Wrest Park

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Wrest House c.1708. This building was replaced in the 1830s, but the formal parterre elements of the garden remain from this time.

Wrest House, 2007

Wrest Park is a country estate located near Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England. It comprises Wrest Park, a Grade I listed country house, and Wrest Park Gardens, formal gardens surrounding the mansion.

[edit] Wrest Park

The present house was built in 1834-39, to designs by its owner the Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey, an amateur architect, the first president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who was inspired by buildings he had seen on trips to Paris and based his house on designs published in French architectural books such as Jacques-François Blondel's Architecture Française (1752); the works were superintended as clerk of works on site by James Clephan,^[1] who had been clerk of the works at the Liddell seat, Ravensworth Castle, County Durham, and had recently performed as professional amanuensis and builder for Lord Barrington, whose house, Beckett Park, Berkshire, was designed by his brother-in-law, Tom Liddell, an amateur architect.^[2] Wrest has some of the earliest Rococo revival interiors in England. Reception rooms in the house are open to the public.

[edit] Wrest Park Gardens

Thomas Archer Pavilion at the end of the Long Canal, 2007

Thomas Archer's garden pavilion at Wrest Park.

Wrest Park Gardens, one of the grandest English gardens of the early eighteenth century, are spread over 150 acres (607,000 m²) and were originally laid out probably by George London and Henry Wise for Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent, then modified by Capability Brown in a more informal landscape style, without sacrificing the parterres. Wrest Park House was for generations the seat of the de Grey family, whose De Grey Mausoleum is at nearby Flitton.

In the Great Garden, water catches the eye in every direction while intersecting alleys provide splendid vistas of the many garden buildings and ornaments. The park's centrepiece is an example of French parterres divided by a wide gravel central walk, continued as a long canal that leads to a very fine free-standing domed pavilion (originally called the Banqueting House) designed in full Baroque style by Thomas Archer in 1709 and completed in 1711 costing £1,809 (decorated inside by Louis Hauduroy in 1712). Also Archer built between 1710 and 1717 at a cost of £1,259 the Hill House (now demolished) on the summit of the adjacent Cain Hill to which Henry Grey's family used to ride for breakfast. Later the boundary canals were altered to take the more natural shape by Capability Brown who worked here between 1758-60. The surveyor John Rocque made a map of the gardens and garden houses at Wrest, 1735, dedicated to Duke Henry^[3] The central formal area was retained instead of being swept away when it was ringed by a canal and woodland planned by Brown. During the later 18th and 19th centuries, the Bath House (designed by Edward Stevens or Thomas Wright, 1770), and marble fountains were added. The huge Orangery was built by Earl de Grey.

From 1906 to 1911 Wrest Park was leased to the American Ambassador, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, during which time a number of important visitors came there. King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were guests there on 24 July 1909 and the former US president Theodore Roosevelt visited in May 1910.

The estate at Wrest is the oldest lay estate in Bedfordshire.^[4] Wrest Park Gardens are now in the care of English Heritage.

[edit] Restoration programme

In the autumn of 2007 English Heritage has announced that the Wolfson Foundation has pledged up to £400,000 towards the restoration of a number of the key features of the Wrest Park estate including the mansion's formal entrance area, the garden statuary, railings and gates decoration and altering the height of the carriage drive. In the next phases the lakes and canals will be restored.

[edit] Memorial column dedicated to Lancelot 'Capability' Brown

Lancelot Brown Memorial Column

The inscription on the column, originally placed near the Bowling Green House (remodelled by Batty Langley, 1735), and now located in the eastern part of the gardens:

'These gardens, originally laid out by Henry Duke of Kent, were altered by Philip Earl of Hardwicke and Jemima Marchioness Grey with the professional assistance of Lancelot Brown Esq. in the years 1758, 1759, 1760.'

[edit] Thomas Carew's poem about the old Wrest House

Thomas Carew (1595-1640) wrote his country house poem 'To My Friend G.N. from Wrest' in 1639 that described the old house which was demolished between 1834 and 1840:

Such pure and uncompounded beauties bless

This mansion with an useful comeliness,

Devoid of art, for here the architect

Did not with curious skill a pile erect

Of carved marble, touch, or porphyry,

But built a house for hospitality;

No sumptuous chimney-piece of shining stone

Invites the stranger's eye to gaze upon,

And coldly entertains his sight, but clear

And cheerful flames cherish and warm him here:

No Doric nor Corinthian pillars grace

With imagery this structure's naked face,

The lord and lady of this place delight

Rather to be in act than seem in sight;

Instead of statues to adorn their wall

They throng with living men their merry hall,

Where at large tables filled with wholesome meats

The servant, tenant, and kind neighbour eats.

(lines 19-36)

Amalthea's horn

Of plenty is not in effigy worn

Without the gate, but she within the door

Empties her free and unexhausted store.

Nor, crowned with wheaten wreaths, doth Ceres stand

In stone, with a crook’d sickle in her hand:

Nor, on a marble tun, his face besmeared

With grapes, is curled Bacchus reared.

We offer not in emblems to the eyes,

But to the taste those useful deities.

We press the juicy god and quaff his blood,

And grind the yellow goddess into food.

(lines 57-68)

[edit] See also

• Silsoe
• De Grey Mausoleum
• Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Wrest Park's page on English Heritage's site

[edit] Further reading

• Nicola Smith, "Wrest Park" published by English Heritage, London 1995, ISBN 1-85074-481-5
• Linda Cabe Halpern, "Wrest Park 1686–1730s: exploring Dutch influences" in Garden History Journal vol 30.2 (2002)
• Jean O’Neill, "John Rocque as a guide to gardens" in Garden History Journal vol 16.1
• James Collett-White, "Inventories of Bedfordshire Country Houses 1714-1830", Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, Volume 74, 1995
• Charles Read, Earl de Grey, London 2007 ISBN 978-0-95556-930-2