National Trust
Croome largely represents the vision of a single man, George William, 6th Duke of Coventry. The site was originally boggy land. Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was responsible for the landscape and for the remodelling of the house – his first commission. Robert Adam designed a number of room interiors.
A walk (or route march) around the estate brings one past many features of this created landscape. First the church, constructed as an eyecatch after the previous church, judged too close to the house, was demolished. Then an ice house hidden in the wood. Then the walled garden, privately owned and only open at certain times. The Rotunda stands on a rise and forms a viewpoint for the house and several distant eye-catchers.
The house stands in the middle of the park. Nominally, all four floors are open to visitors but when I visited some rooms were closed for repairs and I did not get any guided tour to the top floor. The guidebook floor plan marks part of the Red House extension as open to visitors but the shortform leaflet didn’t and this wing was closed for repairs.
The rooms are mostly empty or used for exhibitions, the original furnishings and contents being elsewhere or lost in a warehouse fire. The Long Gallery has impressive plasterwork, apparently recently restored. The Dining Room plasterwork was colourised by the Kirshna movement when they were in occupation of the house. It looks great, but purists may not agree. Also in this room is a display of some of the Croome china, well worth seeing.
Above, the rooms mostly look unrestored. The Chinese Room has lost its plaster ceiling. Some fell down and the NT removed the rest for safety. Two rooms contain the last private owner’s bathroom fittings, retained by the NT as part of the ‘history of the house’. Personally I think they look awful and should go.
Moving on, a reconstructed Chinese bridge spans the river giving access to more parkland. A hard path leads on to the lake with various monuments, the Grotto with statue of Sabrina, and the Temple Greenhouse. Finally one returns to the church.
At the estate entrance are some black huts which house the reception, shop, and tea-room. The huts are one of the few remnants of RAF Defford, an airfield used during WWII for development work on radar. In another of the huts you will find a very interesting museum and exhibition of RAF Defford and its work.
Category: House
Grand houses
Rodmarton Manor, Gloucestershire
Privately Owned
Despite its Jacobean appearance, Rodmarton Manor was built in 1909-1927 for Claud Biddulph and his wife. The project was much influenced by the Arts & Craft movement, and was built by hand using local labour and materials. The furnishings were made by craftsmen in Arts & Craft style, and remain in the house.
The interior design and furnishings are of particular interest.
Outside are various sections of garden – a pleasant terrace garden behind the house, and to one side a hedged long walk with fine borders, and a large kitchen garden, partly laid to lawn.
Well worth a visit, particularly for Arts & Crafts enthusiasts.
Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire
Privately Owned
There has been a castle at Sudeley since Norman times. Parts of the present castle date from the 15th century. The castle was fought over in the English Civil War and afterwards was partially demolished by the Parliamentarians, leaving it as an uninhabitable ruin. In 1837 the picturesque ruin was bought by two wealthy industrialists, the Dents, who restored most parts of the castle as a Victorian country house. Richard III’s hall was left as a picturesque ruin.
Detached from the house is an interesting chapel, also restored in the 19th century.
Many historic names are associated with Sudeley, including Richard III, Henry VIII, Queen Katherine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, Elisabeth I, and George III.
Various rooms are open to the public, but most of these are exhibition spaces. The ‘Castle Rooms’ contain some furnished rooms with interesting contents.
In the grounds are lawns, formal and informal gardens, and an aviary with a collection of exotic pheasants. The grounds are well worth a walk around the circuit.
Sezincote, Gloucestershire
Privately Owned
Sezincote was built in 1805-1807, for Charles Cockerell, brother of John Cockerell who bought the estate in 1795. Both brothers had served in India. Charles appointed as architect another brother, Samuel Pepys Cockrell, to build a house in the Indian manner. Externally the house contains both Mogul and Hindu elements. The stable block partly visible beyond is also built in an Indian style, and various Indian-style sculptures can be found in the grounds: bulls on the entrance bridge, a 3-headed snake, and a pair of elephants.
The interior of the house is in a Greek Revival style. The principal rooms are on the first floor. The rooms on display are well furnished and finished. The central staircase under the dome is of ‘flying’ design, supported by curved cast-iron arches.
The house has two wings leading to pavilions, one being a curved conservatory and the other containing extra accommodation and ending in a pavilion where Charles Cockerell slept in a tent.
Apparently the house was in poor condition by the time the next owners, the Kleinworts, bought it in 1944. The interiors have been redecorated and restyled fairly recently.
There are sloping informal gardens around a stream near the entrance gate, and formal gardens at the far side of the house. The gardens are very attractive and worth a walk around.
Woodchester Mansion, Gloucestershire
Private trust The mansion is managed by a private trust, while the grounds are managed by the National Trust.
The construction of Woodchester Mansion, a Gothic Revival house, was commenced around 1856 and abandoned around 1870. The house was never completed as the family ran out of money and heart for the project. Externally the house looks complete with roofs and windows in place, but internally floors are missing and walls and vaulting are unplastered allowing the underlying structural elements uniquely to be seen.
In tune with the Gothic style, the house has a considerable amount of internal stone vaulting, which requires to resist its thrust the buttresses visible externally. The intended vaulting was not fitted in the Dining Room and Library, and these spaces remain open to roof level. Most parts of three floors and the cellar can be visited.
Parts of the house have sustained considerable water and frost damage since the 19th century, and the Woodchester Mansion Trust is attempting to carry out repairs and return the mansion to its 1870’s condition.
The mansion is of considerable interest, particularly to those interested in architecture. The NT estate offers long walks through woodland and past lakes.
