History of Lavant House

Lavant House has been in existence for nearly three hundred years. The oldest part of the house dates from the early eighteenth century and for much of that century it belonged to the Miller family, whose family tomb can be seen in Chichester Cathedral.

Sir John Miller was a good friend of the Second Duke of Richmond and one of the early references to Sir John's estate at Lavant appears in an account of a cricket match in August 1749, played, at Lavant, between a team led by the Duke's eldest two sons which was beaten by the team run by the two eldest sons of Sir John Miller.

The Third Duke purchased the estate, from Sir John's son and heir Sir Thomas Miller, in 1791 at which time the house was approached from the south through the Iron Age earthworks. The British Museum owns a 1780 watercolour of the house, as it was then, by the Swiss artist Samuel Grimm.

Goodwood estate accounts reveal considerable expenditure on the house and associated buildings in the years 1804-1806 and it is likely this was when the house received a radical 'facelift' changing the main entrance from the south to the north, where it is today, complete with knapped flints and porte cochère.

The reworked house was left, for life, to Henriette Anne Le Clerc, the illegitimate daughter of the Third Duke, and she lived there until her death in 1846. Raised by the Duke and his wife, painted by Romney and presented at Court her life was one of considerable comfort. She married Colonel John Dorrien two years after her father died and had a son Charles. Following her death from 'decay of nature' in 1846 the house returned to the Goodwood Estate and remained there, being both rented out and extended to the east, until 1907 when it was finally sold.

The house was owned by Mrs Day, who had purchased the estate with her husband in 1923, when it was sold to Commander and Mrs Green in 1952 for use as a school.

For more information please contact Lavant House School via our contact form, or you can request a prospectus