Everything about Woodchester Mansion totally explained
Woodchester Mansion is an unfinished,
Gothic revival mansion house located in
Woodchester,
Gloucestershire,
England. It was formerly known as
Woodchester Park.
The Mansion was abandoned by its builders in the middle of construction, leaving behind a building that appears complete from the outside, but with floors, plaster and whole rooms missing inside. It has remained in this state since the mid-1870s.
The Mansion's creator William Leigh bought the Woodchester Park estate for £100,000, demolishing an existing house on the site, known as "Spring Park" which was home to the Ducie Family.
History
The original
manor house for Woodchester was in the heart of the settlement of Woodchester, next to the old church. After a succession of owners, the manor was granted to George Huntley in 1564. Subsequently, he decided to create a
deer park, a little distance from the manor house, by both purchase and through the enclosure of common agricultural land in the Inchbrook valley. A seven-mile long boundary wall surrounded the park and by 1610 a hunting lodge was built at the western end.
Ducie family
The expense of creating the park is thought to have nearly bankrupted the Huntleys and the manor and park were sold to
Sir Robert Ducie in 1631. Later generations of the Ducie family decided to build a grand country house and, at the same time, create a magnificent landscaped park out of the deer park. Quite why this site was chosen will forever remain an enigma. The steep sides of the valley mean that for much of the year the sun is obscured. The house being positioned halfway down the length of the valley reduces the dramatic views that would have surely been seen if it had been built on a higher spot. The site is neither convenient nor easy for transport. As it wasn't the Ducie's principal residence, they may have looked at it more as an isolated retreat. In any case, they decided to extend and adapt the hunting lodge and lay out a formal garden, and although a precise start date isn't known, the house - called Spring Park - was constructed during the 1740s. Certainly by 1750 it was finished, as
Frederick, Prince of Wales stayed - and in 1788,
George III visited.
Before the visit of George III - and only 30 years after the formal gardens were established - a start was made on extensively re-landscaping the grounds from plans drawn-up by
John Speyers, working with
Capability Brown. This plan removed the more formal aspect of the garden to create a naturalistic park. Part of the plan also turned a group of small fishponds into a series of lakes - and this was done in the late 18th or early 19th Century.
Not only was the park remodelled but the house too - several times in the 1770s and 1830s (including the reintroduction of a more formal garden area by
Humphry Repton) but in 1840 when the 2nd
Earl Ducie wanted further alterations and repairs, the estimate was thought to be too great and the estate was sold to William Leigh, a wealthy merchant.
William Leigh
William Leigh had been born in
Liverpool and educated at
Oxford and
Eton. At the time of the purchase he was living at
Little Aston Hall in
Staffordshire, where he'd recently converted to the
Roman Catholic faith. This and the
Gothic Revival style in architecture were fashionable, and formed the ideology for the new house. He approached
Augustus Pugin to draw up the plans.
Pugin drew up plans for the house but in 1846 he became ill and the project was allowed to drop. Leigh meanwhile gave land in
South Woodchester to a community of Roman Catholic
Passionist fathers for a monastery and church. He then turned to
Charles Francis Hansom, whose brother designed the famous
Hansom cab of Victorian London, to take over the architectural planning.
In 1857 Leigh however dropped Hansom, and unexpectedly hired
Benjamin Bucknall, a young man who was an aspiring architect and assistant to Hansom, but very inexperienced. Bucknall set about studying Gothic Revival architecture - the result, Woodchester Mansion is Bucknall’s masterpiece.
Woodchester Mansion was constructed from 1858 to 1870, and finally in 1873, when William Leigh died, all work stopped.
It may be surmised that Leigh's surviving family were less keen on the design for shortly after Leigh's death they asked another architect,
James Wilson (Architect) of Bath, to propose a new design. This he did in his flamboyant
Italianate style, but the cost of completing a new mansion was too great for any of them to afford. (Indeed, it raises the question of how they ever thought they could both demolish and build a completely new building, but clearly it underlines that they didn't share their father's passion for living in monastic conditions.) Wilson had his own opinion of the site and wanted the family to build, if they were going to, in a new location in the valley.
Wilson wrote:
In the meantime, Bucknall had moved to
Algiers where he worked on domestic projects and villas. The reason for his move is unknown, although poor health is one reason put forward, but without doubt he must have been bitterly disappointed that his grand vision and architectural statement hadn't been realised. Indeed, in 1878 he wrote to Leigh's son:
In 1894
Cardinal Vaughan paid a visit to the house, and the drawing room was updated, but from that day on the house stood often empty. The next heir, Vincent Leigh, briefly lived in part of the house, and his sisters in the gatehouse.
The twentieth century
In 1938, William Leigh's granddaughters, Blanche and Beatrice, sold the house - and what was left of the estate - to a mental health charity, the Barnwood House Trust. They intended to convert the Mansion into a mental hospital, but subsequently this plan was shelved. During the Second World War, the grounds were used as a billet for Canadian and American troops, and the Mansion itself used by St Paul's Teacher Training College. It was then abandoned to the elements. Fortunately, its isolated position meant it didn't suffer from vandalism; it wasn't redeveloped.
Local people ensured it never fell into total disrepair and the Mansion and a small area of surrounding land was eventually purchased by
Stroud District Council, who leased it to a building restoration trust, the Wooodchester Mansion Trust, in 1992. A board of Trustees manage the Mansion and open it to the public on many weekends from April through until October with the aid of volunteers. The Trust also operates a programme of training courses in stone conservation and craftsmanship at the Mansion.
The parkland around the mansion is owned by the
National Trust, and is open to the public as part of its
Woodchester Estate.
The building is home to important colonies of protected lesser horseshoe and greater horseshoe bats and is a
Site of Special Scientific Interest.
The paranormal
Since the infamous and talked about show
Most Haunted Live visited the house on
June 21 2003 for a Live ghost hunt on LIVINGtv, the house has become a regular haunt for ghost hunters. So much happened with
Yvette Fielding and her team that night that she returned in 2005 in the seventh series of
Most Haunted with medium David Wells where on the night they captured mass amounts of activity including tables moving and strange noises. Fielding is said to be very keen about returning for a third time and this occurred in May 2007 which will be screened as part of the tenth season in early 2008.
It has featured on several television programmes, including the ghost hunting show Hauntings where 3 episodes have been filmed at the mansion for the upcoming TV Series. Presenters James Pembridge and Jennifer Jaques both say that the Mansion is haunted. On their third visit which will happen on the
31st May 2007, two guests Kirsty James and Kayliegh Mundy will join them. The team hope to show others of the mansions ghostly past. They are return in mid 2008.
Further Information
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