Summary
Painted white, this predominantly late-Georgian house of three bays and two storeys, with a raised and pedimented central attic bay, is flanked by single storey, two-bay wings. Henlle, formerly known as Belmont, was built in 1794 for Richard Lovett, whose father, Thomas, had bought the place from John Hughes of Corwen in 1782. The house still retains some of its contemporary interiors from this time. The front door leads into a hall with a screen of Ionic columns and, beyond, is an elegant, simple staircase which rises in an open well. On the west front, where a canted bay rises through two storeys, the ground floor room has walls divided by pilasters which are painted with feather decoration, probably of the first decade of the nineteenth century.
The Lovetts, who created Henlle as a classical villa, hailed from Mount Sorrell in Leicestershire and had inherited Greenhead House in that county through the marriage of Joseph Lovett (d. 1762) with the heiress, Mary Dale, in 1704. Their son, Joseph (1714–1777), moved to Chirk, and Thomas, father of the builder Richard, was his son.
On Richard’s death in 1815, the Lovett property was divided between his two cousins, Thomas (1792–1863) and Joseph Venables Lovett (1787–1866), whose father John Lovett (1754–1795) had been ‘a surgeon of skill and integrity in his profession’ and was Mayor of Oswestry in 1790.
Thomas Lovett received Fernhill (q.v.) and the family’s properties in Minsterley, Pontesbury and Wrexham, including a share in the Snailbeach Mining Company which his uncle had established in 1782. Belmont and the Whittington estates went to Joseph Venables Lovett who, in 1820 was Mayor of Oswestry and then High Sheriff of Shropshire in 1847. He married Margaret, the daughter of Richard Heaton of Plas Heaton in Denbighshire.
On his death he was succeeded by his eldest son, Colonel Thomas Heaton Lovett (1817–1892), Hon. Colonel of the North Shropshire Volunteers and Major of 98th Regiment, who married Cecil Elizabeth (d. 1876), eldest daughter of Wilson Jones of Hartsheath, near Mold. They had ten children of whom nine survived to adulthood. In 1873, Colonel Thomas Heaton Lovett had commissioned alterations to the service areas and the addition of a new dressing room and verandah which was undertaken to the designs of John Douglas of Chester. At the same time, services were upgraded with the provision of a hydraulic ram and new water supply.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 317 - 318Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021