In 2012, Mr Jenrick applied to Herefordshire Council for planning permission to construct a new service wing in Eye Manor, his Grade 1 listed seventeenth-century mansion.
Robert Jenrick asked one of the King’s favourite architecture firms to renovate the servants quarters of his mansion, according to a recently unearthed document. In 2012, the top Tory who stood against Kemi Badenoch for Conservative leader last year, applied to Herefordshire Council for planning permission to construct a new service wing in Eye Manor, his Grade 1 listed seventeenth-century mansion.
The old service wing was demolished, internal alterations made, and the drive and entrance gates re-aligned. He asked Adam Architecture to carry out the work.
The firm was set up by Robert Adam, one of King Charles ’ favourite architects and designer of several properties at Poundbury, the Duchy of Cornwall’s estate in Dorset. The historian Nikolaus Pevsner described Eye Manor’s interiors as “gorgeously enriched”.
And Marcus Binney, the former Editor of Country Life magazine, described the house as having “for its size…the most gorgeous series of Charles II interiors in England”. Plasterwork in the house is “overflowing in richly sculpted fruit and flowers”, Mr Binney wrote in the Times in 2008.
Herefordshire Council describe the manor as a “beautiful Herefordshire country house built with the proceeds of slavery”. The original owner, Ferdinando Gorges, ‘made a fortune out of sugar and slaves’. His extensive trading earned him the nickname ‘King of the Black Market’, according to a ‘Souvenir Guide’ to Eye Manor.
Jenrick bought the house in 2009 for a reported £1.1m. It is unclear whether Jenrick uses Eye Manor as his primary residence. His nomination papers for the 2024 general election list his address as ‘in the Newark Constituency’, some 130 miles from Eye.
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Last month the Sunday Mirror revealed the ambitious Tory MP shadow minister had been forced to correct his own CV – after accusing Labour MPs of embellishing theirs. In a biography on his website, Mr Jenrick claimed to have been “the joint youngest Cabinet Minister since the Second World War, tied with Harold Wilson and William Hague” when he was made Housing Secretary in 2019.
But he was 37 at the time he was elevated to the cabinet, while Wilson and Hague were 31 and 34 respectively when reaching Cabinet minister status. It came after he’d attacked Labour politicians including Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds for correcting errors on their CV.
