Hotham Park House

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Hotham Park House Hotham Park House.JPG
Hotham Park House

Hotham Park House is a grade II* listed 18th-century country house in Bognor Regis, West Sussex. It stands in the 9 hectare (22 acres) Hotham Park, now a public open space.

Bognor Regis town

Bognor Regis is a seaside resort in West Sussex on the south coast of England, 55.5 miles (89 km) south-west of London, 24 miles (39 km) west of Brighton, 5.81 miles (9 km) south-east of Chichester and 16 miles (26 km) east of Portsmouth. Other nearby towns include Littlehampton east-north-east and Selsey to the south-west. The nearby villages of Felpham, and Aldwick are now suburbs of Bognor Regis, along with those of North and South Bersted. The population of the Bognor Regis built-up area, including Felpham and Aldwick, was 63,855 at the 2011 census.

Hotham Park

Hotham Park is a public park in the seaside town of Bognor Regis, West Sussex, England, in the United Kingdom. It was established by the founder of Bognor Sir Richard Hotham, who formerly resided at Hotham Park House which still stands today. Since becoming a public park in 1947 Hotham Park continues to be a popular local attraction for residents of the town as well as holiday makers. The park is located nearby to Butlins and the town centre.

Contents

The house, originally called Chapel House after a nearby chapel, was built in 1792 by Sir Richard Hotham, the founder of Bognor, as his main residence. After the chapel was demolished in the 1850s, the house was renamed Bersted Lodge, then Aldwick Manor and subsequently Hotham Lodge. It is built of stuccoed brick in two storeys with a six-bay (but 10 window) frontage. [1]

Richard Hotham British politician and businessman

Sir Richard Hotham was an East India merchant, property developer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1780 to 1784. He is especially noted for his development of the Sussex village of Bognor into a seaside resort. He was also sometimes called Hotham the Hatter, to mark his original trade.

History

Sir Richard Hotham, a London hatter, moved to the Bognor area in the late 18th century and laid the foundation stone of the town in 1787. He commissioned the building of the present house, with its own private chapel, in 1792, but died a few years later in 1799.

In the early 1800s the house belonged to a Jamaican planter Thomas Smith who had married Susannah Mackworth-Praed. He died in 1825 but his widow continued to live in the house until her own death in 1856. Her brother-in-law, John Bourke, 4th Earl of Mayo, died there in 1849.

John Bourke, 4th Earl of Mayo Irish politician

John Bourke, 4th Earl of Mayo, GCH, PC (Ire) was an Irish peer and courtier, styled Lord Naas from 1792 until 1794.

John Ballett Fletcher bought the house in 1857 and had the chapel demolished, except for its tower. In 1899 the house, then called Bersted Lodge, passed to his eldest son William Holland Ballett Fletcher (1852–1941) who renamed it Aldwick Manor in honour of the fact that he had inherited the Lordship of the Manor of Aldwick. He improved the surrounding parkland by planting trees, shrubs and exotic plants in collaboration with Kew Gardens. His only son was killed on active service in 1915 and when he himself died in 1941 the house was taken over by the Ministry of Pensions for the remainder of the Second World War. After the war the park was acquired by the then Bognor Regis Urban District Council and developed as an amenity for the people of Bognor. The house itself remained empty until 1977, at which time it was acquired and renovated by Abraham Singer and subsequently converted into luxury flats.

Kew Gardens worlds largest collection of living plants in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames

Kew Gardens is a botanical garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park in Middlesex, England, its living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Site.

Today the house is owned by Arun District Council, but leases the flats via a Head Lease.

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References

  1. ↑ Hotham Park House. "British Listed Buildings".

Coordinates: 50°47′12″N0°40′02″W / 50.7866°N 0.6672°W / 50.7866; -0.6672

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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