mansion in the park, in place of the old manor house near the church. (fn. 62) After Hosier died in 1750, Wicken passed to his granddaughter Elizabeth and her husband Thomas Prowse, an amateur architect who, before his death in 1767, began the rebuilding of Wicken church to his own design and in 1765 prepared plans for the enlargement of the mansion. (fn. 63) He also improved the estate by repurchasing in 1753 two farms at Dagnall which had been sold in the Spencers' time, and by inclosing the remaining common fields in 1757, which led to the building of three farmsteads on the new inclosures. (fn. 64)
Wicken passed from Thomas Prowse's widow to their daughter Elizabeth, on whose death in 1810 it once again became part of an estate centred elsewhere and the mansion was let. In 1877, after forty years as a tenant, the 1st Lord Penrhyn purchased the estate, which remained in his family's hands until 1944. (fn. 65) The DouglasPennants' main home was their enormous Caernarvonshire estate centred on Penrhyn Castle, whose chief asset in the 19th century was the extensive slate-quarrying business which dominated the local economy. They appear to have regarded Wicken as a convenient second country estate, only 50 miles from London in excellent hunting country (three generations of the family were masters of the Grafton Hunt), with more congenial neighbours and certainly more amenable tenants than the small farmers and quarrymen of North Wales, amongst whom the family were deeply unpopular. (fn. 66)
There was litle new building in either the 19th century or the first half of the 20th in Wicken, which remained a close community almost entirely owned by a single estate. Sir John Mordaunt provided a schoolroom in 1839, which was replaced by a larger building in 1878, the gift of the 1st Lord Penrhyn, who later met the entire cost of restoring the church. (fn. 67) The 2nd Lord Penrhyn enlarged the mansion in 1913 and provided the village with a piped water supply, but otherwise the Douglas-Pennants did not do much towards modernising, replacing or increasing the housing stock on the estate, or altering the arrangement of the farms. (fn. 68)
The Modern Parish.
The purchase of the Wicken Park Estate by the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol in 1944, including virtually the whole of the parish of Wicken apart from the glebe (which the Society bought six years later), as well as Dovehouse Farm in Deanshanger and Limes End in Leckhampstead, (fn. 69) marked the beginning of change in the community. The mansion was let to a private school, although the buildings were not greatly altered. (fn. 70) In the north of the parish, Wicken Wood, most of which was cleared during the Second World War, was let to the Forestry Commission, whilst the smaller acreage near Wicken Park was retained as amenity woodland.
The cottages in the village were progressively sold (over 60 had been disposed of by 1979) and the farms gradually consolidated. The 10 holdings totalling 2,306 acres in 1944 had been amalgamated into five principal tenancies (3,075 acres) by 1980. (fn. 71) During the following decade the Society began to sell farms to sitting tenants and by 1992 the estate was reduced to 1,877 acres. (fn. 72) As well as a reduction in the number of farms, the half-century after 1944 also saw some amalgamation of fields, although less markedly so than in some parishes in the district. In the 1970s the Society bought the bed of the disused Buckingham branch of the Grand Union Canal, most of which was absorbed into adjoining farms, apart from a short stretch which was acquired by the Northamptonshire Naturalists' Trust as a nature reserve. When the amenity woodland in hand was affected by Dutch elm disease in the early 1980s the Society replanted the spinneys with hardwoods to maintain the traditional appearance of the estate. (fn. 73)
As soon as they acquired a group of estates within reasonable travelling distance of each other in the South Midlands, the Society of Merchant Venturers made regular tours to inspect their property, under the guidance of th