Moor Park is a Neo-Palladian mansion set within several hundred acres of parkland to the south-east of Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, England. It is called Moor Park Mansion because it is in the old park of the Manor of the More, a 16th-century palace. It now serves as the clubhouse of Moor Park Golf Club.
The house is listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for England, and the landscaped park is listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. [1] [2]
After the Manor of the More became a ruin, in about 1617 the 3rd Earl of Bedford built a new house on the hill to the southwest of the old palace, within the deer park. [3] [4]
The house was rebuilt in 1678–1679 for James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, and inherited by his wife, Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch, after he was beheaded. She sold it to Benjamin Haskins-Stiles, who had made a fortune in the South Sea Company before the notorious bubble burst; the current appearance of the mansion can be traced to him. [5]
Styles had the house remodelled in the 1720s. The principal architect was Giacomo Leoni, [6] initially assisted by the painter Sir James Thornhill. Leoni refaced the house with Portland stone and added a great Corinthian portico on the south front and Tuscan colonnades (since removed). Inside, Thornhill was commissioned to paint the Great Hall and the Grand Stair, [7] complete with a dome in imitation of St. Peter's, Rome. However, Thornhill quarrelled with Styles and left the project before its completion. The paintings on the Grand Stair date from 1732 and depict the Origin of the Seasons from Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Francesco Sleter, a Venetian artist who studied under Jacopo Amigoni. All that remains of Styles's work on the Grand Stair is a panel over a doorway, uncovered during restoration work in 2002. After Styles's falling-out with Thornhill, Amigoni was commissioned to paint the four pictures in the Great Hall—the story of Jupiter and Io, also from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The wall paintings in the erroneously named Thornhill Room are probably by Sleter and Amigoni, while the ceiling, which depicts Aurora and the Dawn, was painted somewhat earlier, by Antonio Verrio. [8]
In 1752 the house was bought by Admiral Lord Anson, who commissioned Capability Brown to remake the formal gardens in sweeping "landscape style" with a small lake. Horace Walpole was not impressed: "I was not much struck with it, after all the miracles I had heard Brown had performed there. He has undulated the horizon in so many artificial molehills, that it is full as unnatural as if it was drawn with a rule and compasses." [9] In 1785 the house was purchased by Thomas Bates Rous formerly of the East India Company and MP for Worcester. After excessive election expenses he was in need of cash and demolished part of the building for its valuable stone. [10] Further owners succeeded at regular intervals until the enlarged estate was sold to the Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury in 1828. Earl Grosvenor, son of the Duke of Westminster, built the gateway at Batchworth Heath and planted the pleasure grounds with trees and ornamental shrubs. It is said that the commercial strawberry, a hybrid of the European strawberry and a Chilean species, was first cultivated in the kitchen gardens of Moor Park, as had been the "Moorpark" fuzzless apricot in an earlier day. [11]
Lord Leverhulme purchased Moor Park and commissioned golf-course designer Harry Colt to lay out the courses that now surround the mansion. These opened in 1923. [4]
During the Second World War, the mansion was requisitioned, becoming the Headquarters of the 1st Airborne Corps, who there planned Operation Market Garden, the abortive mission to capture the bridges of the Lower Rhine in 1944. [4] The operation was planned in a first-floor room, now named "the Arnhem Room". Moor Park Golf Club now has its clubhouse in the building, and since buying the freehold of the mansion in 1994 has completely restored and refurbished the building and paintings. [4]
Addington Palace is an 18th-century mansion in Addington located within the London Borough of Croydon. It was built close to the site of an earlier manor house belonging to the Leigh family. It is particularly known for having been, between 1807 and 1897, the summer residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Since the 1930s most of the grounds have been occupied by Addington Palace Golf Club. Between 1953 and 1996 the mansion was occupied by the Royal School of Church Music, which has since moved to Salisbury. It was later used as a wedding and events venue.
