Hill Court Manor

Hill Court Manor (grid reference SO574216) is a country house built in 1700 at Hom Green, Walford near Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire. The house is a Grade I listed building. It is currently owned and occupied by the Rehau Group.

Although Hill Court has only been owned by four families since its construction nearly three hundred years ago, each family has been instrumental in the development of different aspects of this fine country estate from the structure of the building to the lay out of the gardens and the management of the land.

In 1698 the building of Hill Court was initiated by Richard Clarke, the son of a country gentleman, whose family, it is believed, made their fortune importing clover seed to England in the seventeenth century. Work on Hill Court progressed, but Richard died in 1702 before his house was finished and the task of completing the building was passed on to his brother Joseph.

There were not many surviving accounts from the building but records show that on 21 September 1700 the sum of £71 12s 9d was paid to Robert Wayman for all the brickwork in the house walls and drains.

When Joseph Clarke finished building Hill Court in 1708 it was a rectangular, two storey house with a large hipped roof. Looking at the house today it is possible to see the darker bricks of the original building finishing in a line just above the first floor windows of the central block. Joseph lived in his new country house with his wife and eight children and he was sufficiently established in the county to become High Sheriff in 1715.

In the 1700s the impressive avenue in the front of the house was planted with elm trees by John Kyrle, a friend of Joseph Clarke. Kyrle was a local gentleman and benefactor to the town of Ross. It is documented that he rebuilt the church spire and laid out the Prospect, a public garden in the town. The stone work at Hill Court bears resemblance to that in the Prospect gardens and this suggests that there may be some truth in the tradition that he designed Hill Court.

Joseph Clarke died in 1728 and was succeeded by his eldest son Richard. It is probable, that about eight years later, Richard began extending Hill Court, creating the house as we know it today. Unfortunately he died in 1748 before his alterations were completed. As it turned out the extensions were scarcely needed by Richard's family. His brother John died in 1759; their mother died in 1765 and was succeeded by her daughters, Alice who died in 1779, Mary who died in 1789 and Jane who died in 1806.

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