'The ideal of what an English country house should be': Ven House's journey from Georgian corruption to modern glory

In the summer of 1678, Michael Malet was incarcerated in the Tower of London by Charles II for ‘mad, extravagant words’ uttered during a Parliamentary by-election in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Malet was twice elected as MP for Milborne Port, Somerset, close to his seat at Poyntington, Dorset, and his fanatical denunciations of the Court and popery earned him notoriety. In 1675, he had not only introduced a bill that aimed to legalise bigamy — probably in an attempt to allow Charles II to father a Protestant heir by one of his many mistresses — but he had shouted at the King’s brother, the future James II, a Catholic, to abandon ‘idolatry’ in the Queen’s drawing room.

One of those who was involved in managing the prosecution of Malet was the recently appointed Recorder of Abingdon, Thomas Medlycott. He was the son of a London dyer who had trained in the law and, as we shall see, Malet’s prosecution evidently connected him directly with Milborne Port and the families vying for control of its two Parliamentary seats. It also drew him directly into the infighting between the emerging factions of Whigs and Tories in national politics.

In Abingdon, Medlycott went on to oppose the manipulation of a mayoral election and then, in 1686, having been briefly dismissed from office as Recorder, he successfully defended a large group of dissenters in Berkshire from prosecution and taunted one of the Tory judges presiding over the case.

Latest Videos From

Watch full video here:

Given the political sympathies that these actions imply, it is no surprise that he was a firm supporter of the Glorious Revolution that overthrew James II in 1688. So much so that William of Orange actually stayed at his Abingdon home, Unicorn House, on his march from Exeter to London. Medlycott was subsequently elected to the convention — later declared to be a Parliament — that legitimised William’s succession with Queen Mary to the throne. His career as an Abingdon MP, however, proved very short lived. On May 7, 1689, the result of his election was overturned on account of the violence that accompanied the poll. He did not stand again, possibly because of his age — he was 61 — and retired from public life.

In the meantime, however, Medlycott had clearly been laying plans for his two eldest sons, James and Thomas. Both trained in the law and, until 1689, it is likely that the former was intended to enter into his father’s interests in Abingdon. Provision for his second son seems to have been organised by 1683, when Thomas was 21. This took the form of a mortgage on the estate of a Tory army officer, Sir Charles Carteret, in Somer-set. It cannot be a coincidence that this estate, which included the future site of Ven House, was close to Milborne Port and that Carteret repeatedly secured election in the borough as an MP from 1690–98. In some way, impossible now to discern, the prosecution of Malet must lie behind this connection.

During the 1690s, the younger Thomas began to enjoy a successful career in Ireland as secretary to the 2nd Duke of Ormonde, from whom he received property in 1698/99. That probably explains why, in 1698, James purchased Carteret’s mortgaged estate in Somerset. He occupied a house called Ven Farm on the edge of the town as his seat, but his work remained focused in London. Meanwhile, his younger brother — who comes across as more active and ambitious — managed his associated voting interest in the costly, fractious and hard-fought elections that were now central to English political life. In 1702, Thomas petitioned on behalf of James against the result of one election with far-reaching consequences.

Despite its diminutive size, Milborne Port returned two MPs. As was true across England, these were elected according to local traditions rather than a universal system. Thomas’s complaint established that, to avoid ‘disturbances’, all the inhabitants of Milborne Port not in receipt of alms had in recent years been allowed to vote. It was agreed, however, that only the votes of those paying scot and lot — a tax; hence the expression ‘scot free’ — in the nine bailiwicks of the town were actually eligible voters. At a stroke, the electorate shrank from about 80 to 48. With four of the bailiwicks under his ownership, James now established a controlling interest in elections and Milborne Port became almost — dependent on political alliances — a ‘pocket’ borough.

Consequently, in 1706, Thomas was returned as one of the borough MPs and, in 1710, James took his place. Then, on December 13, 1716, their 88-year-old father died and was buried at Milborne Port. James was nearly 60 by this date and it may have been in response to his inheritance that he both resigned his seat as MP and sold the lucrative office of Master in Chancery, which he had secured in 1706, for the enormous sum of £3,000. It was probably at this moment that James first contemplated a much grander residence at Milborne Port as an expression of his local standing and electoral authority.

The only documentary evidence for the construction of Ven House (Fig 1), which James subsequently began immediately adjacent to Ven Farm, is an undated — and until recently, misinterpreted — summary building account in the Medlycott family papers held in the Somerset Record Office. This cites the total cost of the new house as £2,493 4s 4d, with the lead, freestone and some timber being provided at James’s cost. Included in this total were £467 10s for 550,000 bricks, as well as £27 10s for their carriage, £334 12s for timber — variously brought from nearby Brewham Forest, Motcombe, and the estate — £99 15s for sash windows and their glass and 6,402ft of stone from ‘Doughthill’ (possibly Doulting) and Chariton. Crucially, the account also mentions the name of the chief contractor and presumed designer of the house, ‘Mr Ireson’.

