I discovered Minley Manor and Minley Home Farm in 2020 while looking for somewhere nearby to exercise during the Covid pandemic lockdown. Minley soon became one of my favourite places to walk, and I kept going back to look at the manor and farmhouse – buildings crying out to have a novel written about them.
The result was Murder at Merewood Hospital. It tells the story of the remaining five patients left in a military hospital on the Merewood estate at the end of the First World War.
During the war, many stately homeowners gave over a wing of their home or a building on their estate to the Red Cross to turn into a temporary hospital for injured soldiers. This is true of Minley Manor, a country manor house built around 1860 in a French Gothic style for Raikes Currie – a wealthy banker and Member of Parliament.
Raikes’ grandson, Laurence Currie, later introduced a water tower, walled gardens and a kitchen garden to the estate and extended the woodland. In 1896, he had Home Farm built, a unique model farm designed by Arthur Castings. The farmhouse had a similar decorative façade to the manor.
In the Great War, Laurence Currie gave over a lodge on the Minley estate to be used as a hospital for wounded servicemen. The Commandant of the hospital was Mrs Laurence Currie, and the Curries met all of the hospital’s expenses.
My novel has a similar premise in that the Wintringhams of Merewood Manor fund Merewood Hospital, and Dorothy Wintringham is the Commandant of the hospital. However, because of its unusual architecture, I chose Minley Home Farm rather than Minley Lodge as the building that’s turned into Merewood Hospital.
In 1935, the Ministry of Defence purchased Minley Manor and all its estates. Minley Home Farm remained an active dairy farm until the mid-20th century and was still used by the MoD until the 1990s.
In 2014, Minley Manor was sold and is now an events venue. Over the years, it’s featured in many films, including Mosquito Squadron and Stardust.
The MoD still owns Home Farm and thousands of acres of surrounding land. Despite other buildings within the estate being listed, Home Farm remains unlisted. It’s now derelict and in need of restoration.
In 2020, the MoD submitted plans to demolish the farm. The Victorian Society sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Defence, urging them to rethink, highlighting the farm’s architectural and historical significance.
SAVE Britain’s Heritage took legal action to block the demolition, and with the support of the Victorian Society, they’ve applied for Home Farm to become a listed building. So far, that hasn’t happened.
The future of Minley Home Farm remains uncertain, and I’m not sure it will survive for much longer. I still regularly walk at Minley, and each time I see the farm, it’s deteriorated a little more.
In its day, it was a unique model farm – and it will be sad to see this piece of history lost forever.