Coldrey House around 1900

Christopher Hussey continues:- “The manor was the Bishop of Winchester’s, but always leased to tenants. Though the East front, visible from the main road, is a charming late Georgian facade - one of the latest re-frontings in Froyle - a wing, running at right angles to it, containing the present entrance, is very much earlier. In the fourteenth century Coldrey was held by the Colrithe family, the names being evidently connected. A daughter took it to the Holts, Thomas Holt of Coldrey dying in 1458. His heiress married Edward Berkeley, whose daughter, Laura, brought it from Lord Mountjoy. In Henry VIII's reign William Lord Mountjoy sold the manor to William Lyster, who died in 1553, his son selling it to John Lighe, Esq., in 1557. Lighe, or Leigh, may well have built the old part of the house and was buried in Froyle Church in 1557, and his descendants retained Coldrey till 1629, when Thomas Leigh sold the property to Sir Humphrey May. Thenceforward local yeoman families were in possession, probably as tenant farmers; an Eggar, now squires of Bentley, in 1683; Robert Baldwin of Coldrey died in 1729; and in 1756 Thomas Rothwell of Coldrey married Elizabeth Burningham of Husseys. The front room may be as late as about 1815; the principal rooms were rather charmingly re-decorated in the style of that period. By 1850 it was being farmed by Mrs. Harriet Lee, in 1939 Colonel Nigel Duncan, whose family had owned Coldrey for two generations, sold the property to Mr. C. Mann, who has recently made considerable alterations. Coldrey lies off the main Farnham - Alton road, where the lane from Binsted and Isington bridge to Odiham via Lower Froyle crosses it..” In 1941 Christopher Hussey illustrated his article with some photographs of the house and its interior.

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