Ernest Cook

Last updated • 1 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
South Lodge, at the entrance to Fairford Park, one of Ernest Cook's estates in Gloucestershire SouthLodgeFairford.jpg
South Lodge, at the entrance to Fairford Park, one of Ernest Cook's estates in Gloucestershire

Ernest Edward Cook (4 September 1865 – 14 March 1955) was an English philanthropist and businessman. He was a grandson of Thomas Cook, the travel entrepreneur.

Contents

Cook was born in Camberwell, London and educated at Mill Hill School, as were his two brothers Frank and Thomas. He entered the family travel business, and developed its banking operations. In 1928, along with his brother Frank, he sold his business interest in the family firm to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. [1]

Following the sale, Cook retired to Bath, and devoted himself to his art collection and the acquisition of country estates. He accumulated a large collection of fine and decorative art, which on his death became the largest bequest ever left to the National Art Collections Fund. [1] In 1931 he acquired Montacute House in Somerset and the Bath Assembly Rooms for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

He became a major benefactor of the National Trust, and encouraged the Trust to acquire historic country houses and estates. Montacute House and the Assembly Rooms were transferred to the National Trust. In 1938 he acquired Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire when it was threatened with demolition. The contents were sold off by public auction. Cook acquired a total of seventeen estates, of which Bradenham, Buscot and Coleshill passed to the National Trust. [1]

In 1952 Cook founded the Ernest Cook Trust, and transferred seven estates to it. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chatsworth House</span> Country house in Derbyshire, England

Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Bakewell and 9 miles (14 km) west of Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the Cavendish family since 1549. It stands on the east bank of the River Derwent, across from hills between the Derwent and Wye valleys, amid parkland backed by wooded hills that rise to heather moorland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cragside</span> Victorian country house near Rothbury in Northumberland, England

Cragside is a Victorian Tudor Revival country house near the town of Rothbury in Northumberland, England. It was the home of William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, founder of the Armstrong Whitworth armaments firm. An industrial magnate, scientist, philanthropist and inventor of the hydraulic crane and the Armstrong gun, Armstrong also displayed his inventiveness in the domestic sphere, making Cragside the first house in the world to be lit using hydroelectric power. The estate was technologically advanced; the architect of the house, Richard Norman Shaw, wrote that it was equipped with "wonderful hydraulic machines that do all sorts of things". In the grounds, Armstrong built dams and lakes to power a sawmill, a water-powered laundry, early versions of a dishwasher and a dumb waiter, a hydraulic lift and a hydroelectric rotisserie. In 1887, Armstrong was raised to the peerage, the first engineer or scientist to be ennobled, and became Baron Armstrong of Cragside.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire</span> Country house in Buckinghamshire, England

Hartwell House is a country house in the parish of Hartwell in Buckinghamshire, Southern England. The house is owned by the Ernest Cook Trust, has been a Historic House Hotel since 1989, and in 2008 was leased to the National Trust. The Grade I listed house is Jacobean with a Georgian front and Rococo interiors, set in a picturesque landscaped park, and is most famous as the home of exiled French king Louis XVIII in the early 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Montacute House</span> Late Elizabethan mansion in Somerset, UK

Montacute House is a late Elizabethan mansion in Montacute, South Somerset, England. An example of English architecture created during a period that was moving from the medieval Gothic to the more classically-inspired Renaissance style, Montacute is one of the few prodigy houses to have survived almost unchanged from the Elizabethan era. The house has been designated as a Grade I listed building, and its gardens are also listed at the highest grade on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Wycombe Park</span> Country house in West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England

West Wycombe Park is a country house built between 1740 and 1800 near the village of West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th-century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet. The house is a long rectangle with four façades that are columned and pedimented, three theatrically so. The house encapsulates the entire progression of British 18th-century architecture from early idiosyncratic Palladian to the Neoclassical, although anomalies in its design make it architecturally unique. The mansion is set within an 18th-century landscaped park containing many small temples and follies, which act as satellites to the greater temple, the house.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenway Estate</span> In Devon, former house of Agatha Christie

