerpost (1998); The Mirror Crack'd (1980); a 1995 episode of Keeping Up Appearances and the television series The Tudors. The house was the inspiration for Croft Manor in the Tomb Raider series. The Cinema Museum in London holds film of the house from 1938 (Ref HM00083).