Fyne Court | |
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![]() The cafe and shop at Fyne Court | |
General information | |
Town or city | Broomfield |
Country | England |
Coordinates | 51°04′50″N3°06′52″W / 51.080563°N 3.114310°W |
Construction started | c.1629 |
Demolished | 1894 |
Client | Andrew Crosse |
Fyne Court is a National Trust-owned nature reserve and visitor centre in Broomfield, Somerset, England. It was formerly an estate, and large English country house, belonging to the Crosse family.
Andrew Crosse conducted a series of experiments with electricity, including the development of large voltaic piles, at the house during his ownership in the early 19th century. The main building of Fyne Court burnt down in 1894. The buildings which survived the fire have been used as offices and a visitor centre by organisations such as the Somerset Wildlife Trust and Quantock Hills AONB Service since it came into the ownership of the National Trust in 1967. It is surrounded by a large country estate of woodland, ponds and meadows. Within the grounds are a folly and boathouse.
The nature reserve is set in parkland which was originally the pleasure grounds of a large house belonging to 19th-century scientist and pioneer in electricity, Andrew Crosse. [1] His family had owned the house from its construction, Fyne Court having been built in around 1629 by an earlier Andrew Crosse, who had purchased part of the manor of Broomfield. [2] [3] The house had been enlarged and extensively remodelled by Andrew Crosse (1704-66), great-uncle of the scientist, who also completed a fashionable Arcadian garden including five linked ponds, a serpentine lake, and additional tree planting.
Having lost his parents, his father in 1800 and his mother in 1805, Crosse took over the management of the family estates at the age of 21. Among his experiments Crosse erected "an extensive apparatus for examining the electricity of the atmosphere," incorporating at one point an insulated wire some 1.25 miles (2.01 km) long, later shortened to 1,800 feet (550 m), suspended from poles and trees. Using this wire he was able to determine the polarity of the atmosphere under various weather conditions. His results were published by his friend George Singer in 1814, as part of Singer's Elements of Electricity and Electro-Chemistry. [4]
Along with Sir Humphry Davy (who visited Fyne Court in 1827), Crosse was one of the first to develop large voltaic piles. [5] Although it was not the largest he built, Henry Minchin Noad's Manual of Electricity describes a battery consisting of 50 jars containing 73 square feet (6.8 m2) of coated surface. Using his wires Crosse was able to charge and discharge it some 20 times a minute, "accompanied by reports almost as loud as those of a cannon". [4] He became known locally as "the thunder and lightning man". [6] In 1836 Sir Richard Phillips described seeing a wide variety of voltaic piles at Fyne Court, totalling 2,500, of which 1,500 were in use when he visited. [7]
The house was the childhood home of The Right Hon. Susan Harris, Countess of Malmesbury, who was the daughter of John Hamilton of Fyne Court and the second wife of James Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary and Tory politician. She published a number of books and articles in her lifetime including 'Village Life in England' in which she recorded some reminiscences of life in Broomfield. [8] She later married Major General Sir John Charles Ardagh who is buried in Church of St Mary & All Saints, Broomfield churchyard and wrote an account of his life.
The house burnt down in 1894. [9] [10] However the detached music room in which Crosse conducted his experiments survived, [11] along with some of the books and oil paintings by Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens. [12] The laboratory table on which Crosse carried out experiments stands in the aisle of the Church of St. Mary and All Saints in Broomfield and an obelisk in his memory is in the churchyard. [13]
In 1918 several hundred acres of the woodland within the park was sold at an auction in Taunton. [14] Fyne Court was left to the National Trust by John Adams in 1967, and passed in to the Trust's ownership in 1972 once legal issues were resolved. [15] It was also used as the headquarters of the Somerset Wildlife Trust. [16] The Quantock Hills AONB Service have their headquarters in the grounds. [17]
Fyne Court is surrounded by a 65-acre (260,000 m2) estate. [18] Much of the landscaping, including an arboretum laid out in 1780, has become overgrown and now provides varied habitats including broadleaved woodland, ponds and meadows grazed by highland cattle. [19] The site is home to over 100 species of fungi and some rare invertebrates. [16] In the grounds is a folly with two 13 feet (4 m) wide crenelated towers, and a boathouse. [20]
The Cotswolds is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale.
The voltaic pile was the first electrical battery that could continuously provide an electric current to a circuit. It was invented by Italian chemist Alessandro Volta, who published his experiments in 1799. The voltaic pile then enabled a rapid series of other discoveries including the electrical decomposition (electrolysis) of water into oxygen and hydrogen by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle (1800) and the discovery or isolation of the chemical elements sodium (1807), potassium (1807), calcium (1808), boron (1808), barium (1808), strontium (1808), and magnesium (1808) by Humphry Davy.
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Wimpole Estate is a large estate containing Wimpole Hall, a country house located within the civil parish of Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, England, about 8+1⁄2 miles southwest of Cambridge. The house, begun in 1640, and its 3,000 acres (12 km2) of parkland and farmland are owned by the National Trust. The estate is regularly open to the public and received over 335,000 visitors in 2019. Wimpole is the largest house in Cambridgeshire.
The Avon Wildlife Trust aims to protect and promote wildlife in the area of the former county of Avon — now Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, in England. It has its headquarters in Bristol and runs wildlife centres at Folly Farm, Somerset and Feed Bristol, Frenchay, North Bristol.
Andrew Crosse was a British scientist who was born and died at Fyne Court, Broomfield, Somerset. Crosse was an early pioneer and experimenter in the use of electricity. He became known after press reports of an electrocrystallization experiment he conducted in 1836, during which insects "appeared".
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Broomfield is a village and civil parish in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, England, situated about five miles north of Taunton. According to the 2011 census it had a population of 249.
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Quantock Lodge is a grade II listed nineteenth-century Gothic revival mansion built by Henry Labouchere, 1st Baron Taunton (1798–1869), to the design of Henry Clutton. It is built from Cockercombe tuff and is located near Aley in the parish of Over Stowey in Somerset. It has variously been used as an estate, a sanatorium and a school.
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Sydenham Hill Wood is a ten-hectare wood on the northern slopes of the Norwood Ridge in the London Borough of Southwark. It is designated as a Local Nature Reserve and Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation. With the adjacent Dulwich Wood, Sydenham Hill Wood is the largest extant tract of the ancient Great North Wood. The two woods are formed from coppices known as Lapsewood, Old Ambrook Hill Wood and Peckarmans Wood after the relocation of The Crystal Palace in 1854 and the creation of the high level line in 1865.
The Church of St Mary & All Saints in Broomfield, Somerset, England was built in the 15th and 16th centuries and has been designated as a Grade I listed building.
The county of Somerset is in South West England, bordered by the Bristol Channel and the counties of Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, and Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south, and Devon to the west. The climate, influenced by its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the prevailing westerly winds, tends to be mild, damp and windy.
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Broomfield Park is a 21 hectare public park in Palmers Green in the London Borough of Enfield. It is a Site of Local Importance for Nature Conservation and is registered by English Heritage in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens for its special historic interest