Penn Street Village - Buckinghamshire |
| Penn House itself dates from 1760, when Assheton Curzon, the successor of the Penns, knocked down an earlier Tudor building and replaced it with a modest-sized, but spacious country mansion in red brick. Assheton Curzon was a considerable figure: he sat as Member of Parliament for Clitheroe for nearly 40 years until 1790 and in recognition of his public service was elevated to the House of Lords in 1794. During the nineteenth century, his grandson, Earl Howe, entertained King William IV and Queen Adelaide at Penn in his capacity as the Queen’s Lord Chamberlain. http://www.pennhouse.org.uk |
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The estate’s characteristic mixture of enclosed grazing-land and pockets of traditional ancient woodland probably changed little between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. However in about 1870, extensive areas of oak and beech woods were planted, both to enhance Penn’s appeal as a shooting estate and to ensure a source of local supply of raw materials to the furniture industry of High Wycombe. During the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of the tenant farms on the estate were vacated and taken in hand, with smaller fields and paddocks being amalgamated. In the process, the agricultural emphasis shifted increasingly from livestock to arable cropping. |