Story of Mount Battenhall, Worcester’s most opulent house – money down the drain

Quite possibly Worcester’s most opulent private house, it has been by turns a large Italianate villa, a glittering mansion, a wartime hospital, two short term family homes and then an independent girls school for 80 years. Now the Mount has got the builders in again, as it undergoes its latest transformation into a retirement community. 

The story of Mount Battenhall – which to modern generations is better known as the home of  St Mary’s Convent School – has been comprehensively covered in a new book by local historian John Richard Hodges, who a few years ago did an equally impressive job on Evesham’s pride and joy Wood Norton Hall.

It shows that behind the gated entrance, through which visitors in gleaming horse drawn carriages once passed to be met by top hatted footmen, things were not always as they seemed. A somewhat vainglorious  project from the outset, it swallowed money as a private home and even the school had to close after running into financial difficulties. In 1929 there was a bizarre name change too: from  Battenhall Mount to Mount Battenhall.

The property started life as an Italian-style villa, built for wealthy Worcester clothier William Sprigg in 1867. However when it was bought by the Hon Alfred Percy Allsopp in 1889 the spending began in earnest.

The Allsopp family in 1910. The Hon Alfred Percy Allsopp and his wife Lilian Maud with their daughter Dorothy and her fiancé Captain Charles R Britten, later Brigadier Britten of Kenswick Manor, near Worcester. Photo courtesy Jo Hunt

Allsopp was the seventh son of Sir Samuel Allsopp, who later became Lord Hindlip of Hindlip Hall (now West Mercia Police headquarters), which was where young Alfred Percy grew up. He was chairman of the family brewery in Burton upon Trent, as well as owning the Star Hotel in Worcester and having numerous other investments, including an interest in the Great Central Railway. He was also a member of the Carlton Club, London’s foremost members only club.

Allsopp was MP for Taunton from 1887-95 and Mayor of Worcester on three occasions, in 1892, 1894 and 1909. In other words he was a serious player and set about developing Battenhall Mount to fit his station in life.

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This was done in two stages, in 1892 and 1895/6. When Allsopp bought the Mount it had eight bedrooms, by the time he had finished it had 18. Having added considerably to its original six acres, he also built a new stable block, a new gate lodge to the north-west and the Gardener’s Cottage to the south-east of the house. He set up a dairy farm and ran a herd of Jersey cattle. In the stables were 18 beautiful Arab horses.

Visitors to what was then Battenhall Mount arrive in 1910 to be greeted by a footman. Photo courtesy Jo Hunt

He lavishly refitted the property’s interior, filling it with the some of the finest fittings he could find. Indeed, when the Allsopps eventually sold Battenhall Mount in December, 1911, the house was marketed as “unfurnished”. There was a separate sale of the contents.

The Hon Alfred Percy’s financial downfall was officially credited to bad investments – he was declared bankrupt in 1914 but discharged in 1920 – although the cost of redeveloping Battenhall Mount must have weighed heavily, as indicated by the fact that when Ledbury jam maker Thomas Davies bought the estate in 1919 he paid just £300,000 (£10,000 back then), while Allsopp reckoned to have spent nearly £3 million (or £100,000) on the house and grounds.

Battenhall Mount as a VAD hospital during the First World War. Photo courtesy Ray Jones

True, the Mount had been used as a Red Cross VAD hospital during the war years, but the disparity between the two figures is astonishing. 

Mind you, the Allsopp family were far from on their uppers. In 1920, the Hon Alfred Percy was living in a property in Markham Square Chelsea, where today a four-bedroomed home would cost around £6 million.

Tom Davies, the Ledbury Jam factory owner with his prodigious brood  at Battenhall in the early 1920s. He fathered 11 children by three wives. Photo courtesy Jack Gittings

Tom Davies, the new owner of the Mount, was a colourful figure. One of 16 children, he had 11 of his own by three different wives and made his money selling jam to the army during the First World War.

But Davies didn’t linger long at Battenhall. Within eight years he had moved to South Africa to grow fruit and the mansion was sold to consulting chemist Dr Charles Herbert Thompson, who renamed it Mount Battenhall.

Dr Thompson had many business interests, both in England and France, and  invented the “verre sur verre” process of enamelling glass. However, his ownership of the Mount was even shorter.

In 1933 he sold it for £350,000 (£7,600 then) to a French order of nuns, The Sisters of St Marie-Madeleine Postel, because of its costly upkeep and died the following year at his new home Severn Grange, Claines. 

And so began the 80 years of Mount Battenhall as St Mary’s Convent School, Worcester. It was a happy and, for the most part, successful place too, but the days of carriages and four clip-clopping up the drive, footmen and family croquet on the lawns had gone forever.

Richard Hodges can be contacted at richardjhodges79@gmail.com