Parking is at the NT car park by the road. Visitors to the mansion face either a 1 mile walk or a wait for the shuttle buggy. There is an entrance charge for the house. The lakes are another mile further on – that’s a 4 mile walk to see the lot on foot. On your return, watch out for the inconspicuous and unsigned steps up to the car park. 🙁
Dunster Castle, Somerset
I first visited Dunster Castle some years ago but this account is from April 2019. Dunster Castle is a former motte and bailey castle, now a country house, in the village of Dunster, Somerset, England. The castle lies on the top of a steep hill called the Tor, and has been fortified since the late Anglo-Saxon period. After the Norman conquest of England in the 11th century, William de Mohun constructed a timber castle on the site as part of the pacification of Somerset. A stone shell keep was built on the motte by the start of the 12th century, and the castle survived a siege during the early years of the Anarchy. At the end of the 14th century the de Mohuns sold the castle to the Luttrell family, who continued to occupy the property until the late 20th century.
The castle was expanded several times by the Luttrell family during the 17th and 18th centuries; they built a large manor house within the Lower Ward of the castle in 1617, and this was extensively modernised, first during the 1680s and then during the 1760s. The medieval castle walls were mostly destroyed following the siege of Dunster Castle at the end of the English Civil War, when Parliament ordered the defences to be slighted to prevent their further use. In the 1860s and 1870s, the architect Anthony Salvin was employed to remodel the castle to fit Victorian tastes; this work extensively changed the appearance of Dunster to make it appear more Gothic and Picturesque.
Following the death of Alexander Luttrell in 1944, the family was unable to afford the death duties on his estate. The castle and surrounding lands were sold off to a property firm, the family continuing to live in the castle as tenants. The Luttrells bought back the castle in 1954, but in 1976 Colonel Walter Luttrell gave Dunster Castle and most of its contents to the National Trust, which operates it as a tourist attraction. It is a Grade I listed building and scheduled monument. (source: Wikipedia).
The interior of the house is interesting and various rooms on the ground and first floors can be seen. The gatehouse and other castle parts remain, but if you are expecting a medieval castle, look elsewhere!
The site has a number of pleasant walks curving around the hill. The top of the hill (above the house) is flat and laid as an open lawn. Below the hill is an old watermill to the south and the village of Dunster to the west. A folly tower tops a nearby hill to the north-east.
There are foot entrances from the village, but if arriving by car, the car park entrance is on the A39 north of the village.
Hall, Devon
Privately Owned
Unusually, the name of this property is just ‘Hall’. I visited Hall under the ‘Invitation to View’ scheme. The present house was built in the Victorian period on the site of two earlier houses. Only ground floor rooms are open to visitors and these have some interesting contents, including some carved wood panels from one of the earlier houses. At the back of the house is the service or North wing, unused since the 1940’s and mostly in a derelict condition. The tour concludes in the impressive Great Hall, of medieval appearance but built as the last phase of the house construction.
Most of the numerous outbuildings predate the house. There are walled gardens, one of which once contained heated greenhouses. A medieval barn remains in a perilous condition and there is in interesting granary raised on pillars to deter vermin.
Clevedon Court, Somerset
National Trust
The house is of medieval origin, remodelled in Tudor times by the Wake family and further modernised in the 18th and 19th centuries by the Elton family. The floor plan is somewhat irregular. The principal downstairs room is the double-height Great Hall. A fine staircase leads up to the Thackeray Room which commemorates the house’s literary connections. Also on this floor is the large State Room, now set up as a bedroom. Adjoining it is the restored Chapel, with a fine rectangular stained-glass window with reticulated tracery.
Downstairs on the east side of the screens passage is the Justice Room, originally a medieval buttery for beer butts, and now a museum room for a collection of colourful Nailsea glassware. From the screens passage, another passage leads to a triangular courtyard. beyond is the Old Kitchen, a much altered double height room now used as an exhibition space. The Old Kitchen predates the other parts of the house.
Outside, a steeply terraced garden with summerhouses rises behind the house to the wooded land beyond.
Holdenby, Northants.
Privately Owned
I visited Holdenby some years ago but have no record of the details. The recent visit was in April 2019. The core of the house is the remains of the kitchen wing of a vast Elizabethan palace, restored and extended in the Victorian era. Two unusual arches, once part of an entrance court, stand in the grounds. The house is open to the public on only a few days of the year. The tour includes the entrance hall, the boudoir (sic) the piano collection room which contains a number of antique pianos and other instruments, the Pytchley Room (with sporting pictures), the Ballroom, the Inner Hall, the Library and the Dining Room.
The grounds include smaller areas of formal garden, a kitchen garden, a primitive-looking replica wattle & daub cottage and a falconry.
Below the house is an interesting church, now in the care of a preservation trust.
Turn End, Haddenham, Bucks
Architect Peter Aldington designed and built three houses, The Turn, Middle Turn and Turn End in the 1960s in the village of Haddenham. Then, as now, English villages suffered from insensitive development, but Adlington set out to create a modern development that was sensitive to the village site. The three houses all have gardens, Adlington’s house Turn End having the largest garden. A number of fine trees have been preserved on the site.
The houses are the antithesis of the estate developer’s ‘box’ in their design, materials and finish, and the large Turn End garden is now widely admired. The houses are small, low and open onto internal courtyards and their gardens. The ‘plant wall’ – a kind of top-lit covered apace – is a new take on houseplants. A section of ‘witchert’ wall (non load bearing) is preserved in the house.
The houses are built mostly of blockwork, whitewashed internally (in Turn End) and the roof beams are exposed. The Town End garden is laid out in a number of sections with a variety of exotic plants.
Turn End and its garden are occasionally opened to the public and well worth a visit. When I visited in August 2018, a queue had gathered by opening time.
