The Hendre is Monmouthshire's only full-scale Victorian country mansion, constructed in the High Victorian Gothic style. Built for John Rolls, as a shooting box, it was vastly expanded by his grandson, John Rolls, 1st Baron Llangattock, and is most famous as the childhood home of Charles Stewart Rolls, co-founder of Rolls-Royce.
The mansion began as a shooting lodge, for John Rolls (1776-1837), son of John Rolls, Sheriff of Monmouthshire (1794), and the original manor house was extensively expanded throughout the next two hundred years. The first of three expansions by the Rolls family began with the architect George Vaughan Maddox who rebuilt parts of the south wing in 1830. John Rolls's successor, John Etherington Welch Rolls, began the mansion's expansion, using Thomas Henry Wyatt as his architect. Wyatt extended the house in the period 1837-41, creating the great hall and improving the park, including the addition of the gate lodges on the Monmouth Road, and he continued the enlargement of the south wing, both to the east and to the west between 1837 and 1858.
In 1872 he pulled down the old stables and built the present Coach House and loose boxes which, for that period, were very modern and forward looking. At this time the centre of the present house, being the Billiard Room, Smoking Room and Dining Room, were added. The final two stages of expansion were undertaken by John Etherington Welch Rolls's son, J. A. Rolls. Raised to the peerage as 1st Baron Llangattock, Rolls employed first Henry Pope, who completed the dining room wing and, secondly, Sir Aston Webb, who added the Cedar Library.
These additions took the mansion to its greatest extent and the late nineteenth century was also the house and family's social apogee, culminating in a visit from the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary), who stayed with Lord and Lady Llangattock at the Hendre in late October - early November 1900. The Duke and Duchess were taken on motor car excursions by Charles Rolls, probably the first time that the royal couple had been in a car. This was an important event in the family's social history; it confirmed their elevation to the upper echelons of society.
Lord Llangattock died in 1912, Charles Rolls having pre-deceased him, dying in an aviation accident in 1910. Lord Llangattock's heir died at the Somme in 1916 and the barony became extinct. The Harding-Rolls branch of the family (descended through John Etherington Welch Rolls, inheriting the title and estate through Eleanor Georgina Shelley-Rolls) continued to live at The Hendre until the 1980s when, following a failed time-share operation, it passed out of their hands. The mansion is presently the club house to The Rolls of Monmouth golf course.
Coordinates:
The Rolls of Monmouth Golf Club [1]
Gwent Archives [3]