Over Langford Manor

Over Langford Manor, also known as The Old Courthouse (of the infamous Judge Jeffreys) is a Grade II listed building, in Upper Langford, North Somerset, England. The original east-west mediaeval farmhouse (late 15th century), now mostly demolished, was the earliest part of the Manor. A north-south wing dating back to both the 16th and 17th centuries abuts the original house. The wall of the sole remaining part of the original mediaeval building is 33 inches thick. As the subsequent additions were built, they were of decreasing wall thickness as befitted the times. Accordingly, the central section of the house is 16th century and the most northerly Hall is 17th century. One of the very old internal ceiling beams shows a bevelled surface along one side and a flat surface on the other. The flat surface (to the north) was where an internal wall was once, and this equates to the position of the outside quoins. This represents where the building stopped for a hundred years or so, before being extended northwards towards the road. The Manor has had its fair share of famous inhabitants including Sir John Latch who, in 1627, was the High Sheriff of Somerset. In 1642, Sir John, a staunch Republican, leased Over Langford Manor and raised soldiers for Cromwell's New Model Army. Two years later, after returning from the Second Battle of Newbury, he died of shock upon discovering his wife and twelfth child had died in childbirth. The couple's poignant memorial is in Church of St John the Baptist, Churchill in Churchill, Somerset. Sir Lintorn Simmons, the Governor of Malta, bought the manor in December 1873. His daughter Blanch Lintorn Orman went on to help found the Girl Guides movement in 1910. Sir Lintorn's granddaughter, Rotha Beryl Lintorn Orman, founded the British Fascists in 1923, the idea came to her while digging the vegetable garden here. She lived there until she died in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands from tuberculosis in 1935. In 1904 Lt Cdr Charles Evans bought…