| Caversham Park | |
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| CavershamPark.jpg View from the south east |
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Location within Reading
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| Former names | Caversham Manor |
| General information | |
| Status | Grade II listed[1] |
| Type | Stately home |
| Architectural style | Greek |
| Location | Caversham, Berkshire, UK |
| Coordinates | |
| Construction started | 1850 |
Caversham Park is a Victorian stately home with parkland in the suburb of Caversham, on the outskirts of Reading, England. Historically it was in Oxfordshire, but since 1911 it has been in Berkshire.
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The history of Caversham Park goes back to at least Norman times, when Walter Giffard, a distant relative of William the Conqueror, was given the estate after the 1066 conquest. The estate, then Caversham Manor, was a fortified manor house or castle, probably nearer the Thames than the present house. The estate was registered in the Domesday Book, in an entry describing a property of 9.7 square kilometres (2,400 acres) worth £20.[2] The estate passed to William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke and Protector of the Realm, in the late 1100s. Marshall, who in his final years acted as de facto regent under the reign of a young Henry III, died in Caversham Park in 1218.
Later it was occupied by the Earls of Warwick. In 1542, it was bought by Sir Francis Knollys, the treasurer of Queen Elizabeth I. However, he did not move here until over forty years later, when he completely rebuilt the house slightly to the north. Sir Francis' son, William Knollys, the Earl of Banbury, entertained Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Anne of Denmark here.
Later it became home to the Royalist Earl of Craven. During the Civil War, the house was confiscated and used to imprison Charles I. Following the Civil War, the manor was demolished because of its poor state of repair.
William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan started to have the house rebuilt in 1718. A friend of the Duke of Marlborough, he tried to rival the gardens at Blenheim Palace. The house burned down in the late 18th century and was replaced with a smaller house. This was enlarged by Major Charles Marsack in the 1780s, in the Greek temple style. Thomas Jefferson visited the estate in 1783.
The residential area of Caversham Park Village was developed in the 1960s on some of the parkland.
The present building was erected by the Crawshay family after a fire in 1850. Afterwards Crawshay had the house rebuilt on an iron frame, one of the earliest cases of the use of this technique.
During the First World War, part of the building was used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. In 1923 The Oratory School bought the house and about 120 hectares (300 acres) of the estate's remaining 730 hectares (1,800 acres). The principal of the school was Edward Pereira. The legacy of the estate's days as a school remain with a chapel building and graves for three boys, one of whom died in World War II in 1940, the other two having died from accident and sickness in the 1920s.
With the onset of the Second World War the British Ministry of Health requisitioned Caversham Park, and initially intended to convert it into a hospital. However, the BBC purchased the property with government Grant-in-Aid funds, and moved its Monitoring Service into the premises from Wood Norton Hall, near Evesham in Worcestershire, in Spring 1943. The nearby estate of Crowsley Park was acquired by the BBC at the same time, to act as the service's receiving station. Caversham Park and Crowsley Park continue to function in that role today. BBC Radio Berkshire is also based at Caversham Park.
In major building works in the 1980s, the BBC restored the old interior, removed utilitarian brick buildings put up alongside the mansion during the war, converted the orangery for use as a listening room and editorial offices, and built a large new west wing. A further major building project in 2007-08 saw the west wing converted to house all of Monitoring's operational staff.
A large 10-metre (33 ft) diameter satellite dish was erected in the grounds in the early 1980s. Later painted green (rather than white) to reduce its obtrusiveness, it and the mansion house are prominent local landmarks, overlooking the Thames and the eastern part of Reading. Shortwave aerials in front of the house were removed.
In the 1980s, the formal name of the service was shortened to "BBC Monitoring".