In a quiet fold of Northamptonshire, Canons Ashby is an Elizabethan manor of rare authenticity, held by one family — the Drydens — from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. Built on the land of a suppressed priory, it escaped the great rebuildings and keeps the face it wore around 1600.
A manor built on a priory
At the dissolution of the monasteries, the Augustinian priory of Canons Ashby was closed; its lands passed to the Dryden family, who raised a manor there. Look at the house: it is arranged around a court, with an entrance tower, a great hall and, added by successive generations, rooms of growing comfort. John Dryden (the builder, namesake of the poet) and his descendants made Canons Ashby a home of the cultivated lesser gentry. Inside, Jacobean plaster ceilings, panelling and a chamber with wall-paintings make a preserved ensemble.
The house of a line of letters
From this family descended the great poet John Dryden (1631-1700), England's first official Poet Laureate. Canons Ashby shows the continuity of a gentry line over nearly four centuries, with its late-seventeenth-century terraced gardens likewise almost unchanged. Don't miss: the entrance tower, the great hall, the Jacobean plaster ceilings, the Painted Parlour, the terraced gardens.
Did you know?
Canons Ashby nearly collapsed for want of upkeep in the twentieth century: it was partly to save such "sleeping" manors that the National Trust stepped in. Its value lies precisely in how little was done to it after 1600 — a house that crossed the centuries simply by growing old.
Info
Canons Ashby is near Daventry (Northamptonshire); a National Trust property, house, priory church and gardens open to the public. Seasonal hours to be checked.