Grove Place

Grove Place
Grove Place as a lunatic asylum in the 19th century
General information
Address	Upton Lane, Nursling, Hampshire SO16 0XY
Coordinates	50°56′57″N 1°28′45″W / 50.949105°N 1.479224°W / 50.949105; -1.479224
Opened	mid 16th century
Owner	LifeCare Residences
Designations	Grade I listed

Upton Lane, Nursling, Hampshire

Grove Place is a Grade I listed building in Nursling, Hampshire. Now converted into retirement apartments, the building was originally a country house and was converted into a lunatic asylum before being developed for its present purpose.

The current house at Grove Place replaced an older one which was located to the south west of the building that stands today. The older house dated from medieval times.

In the 15th century the manor of Southwells, into which Grove Place was incorporated, came to be possessed by the Dean and Canons of St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. Several estates in the area were purchased by a merchant from Southampton named John Mill in the 1520s, and his son Thomas leased the house and six acres of garden at Grove Place from Romsey Abbey.

Thomas Mill died in 1560 and the house and garden passed to his son, Richard. John Mill's son-in-law, James Paget, leased Southwells from the Dean and Canons of St George's Chapel in 1561 for 81 years and it was Paget who commissioned the building of the new house at Grove Place, about 100 metres away from the medieval building which continued to be occupied into the next century.

The house, an Elizabethan mansion, was built in the mid to late 16th century, probably between 1565 and 1576, with some alterations and restoration taking place towards the end of the 18th century and again in 1895.

James Paget's son-in-law William Paulet transferred the remainder of the Southwells lease to Richard Mill in 1590. The manor was purchased by King Charles I in 1630 and he granted it to Henry Knollys. The Knollys family dwelt at Grove Place until Robert Knollys died without a male heir in 1751 and ownership reverted to the Mill family, who kept most of the farmland on the estate but leased 88 acres, including the house.

Dr Edward Middleton purchased the property in 1831 and converted it into a private lunatic asylum. By 1844 the asylum was owned and run by Mrs H Middleton and her family. The first patients to be admitted to the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum were twelve patients that had been selected from Grove Place by two justices of the peace; the first six were transferred on 13 December 1852.