Langley Park is a historic house and estate in Buckinghamshire, England. [1] The parkland is currently known as Langley Park Country Park, and is open to visitors. [2] The house, designed and built by Stiff Leadbetter, is a Grade II* listed building, [3] and the parkland, designed by landscape architect Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, and gardens are Grade II listed together. [1] The house and grounds are owned by Buckinghamshire Council, and the house is leased as a privately run hotel. [1] [4]
The present-day house is the most recent to be built on the site of a medieval deer park. The deer park is first mentioned in historical documents dating to 1202, and was crown property. It was used for hunting deer throughout the medieval period, with a hunting lodge. [1]
A house with stables and outbuildings was built to replace the hunting lodge some time after 1603, when Sir John Kederminster (or Kedermister) was appointed Chief Steward of the Manor of Langley Park. In 1626 he was granted the manor and park, and the land was no longer in crown ownership.
In 1738 the estate was sold to Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706-1758). He used the house as a hunting lodge for a time. In 1755 he commissioned architect and builder Stiff Leadbetter to build a grander house on the site, also to be used as a hunting lodge. [5] This was situated about 100m south of the Kederminster house, and was finished in 1760. [1]
George, the fourth Duke (1739-1817), succeeded his father in 1758, and commissioned famed landscape architect Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1716-1783) to landscape Langley Park. This happened concurrently with Brown's work on the Duke's principal residence, Blenheim Palace.
In 1788 the estate was bought by Robert Bateson Harvey. The estate remained in the ownership of the Harvey family until 1945 when it was sold to Buckinghamshire County Council.
During the First World War Langley Park House was used as a hospital officers of the 2nd Regiment of King Edward's Horse (a cavalry regiment of the special reserve forces, formed in London in August 1914 and moved to France as a dismounted unit in May 1915). [5]
During the Second World War the house was used as the SE Regional HQ of the Home Guard until 1944, and then as headquarters of the Polish units involved in the D-Day landings. [5] [6] In 1993 the house was leased for 99 years by Buckinghamshire County Council for commercial use but had become unused by 2001. The leasehold of the house was sold (i.e. the freehold remained with Buckinghamshire County Council) in 2004 for £2.4 million; in 2018 it reopened as a hotel run by the Marriott Group. [6]
Langley Park House is Grade II* listed. [1] The original house as designed and built by Leadbetter was a compact, villa-like house, with ashlar Woodstock stone, quarried from the Duke's estate there.
John Preston Neale's Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland (1818) notes that "This Mansion is a handsome stone edifice; it is large and square, having a pediment on its principal front. The apartments it contains are well arranged and of considerable dimensions ... a piece of water runs along the South Front of the House, at the foot of a sloping lawn, on which are scattered some beautiful clumps of trees, and other woodland scenery; Windsor Castle, and the heights of the forest, form its distant view." [7]
Robert Bateson Harvey (1825-1887), grandson of the first Harvey to own the house, added Vanbrugh-style quadrant wings ending in square pavilions with angle towers to the east (main) front in c. 1850–60. [1] [6] [8]
The formal gardens on the north, west and south sides of the house were created between 1882 and 1899. They include gravelled paths, lawns and a rock garden, and in some areas are separated from the less formal parkland by a ha-ha. Together the gardens and the parkland are Grade II listed. [1]
The park, designed by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown in the 1760s, [9] has woods, a lake formed by damming a stream, pastures and trees in clumps and individually planted. At the site of a Palladian octagonal temple by Roger Morris (c. 1740, demolished in the mid-19th century) was a 30m-high oriental column (1864, demolished c. 1960). [1] A rhododendron collection now grows in this area, known as the Temple Gardens. [2]
Lancelot Brown, more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English landscape garden style. He is remembered as "the last of the great English 18th-century artists to be accorded his due" and "England's greatest gardener".
Langley, also known as Langley Marish, is an area of Slough in Berkshire, South East England. It is two miles (3 km) east of Slough town centre and 20 miles (32 km) west of Charing Cross in Central London. It was a separate civil parish and village until the 1930s, when the built-up part of Langley was incorporated into Slough. Langley was in the historic county of Buckinghamshire, being transferred to the administrative county of Berkshire in 1974.
Humphry Repton was the last great designer of the classic phase of the English landscape garden, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown. His style is thought of as the precursor of the more intricate and eclectic styles of the 19th century. His first name is often incorrectly spelt "Humphrey".
