This page is one of several pages which are based on articles in our book entitled Royal Leamington Spa, A History in 100 Buildings which was published in 2018 and is no longer in print.
In 1860 John Gardiner sent plans to the local board to build a large house on the corner of Upper Holly Walk and Newbold Road (now Willes Road). The plans were eventually approved and the large house was built in a Classical style. It demonstrates the long period within which houses were built in the street; some on the north side were built in the 1830s (see Oak House and The Furze). John had married his wife, Sarah Fletcher, a cousin from Maryport, who had lived in Leamington for some time. They moved in about 1862. It was No 64 Upper Holly Walk.
John was an Irishman who had sailed to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in his youth and became something of an explorer, having taken the first cattle drove across Australia, and he set up a chain of Temperance Hotels. He came back to England to raise money for a commercial venture in Tasmania, but his wife and child passed away in Australia while he was here, so he settled in Leamington. He lived at Evelyn Villa until he died in 1878 and then his second wife Sarah remained in her home at Evelyn Villa until Christmas Day 1918 when she died aged 106. The house then had several name-changes. In 1920 it was occupied by Francis Whitlock who called it Inchfield and in 1928 Arthur Cecil Knight was in occupation. In 1936 Miss F C Assinder was there running it as a guest house called Inchfield Guest House.
In 1942 Marion Warmington was running a well-known secretarial college from Inchfield House, but by 1959 it was taken over by the Cranmers who ran the establishment under the name of Leamington Secretarial College. In later years, after the college closed, it had many uses. Permission was granted for the change of use to a hotel in 1985. Now, as the Episode Hotel, it has a very good reputation.
Barry Franklin, 2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS are presented at the end of this page — https://leamingtonhistory.co.uk/articles-from-royal-leamington-spa-a-history-in-100-buildings/