Spetchley Park is a country mansion standing in 4500 acres of gardens and parkland in the hamlet of Spetchley, near Worcester, England. The house and park are separately Grade II* listed. [1] [2]
The house is built in two storeys of Bath stone with a large tetrastyle Ionic portico entrance. Within the house is a Roman Catholic chapel. The estate has belonged to the Berkeley family, who also own Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, since it was first built in 1606.
The Spetchley estate, once owned by the Sheldon and Lyttleton families, was bought in 1605 by Rowland Berkeley, a wool merchant and banker. His original Tudor house on the site was burned down on the eve of the battle of Worcester, 1651, by disgruntled drunken Scottish Presbyterian Royalists to prevent Oliver Cromwell from using the house for his headquarters. All that remains of the Tudor house today is part of the moat.
After the fire Robert Berkeley, Rowland's son and a High Court judge, converted the stables into living accommodations. The present Palladian house was built in 1811 by a descendant, Robert Berkeley (1764–1845), to designs by the Catholic architect John Tasker. [3] [4] The gardens and park were then developed over the years, most notably by Ellen Willmott, the sister of Rose Berkeley, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Today in the garden at Spetchley very little has changed since Ellen Willmott's day. It is a garden of contrasts: there are walled gardens, a melon yard with its original glasshouses, a horse pool, Victorian conservatory, a delightful Root house, statues, fountains, architectural follies, rose gardens, lakes and bridges, superb herbaceous borders and magnificent specimen trees. As of 2023, the 30 acres were open (for a fee) to the public between April and November. [5]
A famous regular visitor to Spetchley was the composer Edward Elgar, who had gone to a Catholic school on the estate and in later years stayed at Spetchley many times, living in the Garden Cottage. The pine trees nearby are called "Elgar's Pines" and according to his inscription for his hosts in their copy of the score, they inspired him to write parts of The Dream of Gerontius . [6]
In 1940, during World War II, Spetchley was earmarked to be used by Winston Churchill and the Cabinet in the event of London becoming too dangerous during the Blitz, or a successful invasion by the Germans and the subsequent loss of London. [7] After the Battle of Britain, Spetchley was instead used by the USAAF 8th Air Force as a place of recuperation for its pilots [8] – a basketball court was put up on the front lawn.
In 2019, 750 items of the home's contents were listed for sale by auction by the new owner, Henry Berkely who had inherited the property two years earlier. The sale was intended to provide funding for the necessary renovations. [9] Some four years later, Country Life (magazine) detailed the recent improvements, illustrated with updated photographs of the home's interior. [10]
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Wilton House is an English country house at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, which has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years. It was built on the site of the medieval Wilton Abbey. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII presented Wilton Abbey and its attached estates to William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke. The house is linked by some with the premiere of Shakespeare's As You Like It, and an important literary saloon culture under its occupation by Mary Sidney, wife of the first Earl.
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Cotheridge Court is a Grade II* listed ancient manor house situated in the south-western part of Cotheridge, in the county of Worcestershire, England, and birthplace of Herbert Bowyer Berkeley. The house bought in 1615 by William Berkeley, eldest son of Rowland Berkeley (1548-1611) of Spetchley, was owned and lived in by the Berkeley family for nearly 350 years, but the manor is over one thousand years old. This family descended from the Berkeleys of Berkeley Castle Gloucestershire, and Eadnoth. Cotheridge Court is now a private residence of sub-divided flats.
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All Saints' Church, Spetchley, is a redundant Anglican church adjacent to Spetchley Park, Worcestershire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building, and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.
Spetchley is a hamlet and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, that lies in the district of Wychavon, half a mile from Worcester, along the A44 road. Spetchley contains Spetchley Park, a country mansion with extensive gardens.
Sir Robert Berkeley was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1624. He suffered considerably for giving a judgement in favour of Ship Money.
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Foots Cray Place was one of the four country houses built in England in the 18th century to a design inspired by Palladio's Villa Capra near Vicenza. Built in 1754 near Sidcup, Kent, Foots Cray Place was demolished in 1950 after a fire in 1949. Of the three other houses in England, Nuthall Temple in Nottinghamshire was built 1757 and demolished in 1929; the other two survive: Mereworth Castle and Chiswick House, both now Grade I listed buildings. A modern fifth example, Henbury Hall, was built near Macclesfield in the 1980s. Another example of a similar structure in England is the Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard, which is a garden building not a house.
Robert Berkeley (1713–1804) was an English political writer, who is assumed also to be a significant activist for Catholic emancipation of the 1770s.