The Reverend Dr Thomas Sedgwick Whalley was a poet, playwright and traveller. He was born in Cambridge on 20th September 1746. He was the 8th of the 9 children of John and Mary Whalley. After the death of his father in 1748, his mother moved the family to Wells, where her father was Chancellor of the Cathedral. Thomas was educated at Ilminster School and from 1763-67 at St John's College, Cambridge.
Thomas was ordained deacon in Wells c1770. In 1772 he was ordained priest in London. He was given the living of Hagworthingham in Lincolnshire but immediately hired a curate to represent him there. In 1773 he spent time in Wales and in 1774 he obtained an M.A.
On 6th January 1774 he married Elizabeth Sherwood, who was the only child of Edward Jones of Langford Court and the widow of John Withers Sherwood. She was wealthy and they lived at her Langford Court estate in Somerset. In 1775 or 1776 Thomas and Elizabeth bought a house in the recently completed Royal Crescent in Bath. He and Elizabeth entertained many guests at both houses but Thomas's lavish lifestyle was eating into his wife's fortune and in 1783 they mortgaged Langford Court and let it out while they travelled around France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium for 4 years.
On his return from Europe in 1787, Thomas decided to spend some of his wife's fortune on building a house high up on the north slope of the Mendip Hills overlooking Langford. The stone used to build the house was sourced from local quarries. Initially he called the house The Cottage. Work began on the house in late 1787 or early 1788 and it was mostly completed by 1791, although a few additions were made to it later.
The front of the house was rendered and painted white. A verandah ran the length of the front of the house on the ground and first floors. The Cottage was probably built with a thatched roof but it burnt down in around 1791. It was rebuilt with a slate roof. In 1801 Hannah More, who was one of Thomas's closest friends, suggested that he change the name of the house to Mendip Lodge, as it was by this time much too large to be called a cottage.
The grounds around Mendip Lodge were laid out by 1791. Many trees were planted, including avenues of yews to line the walks around the house. Rustic seats, hermitages and grottos were also built in the gardens. In 1795 land around Churchill was enclosed and Thomas took the opportunity to construct new access roads to Mendip Lodge. A kitchen garden and a gardener's cottage were built away from the main house on the flat land to the north of what is now the A386. Over the next few years Thomas gradually bought more of the land around Mendip Lodge, including Dolebury Warren. Eventually he owned 1200 acres.
Elizabeth Whalley died in December 1801. Thomas married Augusta Utica Heathcote in May 1803. She was from a wealthy Wiltshire family. Langford Court was sold in 1804. Augusta died in October 1807, aged 65.
In October 1812 Thomas married for a third time, to Frances (Fanny) Horneck, who was the widow of General Charles Horneck. However he soon discovered that they were incompatible and that she was in great debt and they separated in 1819. After 1814 Thomas divided his time between Somerset and France.
Thomas put Mendip Lodge up for sale in 1814 for £30,000. This was half the amount of money he had spent on it, but no one wanted to buy it. In 1819 Thomas sold Mendip Lodge to Benjamin Somers, who was a relative of his first wife. However, he had to buy it back from him in 1822 when Somers failed to keep up the mortgage payments. In 1826-7 Thomas added a zig-zag drive and two lodges at the bottom of it where it met the West Harptree Turnpike, to try and make the house more attractive to a buyer.
Thomas Sedgwick Whalley died in La Flèche, France on 4th September 1828 and was buried there. His executor James Anthony Wickham didn't sell Mendip Lodge, as instructed in Thomas's will: he let his daughter Mary and her husband Major William Fawcett live there until after the death of Mary in 1840. In 1844 the Court of Chancery ruled that Mendip Lodge should be sold.
In 1846 Benjamin Somers bought Mendip Lodge back for £16,000. When he died in 1848 he left Mendip lodge to his widow Mary and Langford Place to his son Thomas. Thomas and his mother swapped houses soon after. Thomas Somers restored the gardens of Mendip Lodge, added a new stable block and a coachman's house next to the original kitchen and installed toilets in the house. He died in 1862 but his widow Elizabeth continued to live there with her children and her mother-in-law, until Mary died in 1878.
Elizabeth Somers died in 1900 and her son Benjamin Edward Somers inherited the Mendip Lodge estate. In 1907 he sold it to RA Naylor. He in turn sold it to Vernon Tickell Hill (a cricketer who played for the Somerset county team) in 1909. In 1919 it was sold again to John Beardsall Leigh. In 1938 he sold it on to Vera Wills and it became part of the Coombe Lodge Estate.
In 1939 Mendip Lodge was requisitioned to allow Dr Fox's mentally ill patients to be moved there from Brislington. In c1947 Dr Fox left Mendip Lodge and it was never occupied again, apart from the stables. The house was derelict by 1955 and was partially demolished in 1956. The lodges were damaged by fire in the 1950s and were demolished. In 2010 the front wall of the Mendip Lodge was deemed to be unsafe and it was demolished. Only a small section remains standing today. The stableyard and the buildings in it were demolished to make a bigger parking area for the local shoot.
The Lookout is a horseshoe shaped raised platform 30 metres in diameter. It is located about half a mile to the west of the remains of Mendip Lodge House (grid reference ST461591). It was constructed c1791 by Thomas Sedgwick Whalley as a viewpoint for his house guests , but he may have used an earlier structure connected to the Iron Age camp on Dolebury Warren. It is open on the north west side and surrounded by a dry-stone retaining wall on all the other sides. There is a small brick and stone shelter built into one of the walls. The Lookout has extensive views over much of North Somerset. In 2007 the walls enclosing it were restored by the Woodland Trust, who now own it.
Further reading:
The Reverend Dr. Thomas Sedgwick Whalley and the Queen of Bath: a true story of Georgian England at the time of Jane Austen by Chris Stephens. Candy Jar Books, 2014