Greenway, also known as Greenway House, is an estate on the River Dart near Galmpton in Devon, England. Once the home of the author Agatha Christie, it is now owned by the National Trust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Richardson (architect)</span> English architect (1880–1964)

Sir Albert Edward Richardson was a leading English architect, teacher and writer about architecture during the first half of the 20th century. He was Professor of Architecture at University College London, a President of the Royal Academy, editor of Architects' Journal, founder of the Georgian Group and the Guild of Surveyors and Master of the Art Workers' Guild.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Lees-Milne</span> English architectural historian (1908–1997)

(George) James Henry Lees-Milne was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensive diaries remain in print.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Felton</span> Australian entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist

Alfred Felton was an Australian entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cassiobury House</span> English country house in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Cassiobury House was a country house in Cassiobury Park, Watford, England. It was the ancestral seat of the Earls of Essex. Originally a Tudor building, dating from 1546 for Sir Richard Morrison, it was substantially remodelled in the 17th and 19th centuries and ultimately demolished in 1927. The surrounding Cassiobury Park was turned into the main public open space for Watford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barrington Court</span> Tudor manor house in Barrington, Somerset, England

Barrington Court is a Tudor manor house begun around 1538 and completed in the late 1550s, with a vernacular stable court (1675), situated in Barrington, near Ilminster, Somerset, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penrhyn Castle</span> Country house in Wales

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, constructed in the style of a Norman castle. The Penrhyn estate was founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In the 15th century his descendant Gwilym ap Griffith built a fortified manor house on the site. In the 18th century, the Penrhyn estate came into the possession of Richard Pennant, 1st Baron Penrhyn, in part from his father, a Liverpool merchant, and in part from his wife, Ann Susannah Pennant née Warburton, the daughter of an army officer. Pennant derived great wealth from his ownership of slave plantations in the West Indies and was a strong opponent of attempts to abolish the slave trade. His wealth was used in part for the development of the slate mining industry on Pennant's Caernarfonshire estates, and also for development of Penrhyn Castle. In the 1780s Pennant commissioned Samuel Wyatt to undertake a reconstruction of the medieval house.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Cook & Son</span> British transport and travel company (1841–2001)

Thomas Cook & Son, originally simply Thomas Cook, was a company founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinet-maker, in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham. In 1851, Cook arranged transport to the Great Exhibition of 1851. He organised his first tours to Europe in 1855 and to the United States in 1866.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buscot Park</span> Country house, gardens and estate near Faringdon, Oxfordshire, England

Buscot Park is a country house at Buscot near the town of Faringdon in Oxfordshire within the historic boundaries of Berkshire. It is a Grade II* listed building.

Francis William Green was an English industrialist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Coxwell</span> Village in Oxfordshire, England

Great Coxwell is a village and civil parish 2 miles (3 km) southwest of Faringdon in the Vale of White Horse, England. It was in Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire. The 2021 Census recorded the parish's population as 295 in 124 households.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Phelips</span> English politician

Sir Robert Phelips was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1604 and 1629. In his later Parliaments he was one of the leading spirits in the House of Commons and an opponent of James I, Charles I and their adviser Buckingham.

The Ernest Cook Trust is a large educational charity in England. It was founded in 1952 by the philanthropist Ernest Cook, the grandson of travel pioneer Thomas Cook. Each year the Trustees distribute more than £1.25m in educational grants to benefit children and young people, notably to schools for improving their outdoor education and play areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laramie Plains Museum</span> Historic house in Wyoming, United States

The Ivinson Mansion, now the Laramie Plains Museum, was built in 1892 in Laramie, Wyoming by Jane and Edward Ivinson. Designed by architect Walter E. Ware of Salt Lake City and built by local contractor Frank Cook, the house was regarded as the most significant residence in Laramie at its completion. Edward Ivinson gave the mansion to the Episcopal Church, which used it as a boarding school until 1958. After years of neglect, the house was acquired by the Laramie Plains Museum Association in 1972 and is used as a museum and events center.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 E. J. T. Collins (2004). "Cook, Ernest Edward (1865–1955)" . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50036 . Retrieved 2011-07-08.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Further reading