Henry Knollys was Clerk Comptroller to the royal household and
knighted in 1633. His son, also Henry Knollys, was created Baronet
Knollys of Grove Place in May 1642, He fought for the Royalist side
in the Civil War, which resulted in the sequestration of the estate,
which was only returned to the Knollys family after the restoration
of Charles II.
Grove Place was then occupied by the Knollys family until the
death of Robert Knollys in 1752 without a male heir. Ownership then
reverted by marriage to the senior branch of the Mill family that,
by that time, was resident at Mottisfont Abbey.
They subsequently let Grove Place in the second half of the 18th
century to a series of, often short-term, occupiers. Among these were
General Sir John Clavering, later Commander-in-Chief of Bengal, from
1765 to 1773, James Harris, later Earl of Malmesbury, in 1775, Sir
Charles Rich from 1798 to 1802, Herbert Newton Jarrett from 1804 to
1809 and James Drummond in 1811.
In 1818 Dr Edward Middleton purchased the lease of the house and
converted it into a lunatic asylum, in which use it remained until
about 1855. After the closure of the asylum there was a six-year
period when the house was empty until after the death of Sir Charles
Mills, when St George's Chapel finally sold the freehold to Viscount
Palmerston at the neighbouring Broadlands estate.
In 1895 the Broadlands estate sold the freehold of the house to
Colonel Fenwick Bulmer de Sales la Terriere who subsequently undertook
a major restoration programme on the house, as well as laying out
new formal gardens.
The house was sold in 1906 when, again, there was a sequence of
short-tern owners and occupiers including Major Oswald Magniac (1920s).
In 1961 the house and the remaining estate were sold to Northcliffe
School (and later to the Atherley School) and remained in educational use
until purchased by Renaissance Lifecare PLC in 2007.
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