Oakley House

Summary

Oakley House to 1772

The Manor of Oakley Reynes was purchased by the Duke of Bedford from William Levinz Junior in 1737? Included in the sale was the Mansion House later called the Burystead. This house was situated to the south-east of the present house and is marked on a map of 1737? The present house was added to the map at a later date in a different ink. It was in a field called Odells Upper Hullands.

The present house was therefore built entirely after 1737 and is not a late seventeenth-century house. It was probable that the Duke always intended to build himself a hunting lodge there.

The admittedly incomplete vouchers of the Russell estate suggest that the house was built between 1748 and 1750. At exactly the same time Woburn Abbey was being transformed by Henry Flitcroft. In the steward's correspondence there are a number of mentions of Flitcroft's involvement with Woburn, never any with Oakley. A voucher presented by Thomas Moore shows that he drew up unspecified plans for Oakley on 6 December 1747? He was the equivalent of clerk of works at both houses and it seems as if Oakley was considered to be of less importance than Woburn and could be left to Moore to both design and oversee.

In a building lease of 1751, granted by the Duke of Bedford to allow him to build a house in King Street on the Russell's Bloomsbury estate, Moore is described as a bricklayer of Ilford, Essex. By 1763 his widow had taken on the lease.

Through the vouchers it is possible to find out who the individual craftsmen were who worked on the house. Jones and Matthews provided much of the metal work from a large neat brass knocker on the front door for 10s 6d to a large “Kitchen Range & cheeks” for £6 3s 11d. The same firm fitted most of the hearth equipment. The library, for example, had “A neat Steel Hearth Plate cutt & vailed with bright O.Gs & large Dutch Back for Do vailed weight 1lb 1qrs 14lb, a Pair neat Steel Globe head Dogs, a pair neat Steel Globe head Tongs and Shovel”, all valued at £7 6s 0d.