Durand Academy

This article is about Wispers, the building near Midhurst which has housed several schools. For Wispers School at Wispers, see Wispers School.

Wispers is a Grade II listed British country house in the parish of Stedham with Iping near Midhurst, West Sussex. The house was built in 1874–1876 by architect Richard Norman Shaw, in the Tudor Revival style, more commonly known as "Mock Tudor". It has been added to considerably since. It was a private house from its construction until 1939; from 1939 onwards it has housed several schools.

"By Norman Shaw, 1876, before he started to design in the pretty tile-hung style associated with him. Not very good, and really hardly distinguishable from the standard large Victorian house. Stone ground floor, ornate half-timbering and gables above; limp and mechanical, without any of the picturesqueness his compositions of the 1870s sometimes have. The best thing is the site - high above a steep wooded valley with big views S."

The house was built in 1874-1876 by architect Richard Norman Shaw for Alexander Scrimgeour, a stockbroker. Architectural historians Nikolaus Pevsner and Ian Nairn were underwhelmed by the house: they called it "heavy and hearty", "not very good" and "limp and mechanical", adding that the best thing about Wispers is the site.

In 1892 Scrimgeour's widow, Anne Esther Scrimgeour, died, and her will showed that she owned Wispers along with other properties in the area.

In 1928 Wispers and its estate was bought by the Bedford Estate for Dame Mary Russell, the wife of Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford. Russell used Wispers as a weekend retreat: she was a keen aviator and flew her Tiger Moth from the family seat at Woburn Abbey to Wispers, where she had a hangar constructed in the 1930s at the same time as the large eastern wing was being added to the house. She used a nearby field as a landing strip. The Duchess was killed in a flying accident in 1937, and the house was sold in 1939.

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