Village and former civil parish in Rutland, England
Human settlement in England
Exton is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Exton and Horn, in the county of Rutland, England. The population of the parish was 607 at the 2011 census.[3] On 1 April 2016 the parish was abolished and merged with Horn to form "Exton and Horn".[4][5]
The village
The village's name means 'farm/settlement which has oxen'.[6]
Further south, on the north shore of Rutland Water, stands what was the Barnsdale country house and is now the Barnsdale Hall Hotel and Country Club. Barnsdale was a large country house, built in 1890 as a hunting lodge for Earl Fitzwilliam by architect E. J. May. It is a Grade II listed building.[9]
Exton Park
Fort Henry in Exton Park
Exton Park is a large country estate which has been home to the Noel family (Earls of Gainsborough) for over four centuries. The present Exton Hall was built in the 19th century close to the ruins of the original Tudor mansion which had burnt down in 1810. The romantic Fort Henry, a pleasure-house in the elegant late-eighteenth-century Gothick style,[10] overlooks lakes formed by the North Brook.
There is a fine marble monument by Grinling Gibbons, dating from 1685, showing Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden, with his fourth wife, Elizabeth Bertie, and carvings of his 19 children.[12] In 1954, the tomb was the subject of a design by John Piper, later adapted as a textile design by David Whitehead Ltd.[13]
Other monuments in the church include:
The Harington monument
Robert Keilway (1497 – 1581), politician and court official.
Sir James Harington (c. 1511 – 1592), public servant who fulfilled a number of legal, legislative and law enforcement duties and was knighted in 1565.
Lieutenant Tom Cecil Noel MC (12 December 1897 – 22 August 1918), World War I infantry officer turned aerial observer, notable for winning a Military Cross for bravery on both land and air.
The church spire was struck by lightning in 1843, causing a fire that melted the roof, shattered the windows, and destroyed the west end of the church. It was subsequently rebuilt by J. L. Pearson in 1852/3.
Gallery
The Fox and Hounds overlooks the village green
Knot Garden at Barnsdale Gardens
Barnsdale Hall
The Exton and Whitwell War Memorial
Viscount Campden's monument
A detail of the Kelway monument
References
^"A vision of Britain through time". University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 11 February 2009.
^"Rutland Civil Parish Populations" (PDF). Rutland County Council. 2001. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 11 February 2009.
^"Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
^"Bulletin of Change to local authority arrangements 2015" (PDF). Lgbce. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 March 2018. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
^"Community Governance Review: Parish Area of Horn" (PDF). rutland.gov. 9 March 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015.