HISTORY (MANFIELD & RAY)
Weston Favell House, a large Jacobean style mansion (below), was built between 1899 and 1902 by James Manfield (son of Sir Philip Manfield, founder of the first machine-based shoe factory in Northampton). The house was approached by a driveway from the Kettering Road but the back faced onto land which eventually became Eastfield Park.
When James Manfield built Weston Favell House, the land that is now Eastfield Park became part of the estate belonging to the House. Over the next few years, many trees were planted to create an area of parkland; a fishing lake with a boathouse was constructed; shelter belts were formed; and ornamental gardens with rockeries and ponds were established. The lake was originally stocked with rainbow trout and used for boating and fishing. The ponds were part of ornamental gardens that were occasionally opened to the public to raise money for Northampton General Hospital. In May 1913, when the gardens were opened without charge, the Estate employed a Head Gardener with a staff of 14 assistants.
When the estate was formed, most of the earlier field boundaries were lost and the landscape began to look more like it does today. The red line drawn on the 1925 OS map below, indicates the present park borders. The northern and western limits follow edges largely determined by the estate but the southern border does not correlate to estate limits in any way.
In 1923 the house, its grounds, and the entire Manfield holdings in the area (1500 acres) was put up for auction in 62 lots. Lot 62 included the grounds of the present Eastfield Park, Cynthia Spencer Hospice and Manfield Grange but, with some other lots, remained unsold. A second auction (of 541 acres in 30 lots) was held in 1924 but the house remained unsold. Manfield therefore donated it (with 15 acres of land) to become a hospital for crippled children. For many years the Grade 2 listed mansion served as part of Manfield Orthopaedic Hospital. However, it was closed in 1992 and has since been converted into private residences known as Manfield Grange.
During the break-up of the Manfield Estate, Major Arthur Ray (an Honorary Major in the Territorial Army and Mayor of Northampton in 1928) acquired part of the grounds of Weston Favell House including the Lake, the ornamental gardens, and much of the present Park. He built Eastfield House (below) on the land in 1924 and died in 1944.
Major Ray's wife continued to live in the House until her death in 1947 and the Ray’s eldest son, Owen, lived there until his sudden death in April 1950. (The younger son, Claude, lived in Eastfield Lodge on the Kettering Road until he died in February 1966.)
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Most of the Eastfield House Estate (82 acres) was purchased by Northampton Corporation in 1949. ​Eastfield House and adjoining land, however, was purchsed after the death of Owen Ray by Oxford Regional Hospital Board and became a nurses home and a resource centre before it was sold for private development and demolished.