This must be a reference to Nathaniel Ireson. Born in 1686, Ireson was apprenticed to the famously reliable builder Francis Smith of Warwick and, over the course of a long career, proved extraordinarily versatile, working variously as an architect, sculptor, builder, brick-maker, plasterer, quarryowner and potter. He is first documented in the South-West in 1720, when he was contracted by the banker Henry Hoare to realise Colen Campbell’s designs for Stourhead House, Wiltshire. Indeed, he cannot realistic-ally have been involved at Ven before this date. When exactly work began on the house, however, is not clear and was presumably determined by James’s troubled finances.

According to tradition, James was caught in the financial collapse of the South Sea Bubble late in 1720. If that’s true, and his fortune suffered, the contract with Ireson may have been drawn up just beforehand early in the same year. Alternatively, it may have been signed in about 1725, shortly before the contested elections of 1727 and 1728, when his brother Thomas was once again returned as an MP for Milborne Port.

Whatever the case, James somehow over-stretched himself and, in April 1731, was declared bankrupt. He died almost immediately afterwards, on May 2. By this date, the house must have been largely complete.

Regular and compactly arranged, Ven looks back to the architectural fashions of the 1690s and is laid out on a rectangular plan and built of brick, an unusual material for this region in the period (but well known to Ireson). It comprises a basement, two main floors and an attic storey. The basement to the rear is concealed by a garden terrace that originally terminated to each end in a freestanding banqueting house. Covering the whole structure is a low-pitched roof, which is concealed behind a balustrade.

The front and rear elevations are seven window bays wide and richly detailed in stone. Both were almost identically treated with a central doorcase and a giant order of Corinthian pilasters creating an emphatic tripartite division. Ireson created a similar design at Crowcombe Court in the north of Somerset, where he worked from 1724. At Ven, a heavy cornice incorporates the keystones of the windows to the upper floor, an unusual technical detail. Above, each attic bay is articulated by a single pilaster. The side elevations are entirely brick built and respectively five and six window bays, an idiosyncratic asymmetry in such a regular building.

As originally designed, the front door opened into a two-storey hall flanked by a pair of monumental fireplaces, each decorated with the Medlycotts’ eagle crest (Fig 3). Leading off the hall to each side were a ser-vants’ stair and the principal polite rooms of the house. Of these, the dining room with its fluted Doric pilasters and panelling is today the best preserved (Fig 4). At the far end of the hall, beneath the curving screen that dominates the interior, were three openings to the main stair. This had two flights of steps that swept back to the gallery over the hall screen through three upper arches. The gallery in turn gave access to the bedrooms on the first floor. The services occupied the basement and the attic storey of the house was presumably intended for servants.

The newly completed house and its setting are recorded in three remarkable drawings. Two are signed by a certain Richard Grange, of whom nothing is known. These show the house and the formal layout of the garden from the front and back. The third is dated 1739 and shows the wider grounds, some features of which are still preserved in the present garden layout (Country Life, March 29, 2023). By this date Ven was in the hands of James’s son, another Thomas, who briefly competed with his uncle Thomas for control of the parliamentary seat.

In 1763, the property passed from this third Thomas to a nephew, Thomas Hutchings, who then assumed the name of Medlycott. He was succeeded by his son William Coles, who was elevated to a baronetcy in 1808 in return for his political support. Upon inheriting the estate in 1835, and following the Reform Act of 1832 that swept away the electoral arrangements that had served the family for more than a century, his son and namesake commissioned the established London architect Decimus Burton to renovate the house. Burton is familiar as a Greek Revival practioner, but at Ven he entered to a quite remarkable degree into the spirit of this 1720s building. A full series of his drawings for the work survives.

Internally, Burton closed the lower openings between the hall and the main stair and divided up the latter space to create a new drawing room (Fig 5). At the same time, he recast the servants’ stair as the principal stair (Fig 2). Externally, Burton recycled the front door within a new, projecting porch (Fig 7) and reconfigured the wider setting of the building. Meanwhile, the banqueting houses were demolished and a new conservatory and glazed passage were added across part of the terrace (Fig 6). To either side of the building, he also created courts for stables and other services, each entered through a triumphal arch.

Sir William Coles Medlycott Jnr was succeeded by four sons, the last of whom died in 1920. By this date, the first parts of the estate were already being sold off and the house was subsequently let. An advertisement in Country Life in 1928 described it as possessing a ‘large hall, four reception rooms, billiard room, sixteen bedrooms, bathrooms, lavatories, very complete domestic offices and servants’ quarters, electric light, central heating, luggage lift, stabling [for] ten horses [and] garages’.

Ven House was eventually sold in 1957, however, and has since passed through the hands of several owners. These have included the American collector Tommy Kyle, a serial restorer of country houses, and the designer Jasper Conran. In 2015, the house was bought by the present owner Mike Fisher, the founder of the architecture and interior design firm Studio Indigo, and his partner, Charles, Lord Allen of Kensington. They undertook further restoration work with the help of B2 Architects and have furnished the interior with a combination of historic and modern furnishings to stylish effect (Fig 8). Under their care, and with its outstanding gardens, Ven answers the popular ideal of what an English country house should be.

This feature originally appeared in the May 13, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.