Old Photo of Lanoy House

Our neighbour is the farmer next door and they have farmed the surrounding area for over 100 years (since 1913) The family owned all of the farm dwellings including our house as that was part of the Lanoy Estate at the time.  Mary, the farmers wife, has been researching the history of Lanoy Estate and her farm. She brought this photo down to show us along with a big folder containing lots of interesting historical papers regarding the Lanoy Estate.  This is the only photo of our house, in the early 1900's it was referred to as the Big House.

We bought this house off the Family in December 2013 after the century of belonging to one family, passing down through the generations, as the head of the family was to old to work the farm. Prior to that it belonged to a family called the Pethicks. They were originally from North Devon but had a very successful shipping business in Bristol. This photo is of Squire Pethicks coachman and one of the stable hands. We don't know the date exactly but we believe the house was built around 1871 and this photo may have been taken some 20 years later.  What a fantastic photo this is! Squire Pethick was certainly very wealthy...

Also, you can see the carved oak fascias on the gables and you can just make out the Gothic finials on the apexes which have rotted away and are no longer there.  The driveway looks as if it was gravel or even maybe early tarmac, today our driveway is 2 muddy tracks crossing the front of the house. There looks to be venetian type blinds on the 2 ground floor windows to the left of the coachman. 

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Jo