This remarkable timbered home was preserved for 300 years — and then flattened by a earl

Lymore Hall, in the historic county of Montgomeryshire, was a remarkable and rare example of a country house hardly altered from it inception in the 1670s.

Built around an old hunting lodge during the reign of Charles II, the half-timbered, multi-gabled house was commissioned by Edward, 3rd Baron Herbert of Chirbury to replace his ancestral homes of Black Hall — destroyed by fire — and Montgomery Castle — seized and devastated by Cromwell’s Roundheads.

Lord Herbert clearly heeded history's lessons. Recognising the perceived necessity for a swift departure, the new property was said to feature 'hiding places, odd corners and dark passages communicating with unexpected exits.'

Fine oak panelling, oak and elm floors and oak beams held the house together, developing a unique patina and warping with time.

Lymore also sheltered a striking family heirloom: a unique, hand-hewn, Jacobean-era staircase that the Parliamentarians had uncharacteristically left in one piece and salvaged from Montgomery Castle.

Sadly, Lord Herbert died just three years after Lymore was finished. The house first passed to his brother, then to his wife and, later on the Earls of Powis. The aristocratic family already had other, more modern properties to live in, so antiquated Lymore was treated as a very occasional second (but more likely third or forth) home. According to records, the last person to sleep under the grand old building's roof did so in 1886.

Aesthetically speaking, this served Lymore well and it entered the 20th century with the vast majority of its original features still intact. However, its emptiness did not serve its structural qualities quite so fairly.

'Everywhere ceased to be a quite straight line or an exact right angle,' wrote someone in a 1908 article for Country Life, 'for Nature has most engagingly insisted upon modifying man’s over-precise geometry, so that every floor waves and every floor leans.'

Somehow, Lymore survived the First World War, but during a 1921 fundraising fête for the local orthopaedic hospital the floor collapsed, dumping about 30 philanthropists, including the Earl and Countess, into the very old cellars. Mercifully, no one was seriously injured.

After this near catastrophe, Lymore was abandoned for good.

George Charles Herbert, 4th Earl of Powis, did try his hardest to preserve the unique building, but in a letter to County Life, published inside the October 5, 1929, issue, he outlined his reasons for demolishing it.

'SIR,—As I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is necessary to demolish the interesting old half-timbered house Lymore… I think that I ought to give the public….the reasons which have compelled me to arrive at this decision.

'...Lymore is scheduled as an ancient monument by H.M. Office of Works, and about two years ago H. M. Office of Works gave me a full report on the condition of the house, when it was found a considerable amount of money would have to be spent upon it to preserve it...

'I offered it on lease for £1 per annum [about £56.51 today] to a tenant who would be prepared to put the house in order either to preserve it as it is or to use it as a residence. I then offered it through H.M. Office of Works to the nation, but it was declined on the ground that the OOW had already undertaken the repair of many castles and buildings as they were able to deal with out of the grant made available to them by Parliament.

'I then advertised the house in this country and America for removal and re-building elsewhere, but without any satisfactory result.'

The letter concluded: 'I have, therefore, reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to sell the panelling, staircase, oak, etc., in the house by lots by auction of October 23rd, and I have obtained the consent of the Office of Works to do this. POWIS'

By 1931, no trace of the building still scarred the landscape. However, as always, small fragments do survive.

In 1931, Packwood House in Warwickshire was being extended. Floorboards from Lymore — presumably not the collapsing ones — were used in the Long Gallery, where they remain to this day.

The Lymore Estate still welcomes scores of walkers who pass the ghost of the house as they traverse Offa’s Dyke

And the ornate staircase? It was moved to its third home — Aldborough Hall, North Yorkshire — where it still elevates the great and the good.

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