Ringshall is a hamlet in the Chiltern Hills of England. It is located on the border of the counties of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire; parts of the village lie in the civil parishes of Edlesborough and Ivinghoe in eastern Buckinghamshire, while the rest of the village is mainly within the parish of Little Gaddesden in the west of Hertfordshire. Ringshall lies within the HP4 postcode and the postal address designated by Royal Mail is "Ringshall, Berkhamsted".
Petworth House in the parish of Petworth, West Sussex, England, is a late 17th-century Grade I listed country house, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s to the design of the architect Anthony Salvin. It contains intricate wood-carvings by Grinling Gibbons. It is the manor house of the manor of Petworth. For centuries it was the southern home for the Percy family, earls of Northumberland.
Eaton Hall is the country house of the Duke of Westminster. It is 1 mile (2 km) south of the village of Eccleston, in Cheshire, England. The house is surrounded by its own formal gardens, parkland, farmland and woodland. The estate covers about 10,872 acres (4,400 ha).
Himley Hall is an early 17th-century country house situated in Staffordshire, England. It is situated in the south of the county in the small village of Himley, near to the town of Dudley and the city of Wolverhampton. Himley Hall is a Grade II* listed building. Its park and garden, which were extended in the 1770s by Lancelot "Capability" Brown, are Grade II listed with the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Wrest Park is a country estate located in Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England. It comprises Wrest Park, a Grade I listed country house, and Wrest Park Gardens, also Grade I listed, formal gardens surrounding the mansion.
Scampston Hall is a Grade II* listed country house in North Yorkshire, England, with a serpentine park designed by Charles Bridgeman and Capability Brown. It is located on the north side of the A64 Leeds/Scarborough road, 4 miles (6 km) east of Malton, in Scampston village. The name of the village was referred to in various ways in ancient documents as: Scamestun, Skameston, Skameston, and Skampston, and was probably derived from a personal name.
Tatton Park is a historic estate in Cheshire, England, north of the town of Knutsford. It contains a mansion, Tatton Hall; a medieval manor house, Tatton Old Hall; Tatton Park Gardens, a farm and a deer park of 2,000 acres (8.1 km2). It is a popular visitor attraction and hosts over a hundred events annually. The estate is owned by the National Trust and is managed under lease by Cheshire East Council. Since 1999, it has hosted North West England's annual Royal Horticultural Society flower show.
Croome Court is a mid-18th-century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Upton-upon-Severn in south Worcestershire, England. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for the 6th Earl of Coventry, and they were Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the mansion's rooms were designed by Robert Adam. St Mary Magdalene's Church, Croome D'Abitot that sits within the grounds of the park is now owned and cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust.
Tottenham House is a large Grade I listed English country house in the parish of Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, about five miles southeast of the town of Marlborough. It is separated from the town by Savernake Forest, which is part of the Tottenham Park estate.
Cholmondeley is a civil parish in Cheshire, England, north east of Malpas and west of Nantwich. It includes the small settlements of Croxton Green and Dowse Green, with a total population of a little over a hundred, increasing to 157 at the 2011 Census. Nearby villages include Bickerton to the north east, Bulkeley to the north, Chorley to the east, No Man's Heath to the south west, and Bickley Moss to the south.
Thorndon Hall is a Georgian Palladian country house within Thorndon Park, Ingrave, Essex, England, approximately two miles south of Brentwood and 25 miles (40 km) from central London.
Nuneham House is an eighteenth century villa in the Palladian style, set in parkland at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire, England. It is currently owned by Oxford University and is used as a retreat centre by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. In September 2016 the house and a thousand acres of surrounding parkland and farmland, including the village of Nuneham Courtenay, were put up for sale in three separate lots for a total of £22 million.
Stiff Leadbetter was a British architect and builder, one of the most successful architect–builders of the 1750s and 1760s, working for many leading aristocratic families.
Poundisford Park north of Pitminster, Somerset, England is an English country house that typifies progressive housebuilding on the part of the West Country gentry in the mid-16th century. The main house was built for William Hill around 1550 and has been designated as a Grade I listed building.
Sir Robert Bateson Harvey, 1st Baronet, of Langley Park, was an English Conservative Party politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1863 and 1885.
Burton Pynsent House is a historic country-house in the parish of Curry Rivel, Somerset, England. It is a Grade II* listed building. The house was built in stages between 1565 and 1765, when it was bequeathed to William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham by Sir William Pynsent, 2nd Baronet, who did not want the house to go to Lord North. Pitt had an additional wing built to a design by Lancelot Brown, and the subsequent owner demolished everything but this wing in 1805.
St. Albans is a civil parish in the Gedling borough of Nottinghamshire, England.