Capheaton Hall
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Capheaton Hall, near Wallington, Northumberland, is an English country house, the seat of the Swinburne baronets and the childhood home of the poet Algernon Swinburne. It counts among the principal gentry seats of Northumberland. [1]
The house, which was built for Sir John Swinburne in 1667-68[2] by Robert Trollope of Newcastle, is a provincial essay in Baroque, of local stone with a giant pilasters on high bases supporting sections of entablature dividing the main front into a wide central bay and flanking bays, under a sloping roof with vernacular flat-foofed dormers. The estate was improved with a model farm in Gothick taste, designed by Daniel Garrett for Sir John Swinburne, ca 1746, one of the earliest examples of the Gothic Revival. The north front was rebuilt for Sir John in 1789-90 by a local architect, William Newton.
The house stands in rolling parkland in the manner of Capability Brown. The naturalistic setting of Sir Edward's Lake south of the house was designated a Site of Nature Conservation Importance in 1983 for the wintering and breeding wildfowl it harbours, as well as the fen and carr vegetation that has developed round its margins.
The linear estate village of Capheaton (population 50), built as a planned model village in the late eighteenth century, is sited on a ridge west of the Hall.
The Capheaton archives are at the Northumberland Record Office.
[edit] Notes
- ^ National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland, 1868.
- ^ Dated contract, noted in Colvin, sv. "Robert Trollope".
[edit] References
- Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840, 3rd ed. 1995
- The Swinburn family of Capheaton Hall
- Capheaton Estate Village
