The History of Cadhay
in Devon
by Michael Ford
C A
D H A Y
An Historic Tudor Manor
House in Devon
The Tudor
manor house we see today is essentially
as it was when built just before 1550 but
with Elizabethan and Jacobean additions.
The house
stands on the site of an earlier one, of
which little is known, at Ottery St. Mary
and takes its name from the de Cadehaye
family. The property was first mentioned
in the reign of Edward I.
Through
various marriages Cadhay passed to John
Haydon and it remained with his family
for 200 years. John was a lawyer of
Lincoln’s Inn and legal adviser to
the City of Exeter. When the Collegiate
of St. Mary at Ottery St. Mary was
suppressed in 1545, John Haydon was made
one of four Governors of it when it was
given to the people of the town. The
college buildings surrounding the church
were deserted and left in ruins and it
appears that John Haydon used some of the
stones from these buildings to build a
new house at Cadhay.
The house
he built incorporated the great hall of
the original house and formed a
‘U’ shape having a north front
and east and west wings.
John and
his wife Joan had no children so when
John died in 1587 his great-nephew Robert
Haydon inherited Cadhay. John
Haydon’s tomb can be seen in Ottery
St Mary church.
Robert
married Joan Poulett, the eldest daughter
of Sir Amias Poulett of Hinton St George
in Somerset. It was Robert who enclosed
the courtyard by building the south wing
with its short long gallery made for his
wife in the late 16th century.
Over the four doorways in the courtyard
are statues of Henry VIII, Edward VI,
Mary and Elizabeth dated 1617 and all
dressed alike.
When
William Peere Williams bought the house
in 1737 he decided to update it
internally so he had a ceiling inserted
in the Great Hall to hide the roof beams
and it became a dining-room in the
Georgian style.
The tour
of the house is very interesting and
besides the dining room covers the
library, drawing room and living-hall on
the ground floor and the long-gallery,
one bedroom and the raised roof-chamber
upstairs. The latter shows the roof
timbers of that original great hall but
somewhat altered.
William
died in 1766 but his widow continued to
live at Cadhay until her death in 1792.
Since then Admiral Graves purchased the
property and took up residence followed
by the Bagwells and Hares between 1802
and 1910. The Hares did not live at
Cadhay but had it divided into a
farmhouse and a gentleman’s
residence. In 1910 a William Dampier
Whetham bought the house, restored it and
lived there until 1924 when a Major
William-Powlett took on the tenancy
purchasing it outright in 1935. What had
persuaded the Major to live at Cadhay was
that when he first saw it he noticed his
own coat of arms on the chimneypiece in
the dining-room and so the Pouletts
returned to one of their ancestral homes
purely by chance.
The
gardens are a delight and still have
medieval fishponds.
Cadhay
is a member of the Historic Houses
Association and can be visited during
July and August on Tuesdays, Wednesdays
and Thursdays and Spring and Summer Bank
Holidays from 2pm to 6pm.
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