Hestercombe House

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Building information
Hestercombe House
Gatehouse of Hestercombe House
Location	Taunton
Country	England
Client	Richard Warre
Completion Date	16th century

Hestercombe House (grid reference ST242287) is a historic country house in Cheddon Fitzpaine in the Quantocks, near Taunton in Somerset, England. It is visited by approximately 70,000 people per year.

The site also includes a 0.08 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset, notified in 2000. The site is used as a roost site by Lesser Horseshoe Bats.

The House was used as the headquarters of the British 8th Corps in the Second World War, and has been owned Somerset County Council since 1951. It is used as an administrative centre and a base for the Somerset Fire and Rescue Service.

1 House
2 World War II
3 Gardens
4 Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest
5 References
6 External links

[edit] House

The house is a Grade II*^[1] Listed Country House which was originally built in the 16th century for the Warre family. Richard Warre (-1601) bequeathed it to his son Roger who married Elinor, daughter of Sir John Popham.

The house was enlarged and altered in the 18th century, but this work now no longer being visible beneath the refronting and enlargement works carried out around 1875 for the then owner Edward Portman, 1st Viscount Portman, who had acquired it in 1873. The house remained in the Portman family until 1944.

The house today appears an assemblage of several architectural styles popular during the Victorian era. While the overall design and air could be described as Italianate, also present in the same entrance facade are examples of high Victorian Gothic, such as an Italianate seigneurial tower confused in design with a campanile tower. This tower complete with a glazed loggia is crowned by a French-style mansard roof with oversized chimneys masquerading as Renaissance ornament. The centre piece of the same facade is a porte cochere designed in a heavy neoclassical style.

A visitor centre opened in the Victorian stables in 2005. Most of the cost of the conversion was funded by a grant from Heritage Lottery Fund.

[edit] World War II

During the early years of World War II, the house and gardens were used by the British Army as part of the headquarters for the 8th Corps, which was formed to command the defence of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Bristol. The 8th Corps HQ was at nearby Pyrland Hall, with the Rear HQ was established at Hestercombe House, with Personnel and Logistics staff.

Hestercombe was the headquarters of the American army 398th General Service Engineer Regiment from July 1943 to April 1944. Eisenhower visited Hestercombe on 18 March 1944 to meet General Gerow and inspect the troops. The Engineers were joined by the 19th District Headquarters of the US Supply Services in July 1943, which stayed until July 1944.

Early on 28 March 1944, a few minutes after midnight, a Junkers Ju88 crashed on the drive to the house after being shot down by cannon fire from a de Havilland Mosquito of No. 219 Squadron Royal Air Force.^[2]

Hestercombe was the American 801 Hospital Centre after D-Day until the end of the war.^[3]

A total of 33 barrack huts (various Nissen huts, Romney huts and MOWB (Ministry of Works Brick) huts) were constructed at Hestercombe during the war. Many were demolished in the 1960s by the Crown Estate, and only one is left standing, in Rook Wood.

[edit] Gardens

View up the valley from the formal gardens

When the house and gardens were inherited by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde in the 18th century, a Georgian landscape garden was laid out, containing ponds, a grand cascade, a gothic alcove, a Tuscan temple arbour, a mausoleum, and a rustic "witch house". Bampfylde, an amateur architect of talent, designed a Doric temple for the grounds, 1786.^[4] A Victorian formal parterre was added near the house by Henry Hall in the 1870s. A new Edwardian garden was laid out by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens between 1904 and 1906 for the Hon EWB Portman.^[5] Lutyens also designed the orangery about 50 m east of the main house between 1904-1909, which is now Grade I listed,^[6] as are the garden walls, paving and steps on the south front of the house.^[7]

Since October 2003, the landscape and gardens, extending to over 100 acres, have been managed by the Hestercombe Gardens Trust, a charity set up to restore and preserve this site with a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £3.7M.

The gardens featured on BBC TV's "Gardens Through Time" series, and cover more than 40 acres and with three different styles of garden ranging from woodland walks to lakes and ponds to formal gardens. The Georgian landscape, Victorian shrubbery and terrace and the formal Edwardian gardens combine to create biodiversity and interest for visitors.

[edit] Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest

Hestercombe House

Area of Search	Somerset
Grid Reference	ST242287
Interest	Biological
Area	0.08 hectare
Notification	2000
Location Map	English Nature

The site is used by Lesser Horseshoe Bats (Rhinolophus hipposideros) as both a breeding and wintering roost site. Numbers of Lesser Horseshoes at this site are only exceeded by one other site in Southwest England. The bats use roofspaces in a former stable block as a maternity site.^[8] It has been designated as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).^[9]