Cirencester Park is a country house in the parish of Cirencester in Gloucestershire, England, and is the seat of the Bathurst family, Earls Bathurst. It is a Grade II* listed building. [1] The gardens are Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. [2]
Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst (1684–1775), inherited the estate on the death of his father, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, in 1704. He was a Tory Member of Parliament and statesman who made his wealth from his involvement in the slave trade through the Royal Africa Company and the East India Company. [3] [4] From 1714 Benjamin Bathurst devoted himself to rebuilding the house formerly known as Oakley Grove, which probably stands on the site of Cirencester Castle, and laying out the parkland of what would become Oakley Park.
In 1716, Bathurst acquired the extensive estate of Sapperton from the Atkyns family, including Oakley Wood, and went on to plant one of the finest landscape gardens in England, complete with park buildings, walks, seats, grottoes and ruins. They include Alfred's Hall, now taken to be the earliest recorded Gothick garden building in England, which is also a grade II* listed building. [5]
Allen Bathurst was raised to the peerage as a baron in 1711 and an earl in 1772, and was a patron of art and literature no less than a statesman. The poet Alexander Pope was a frequent visitor to Cirencester House; he advised on the lay-out of the gardens and designed the building known as Pope's Seat in the park, which commands a splendid view of woods and avenues. [6] Jonathan Swift was another appreciative visitor.
The house contains portraits by Lawrence, Gainsborough, Romney, Lely, Reynolds, Hoppner, Kneller and many others, and a set of giant marble columns carrying busts, which are genuine antiques, collected in Italy by Lord Apsley, the son of the third earl, at the time of the Congress of Vienna in 1814.
There were additions to the house by Sir Robert Smirke about 1830. [7]
Subsequent earls were patrons of the Arts and Crafts movement, when Ernest Gimson and the Barnsley brothers, Sidney and Ernest, settled at Pinbury Park on the Cirencester estate in 1894. Norman Jewson joined them in 1907, and describes his life as a student of Gimson in Sapperton in his classic memoir, By Chance I did Rove (1952).
The estate includes much of the villages of Sapperton and Coates, including Pinbury Park, and lays claim to containing the principal source of the River Thames. [2] [8]
Apsley House, at Hyde Park in London, was built by the architect Robert Adam for Lord Chancellor Henry Bathurst, then known as Lord Apsley, and later the second Earl Bathurst. In 1807, the house was purchased by Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who in 1817 sold it to his brother, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington who presented his portrait, today still in Cirencester House.
The house has the tallest yew hedge in Britain. [9]
In 2024 it was announced that a charge was to be levied for the first time for public access to the Cirencester Park estate. [10] A right to roam protest is planned to target the estate. [10] Electronic gates and a ticket booth is to be established to regulate access to the park. [10]
Aside from the Grade I listed gardens and Grade II* listed main house, several other buildings and structures are listed on the National Heritage List for England.
Cirencester is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, 80 miles (130 km) west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames. It is the eighth largest settlement in Gloucestershire and the largest town within the Cotswolds. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural University, the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world, founded in 1840. The town had a population of 20,229 in 2021.
Apsley is a village in Hertfordshire, England, in a valley of the Chiltern Hills below the confluence of the River Gade and Bulbourne. It was the site of water mills serving local agriculture and from the early 19th century became an important centre for papermaking. Today it is a suburb of Hemel Hempstead.
Henry Bathurst, 2nd Earl Bathurst, known as The Lord Apsley from 1771 to 1775, was a British lawyer and politician. He was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain from 1771 to 1778.
Earl Bathurst, of Bathurst in the County of Sussex, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain.
Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst,, of Bathurst in the County of Sussex, known as The Lord Bathurst from 1712 to 1772, was a British Tory politician. Bathurst sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1705 until 1712 and then in the British House of Lords until his death in 1775, after being raised to the peerage as Baron Bathurst.
The River Frome, once also known as the Stroudwater, is a small river in Gloucestershire, England. It is to be distinguished from another River Frome in Gloucestershire, the Bristol Frome, and the nearby River Frome, Herefordshire. The river is approximately 25 miles (40 km) long.
Stowell Park Estate is a 6,000-acre (24 km2) historic agricultural and sporting estate in the Cotswold Hills, Gloucestershire, England. The estate includes the village of Yanworth. The main house is a Grade II* listed building and surrounded by extensive parkland, a mill, and church. The landscaped park is listed Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Henry Allen John Bathurst, 8th Earl Bathurst DL, styled Lord Apsley from 1942 to 1943, was a British peer, soldier and Conservative politician. He was most recently known for an altercation with Prince William.
Dodington Park is a country house and estate in Dodington, South Gloucestershire, England. The house was built by James Wyatt for Christopher Bethell Codrington. The family had made their fortune from sugar plantations in the Caribbean and were significant owners of slaves. It remained in the Codrington family until 1980; it is now owned by the British businessman James Dyson.
Sapperton is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire in England, about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) west of Cirencester. It is most famous for Sapperton Canal Tunnel, and its connection with the Cotswold Arts and Crafts Movement in the early 20th century. It had a population of 424, which had reduced to 412 at the 2011 census.
Frampton Mansell is a small English village 5 miles east-south-east of Stroud, Gloucestershire, in the parish of Sapperton. It lies off the A419 road between Stroud and Cirencester. It has a prominent mid-19th century, Grade II listed church with a set of five original stained-glass windows.
Henry George Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst, styled as Lord Apsley from 1794 to 1834, was a British peer and Tory politician.
Henry Poole (1590-1645) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1624 and 1640.
Allen Christopher Bertram Bathurst, 9th Earl Bathurst, known as Lord Apsley until 2011, is a British peer and landowner and property developer.
Benjamin Bathurst FRS of Lydney, Gloucestershire, was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons for 54 years from 1713 to 1767.
Frampton Court is a Grade I listed country house and estate of about 1,500 acres (610 ha) in Frampton-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, England. It has been owned by the Clifford family since the 11th century. The main buildings are the 18th century Frampton Court and, on the opposite side of the village green, Manor Farm. The gardens at Frampton Court have a Gothic orangery and ornamental canal in the style of William Halfpenny. The two houses, barn and orangery are all Grade I listed buildings in their own right, while the Gatepiers and Gates are Grade II* listed.
Abbotswood is a country house and estate near Lower Swell in Gloucestershire, England. It is a grade II listed building and estate, of medieval origins and with remodelling and garden work to the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens from 1901 onwards.
Colesbourne is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. The village and parish lies within the Cotswolds, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The round houses on the Thames and Severn Canal are five former lengthsmen's cottages built along the canal between Chalford and Lechlade in Gloucestershire, England. Constructed in the 1790s when the canal was built, all but one of them are Grade II listed and have been restored as private dwellings. The buildings have been described as "peculiar" and "a distinctive feature of the Thames and Severn Canal's architecture".
Alfred's Hall is a ruined folly in Cirencester Park, Gloucestershire, England. The Grade II* listed building dates from 1721 and is "probably the first Gothick sham ruin to be built in England".
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