Newnham (Old)

Newnham (since circa 1718Old Newnham) in the parish of Plympton St Mary in Devon is a historic estate long held by the Devonshire gentry family of Strode. The ancient mansion house is situated 1 mile north-east of St Mary's Church, beside the Smallhanger Brook, a tributary of the Tory Brook, itself flowing into the River Plym. The house was abandoned by the Strode family in about 1700 when they built a new mansion on the site of Loughtor Manor House, about 1/3 mile to the north-east of Old Newnham.

Monuments to the Strode family survive in St Mary's Church, Plympton, including the canopied stone effigy of Richard Strode (d.1464), showing a recumbent knight clad in armour. The mural monument of William II Strode (d.1637) and his family shows him kneeling with his two wives on either side and ten children below. The kneeling effigy mural monument to his daughter Ursula Strode, the wife of Sir John III Chichester of Hall, North Devon, survives in Bishop's Tawton Church. A notable member of this family and William II Strode's second son was the parliamentarian Sir William Strode (1594–1645), one of the Five Members whom King Charles I attempted to arrest in the House of Commons in 1642. In 1538 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Strode family purchased the demesne lands of Plympton Priory the second wealthiest monastery in Devon, and thus greatly expanded their estate. The Parliamentary Rotten Borough of Plympton Erle (abolished following the Reform Act of 1832) was controlled by the Strode family and the Treby family of Plympton House, and thus several Members of Parliament for the borough were members of these two families or were nominated by them.

According to the Devon historian Sir William Pole (d.1635) the descent of the estate of Newnham was as follows:

The de Strode family originated at the estate of Strode in the parish of Ermington in Devon, from which they took their surname. Today's Strode Farmhouse incorporates traces of the ancient former mansion house of the Strodes.

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