Sir James Thornhill was an English painter of historical subjects working in the Italian baroque tradition. He was responsible for some large-scale schemes of murals, including the "Painted Hall" at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, the paintings on the inside of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and works at Chatsworth House and Wimpole Hall.
Antonio Verrio was an Italian Baroque painter. He was responsible for introducing Baroque mural painting into England and served the Crown over a thirty-year period.
Rickmansworth is a town in south-west Hertfordshire, England, located approximately 17 miles (27 km) north-west of central London, 5 miles (8 km) south-west of Watford and inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway. The town is mainly to the north of the Grand Union Canal and the River Colne.
Giacomo Leoni, also known as James Leoni, was an Italian architect, born in Venice. He was a devotee of the work of Florentine Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had also been an inspiration for Andrea Palladio. Leoni thus served as a prominent exponent of Palladianism in English architecture, beginning in earnest around 1720. Also loosely referred to as Georgian, this style is rooted in Italian Renaissance architecture.
Euston Hall is a country house, with park by William Kent and Capability Brown, in Euston, a small village in Suffolk, England, just south of Thetford. It is the family home of the Dukes of Grafton.
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Moor Park is an affluent private residential estate in the Three Rivers District of Hertfordshire, England. It is amongst the most prestigious and sought-after addresses on the outskirts of London and is recognised as one of the five established millionaire neighbourhoods in Hertfordshire. It is located approximately 16 miles (26 km) northwest of central London and adjacent to the Greater London boundary.
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Cassiobury Park is the principal public park in Watford, Hertfordshire, in England. It was created in 1909 from the purchase by Watford Borough Council of part of the estate of the Earls of Essex around Cassiobury House which was subsequently demolished in 1927. It comprises over 190 acres (77 ha) and extends from the A412 Rickmansworth Road in the east to the Grand Union Canal in the west, and lies to the south of the Watford suburb of Cassiobury, which was also created from the estate. The western part is a 62-acre (25.1 ha) Local Nature Reserve managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust. The park hosts the free, weekly timed parkrun 5 km event every Saturday morning at 9 am, starting on the field near the Shepherds Road entrance to the park, and finishing by the bandstand.
Wolterton Hall, is a large country house in the ecclesiastical parish of Wickmere with Wolterton and the civil parish of Wickmere in the county of Norfolk, England, United Kingdom. The present hall was commissioned by the 1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton and completed in 1742, it was designed by the architect Thomas Ripley who was a protégé of Lord Walpole and his brother Sir Robert Walpole.
Detmar Jellings Blow was a British architect of the early 20th century, who designed principally in the arts and crafts style. His clients belonged chiefly to the British aristocracy, and later he became estates manager to the Duke of Westminster.
Bramham Park is a Grade I listed 18th-century country house in Bramham, between Leeds and Wetherby, in West Yorkshire, England.
The Grove Park, or The Grove is a public park in Carshalton in the London Borough of Sutton. It is situated close to Carshalton Village in the area approximately bounded by the High Street, North Street and Mill Lane. The southwest corner of the park abuts one of Carshalton's ponds from where water flows through the park as the river Wandle.
Belhus is a golf course, country park, former stately home and manor in the parish of Aveley in Essex, England. The historic manor was known in medieval times variously as "Bellhouse, Belhouse, Bell House", etc. It is now part of the Thames Chase woodland planned for the area.
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Francesco Sleter was an Italian painter, active in England.
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Dyrham Park Country Club is a country house, estate and golf club in Hertfordshire, England, near Dancers Hill, several miles northeast of Borehamwood, and to the north of Barnet. It is a white Palladian mansion, set in two hundred acres, with an 18-hole golf course, adjacent to The Shire London Golf Club. The estate was originally settled as a manor in Elizabethan times and the current Palladian mansion was built in the 19th century. The house was renovated in the 1960s and the golf course was established in 1963. The house has been listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England since May 1949.
Benjamin Haskins-Stiles, of Bowden Park, near Chippenham, Wiltshire and Moor Park, Hertfordshire, was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1721 to 1734.