In the medieval period there was a manor house with dovecote and watermill at Peper Harow and the Church of St Nicholas (listed Grade II) has C12 origins. There are references to the manor house and its occupants through the C14 and C15 but its exact location remains unclear. Cellars under the present house of C15 or C16 date are reported to extend to the north suggesting that the original house was situated further to the north beyond Laundry House. Plans dated to 1752 show various ways of reusing the walls of the old house for the new house designs. The church, however, is located in the centre of Peper Harow park and the manor house may well have been nearby.
In the southern part of the park is Oxenford Grange (listed Grade II), its site supposedly once that of a grange or outlying farm of medieval Waverley Abbey. The present farmhouse has C17 origins (listed Grade II). Another farm, Home Farm, in the park's centre close by the Church of St Nicholas, includes Home Farm House of C17 date (listed Grade II), a C17 timber-framed barn and cottage to the north-west of the house (both listed Grade II), and a C17 granary (listed at Grade I).
The manor and estate were bought by Philip Frowde in 1700 who in turn sold the estate in 1713 to Alan Brodrick, afterwards Viscount Midleton. Some of the cedars on the front lawn to the west of the house were planted in 1735 when 12 cedars and many large ornamental trees were bought to the estate in pots (Malden 1911, 49). J C Loudon in his Arboretum of 1838 remarked on the variety of form of the cedars at Peper Harow.
In the mid C18 George Brodrick third Viscount Midleton pulled down the old house and spent large sums of money on a new house and the park at Peper Harow, commissioning plans from leading architects in 1752. Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-83), who was already landscaping the grounds at Peper Harow, was asked to submit house designs but these were rejected (Stroud 1975, 236). One of these house plans is signed L.B. (Phibbs 1995, ref 1752d).
In the event it was William Chambers (1722-96) who won the contract to design the new house, but at the Viscount’s death in 1765 it was not completed, being finished by his son when he came of age ten years later. It is listed Grade I. A conservatory was added under the advice of James Wyatt in 1797 (Malden 1911, 49), a porch in 1843 by CR Cockerell, and a third storey and north wing from 1913.
Chambers also designed the coach house, stables (listed Grade II) close to the house and Oxenford Lodge (listed Grade II), Eashing (not listed) and Farnham (listed Grade II) lodges. A gateway to the north of the house known as Inigo Jones gate and dated to c 1760 is also by Chambers (listed Grade II) and he may have also designed the conduit building c 1780 (listed as 'dovecote' at Grade II).
Lancelot Brown was England’s leading and most influential landscape designer of the mid to late C18. His first employment as gardener was at his birthplace of Kirkharle, Northumberland, where his duties extended to laying out the grounds. In the late 1730s he began to work on improving parks elsewhere, and by 1741 his reputation was such that he was taken on as head gardener, clerk of works and paymaster for Lord Cobham at Stowe (Bucks). Here he was exposed to the work of William Kent and James Gibbs. From 1745 he worked on successive major commissions, at first mainly in the midlands, then further afield, designing houses as well as transforming landscapes. In 1764 he was appointed Master Gardener at Hampton Court, and in 1765 as his practice expanded still further he took on various assistants, several of whom became well-known designers in their own right. At the peak of his success, in the 1760s and 1770s, he had an annual turnover of £15,000 (around £1M today), and overall worked on well over 200 estates. He died, suddenly, in 1783.
Developing on a much grander scale the idea of the naturalistic landscape promoted by William Kent (c 1685-1748), Brown’s signature features - ‘Capability’ referring to his ability to realize the capabilities, that is the inherent possibilities, of landscapes - included gently rolling parkland (separated from the house by a ha-ha), clumps of trees, a sinuous lake in the middle distance (typically contrived by damming a river or stream) and shelter belts around the park edge screening the world beyond. His ideas were generally conveyed through site visits, a large site plan and by staking out, and unlike Humphry Repton, his successor, he left no writings, theoretical or practical, which set out his vision or working methods. But it is clear that by large-scale yet subtle earth moving, drainage and water management and by planting, Brown was able to create landscapes that were pleasing to the eye, with often subtle yet very successfully controlled views both within the park, and outward from it. There is still much to learn, however, about his achievements, both in terms of individual sites and about his working methods.
Brown’s account book records two payments from Peper Harow's owner George Brodrick, Viscount Midleton, of £400 paid in 1757 and another of £50 in 1758. By extrapolation Brown's charges would suggest he provided a survey and a plan, and perhaps some follow-up visits, with the actual landscaping work being undertaken by the landowner's own estate staff. Brown would also have been paid for his house plans, although he and Midleton were clearly allies as Midleton was amongst the petitioners putting forward Brown’s name for an official post in the Royal Gardens in 1758 (Stroud 1975, 121). John Rocque’s county map of 1762 may therefore depict Brown's landscape and although there are no contemporary descriptions of Brown’s work here, the views from the south-west front of the house, the cedars planted on rising ground on the western slopes of Mount Sion and Jackman’s Hill and the relict drive crossing the pleasure grounds to the west of the house all bear the stamp of Brown’s work (Phibbs 1995). It is thought that Brown was responsible for the landscaping of the river, including earthmoving to create the principal view from the house, and an island made in the process (Brown 2011,118). The Oxenford Lodge approach at the south is also thought to have been designed by Brown and there are several C18 or Brown-period London plane trees, cedars, oaks and copper beeches in the park.
Further buildings were added to Home Farm courtyard in the C18 including a dovecote and granary (listed Grade II*), Barn at Home Farm (listed Grade II*), Home Farm cottages with stables (listed Grade II*) and another barn dating to the late C18 (listed Grade II). A nearby dairy is also late C18 (listed Grade II). Other listed structures include garden walls to the north of the house of a late C18 and C19 date.
Early C19 illustrations show the park grazed with sheep and deer. The pleasure grounds can be seen on G F Prosser’s print of 1828 planted with large fenced shrubberies to keep sheep out. AWN Pugin was employed in 1843 to build an imitation C13-style farm at Oxenford (farmhouse and agricultural buildings variously listed at Grade II and II*). Pugin also designed a cell at Bonville Spring (outside the registered area) as well as the churchyard wall and a gate in 1847 to the park near the church in the same medieval Gothic style (listed Grade II). He also designed extensions to the church itself. By 1850 the park was 285 acres and contained 400 deer. In 1908 Gertrude Jekyll produced designs for the then Earl Midleton for part of the garden but it is not clear if these were ever carried out. The designs became part of Beatrix Farrand’s Reef Point Gardens Library in Maine and are now held at Berkeley University in California.
After Earl Midleton's death in 1942 the estate was broken up into several farms, and property in the outlying villages of Shackleford and Eashing was sold at auction in 1944. During the Second World War, Peper Harow House was requisitioned as the Canadian Army headquarters and several pillboxes are still extant along the banks of the river.
In the post-war years Peper Harow was occupied by the Peper Harow Trust and became a school. A row of 12 semi-detached houses was added on Park Avenue which were built by the boys of Park House School as staff quarters for the school. A new house called Old Cedars was also added. Some of the park has been ploughed in the past but the whole site is now (2016) a private residential area surrounded mainly with pastureland grazed by sheep and subject to environmental stewardship agreement. In recent years new trees have been planted including two Cedars of Lebanon, holm oaks, acers, beeches and oaks.