Bestwood Lodge is a Grade II* listed 19th-century country house in the civil parish of St Albans, Nottinghamshire, England. It was contracted in the Gothic Revival style for the 10th Duke of St Albans by the architect Samuel Sanders Teulon. It has been operated as the Bestwood Lodge Hotel since the 1970s.
The first written evidence of a royal hunting lodge at Bestwood, a part of the larger Sherwood Forest, is from 1286 in the reign of Edward I. [1] In the 1360s, Edward III later expanded the lodge, adding a hall and two chambers. It was at Bestwood Lodge that he plotted to overthrow his mother Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer. [2] Richard III was the last regular royal occupants of the lodge, leaving from the lodge for Bosworth Field where he met his death in 1485. [1]
The lodge and estate remained in royal hands, though often leased out, until the reign of Charles II. The King and his mistress, Nell Gwyn, would visit Bestwood Lodge and he leased the lodge to her in 1682. [1] He later bequeathed it to Gwyn and their son Charles Beauclerk, Earl of Burford. [3] Burford was created Duke of St Albans in 1684 and Bestwood Lodge passed down through his descendants.
The first generations of Dukes of St Albans resided elsewhere. In the 1700s, much of the surrounding land was enclosed into farms, with only a small portion of Bestwood Park remaining forested. [1] The 10th Duke decided to seat his family at Bestwood and demolished the previous lodge. In 1863, he commissioned Samuel Sanders Teulon to rebuild the lodge in the Victorian Gothic Revival style. The new lodge was completed in 1865. Teulon also built nearby Emmanuel Church for the Duke in 1869.
The Duke entertained the Prince and Princess of Wales (later Edward VII and Queen Alexandra), Lord Tennyson, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone at Bestwood Lodge. [4] He constructed the Bestwood Pumping Station on the estate between 1871 and 1874 and the Bestwood Colliery in 1873. The lodge was altered in 1867, repaired after a fire in 1893, and further enlarged in 1896. [5] [6]
The 10th Duke was the only Duke of St Albans to reside at the lodge. After his death in 1898, it was leased to Sir Frank Bowden, 1st Baronet, in 1900. [7] The northern boundary of Nottingham was extended outwards in 1933 close to the colliery and the forested edges of Bestwood Park, where it has remained since. The Beauclerk family finally sold the estate in 1939, with most of the southern farmland purchased by the Nottingham City Corporation for housing. The suburbs of Bestwood Estate, Bestwood Park, Top Valley and Rise Park were built from 1940 to the late 1970s on much of the land that comprised the estate. [8] The lodge itself was requisitioned by the military in World War II for use as a training facility with shooting ranges, trenches and a control base for Northern Command.
In the mid-1970s, the lodge was converted into a Best Western hotel, it continues as such today. Though it was a ducal seat in Nottinghamshire, it is not considered part of The Dukeries. [6]
Duke of St Albans is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1684 for Charles Beauclerk, 1st Earl of Burford, then 14 years old. King Charles II had accepted that Burford was his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn, an actress, and awarded him the dukedom just as he had conferred those of Monmouth, Southampton, Grafton, Northumberland, and Richmond and Lennox on his other illegitimate sons who married.
Eleanor Gwyn was an English stage actress and celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stage, she became best known for being a long-time mistress of King Charles II of England.
Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, KG was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England by his mistress Nell Gwyn.
Charles Francis Topham de Vere Beauclerk, also styled Earl of Burford by courtesy, is a British aristocrat and heir to the peerage title of Duke of St Albans.
The Dukeries is an area of the county of Nottinghamshire so called because it contained four ducal seats. It is south of Worksop, which has been called its "gateway". The area was included within the ancient Sherwood Forest. The ducal seats were:
Murray de Vere Beauclerk, 14th Duke of St Albans,, styled Earl of Burford from 1964 until 1988, is an English duke. He was a member of the House of Lords from 1988 until 1999.
Charles Beauclerk, 2nd Duke of St Albans, KG KB was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1718 until 1726 when he succeeded to a peerage as Duke of St Albans. He was an illegitimate grandson of King Charles II.
William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St Albans was an English aristocrat and cricketer.
William Amelius Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans, PC DL, styled Earl of Burford until 1849, was a British Liberal parliamentarian of the Victorian era.
Charles Victor Albert Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, 11th Duke of St Albans was a British peer and soldier, known as Earl of Burford before 1898.
Osborne de Vere Beauclerk, 12th Duke of St Albans was a British peer and Army officer. He was styled Lord Osborne Beauclerk from 1874 to 1934.
Charles Frederick Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, 13th Duke of St Albans, OBE was a British soldier and hereditary peer.
The Reverend Lord Frederick de Vere Beauclerk, a 19th-century Anglican priest, was an outstanding but controversial English first-class cricketer, the leading "amateur" player of the Napoleonic period.
Bestwood Village is an village and civil parish in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire.
The Royal Stuart Society, founded in 1926, is the largest extant Jacobite organization in the United Kingdom. Its full name is The Royal Stuart Society and Royalist League, although it is best known simply as the "Royal Stuart Society". It acknowledges Francis, Duke of Bavaria as head of the House of Stuart, while refraining from making any claim on his behalf that he does not make himself.
Bestwood Pumping Station was a water pumping station operating in Nottinghamshire from 1874 until 1964.
Bestwood Park is a large post-war council estate located to the north of the city of Nottingham, England, and roughly bounded by Beckhampton Road, Oxclose Lane and Queens Bower Road.
Bestwood Country Park is a country park near Bestwood Village, Nottinghamshire, England. Bestwood was a hunting estate owned by the Crown from the medieval period until the 17th century, when King Charles II gave it to his mistress, Nell Gwyn, and their son. In the Victorian era, Bestwood was the location of a coal mine which closed in 1967. It was established as a country park in 1973.
St. Albans is a civil parish in the Gedling borough of Nottinghamshire, England.
Bestwood St. Albans is a former civil parish in the Newark and Sherwood district of Nottinghamshire, England. The former parish contains 19 listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, four are at Grade II*, the middle of the three grades, and the others are at Grade II, the lowest grade. The former parish contains Bestwood Village and an area to the east. The listed buildings include a country house, later a hotel, and associated structures, smaller houses, a church and its lychgate, a water pumping station and associated structures, the winding house and headstocks of a former colliery, an office building, and a war memorial.