| Hestercombe House | |
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Hestercombe House and gardens |
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Location within Somerset
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| General information | |
| Town or city | Taunton |
| Country | England |
| Coordinates | |
| Completed | 16th century |
| Design and construction | |
| Client | Richard Warre |
Hestercombe House is a historic country house in the parish of West Monkton in the Quantock Hills, near Taunton in Somerset, England. Its restoration to Gertrude Jekyll's original plans (1904–07) have made it "one of the best Jekyll-Lutyens gardens open to the public on a regular basis",[1] visited by approximately 70,000 people per year. The estate is Grade I listed on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.[2]
The site also includes a 0.08 hectare (8,600 sq ft) 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 by Somerset County Council since 1951. It is used as an administrative centre for Somerset County Council and is also the Emergency Call Centre for the Somerset Area of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service.
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The house is a Grade II* [3] listed country house which was originally built in the 16th century for the Warre family. Richard Warre (d. 1601) bequeathed it to his son Roger who married Elinor, daughter of Sir John Popham.[4]
The house was enlarged and altered in the 18th century, but this work is no longer visible beneath the refronting and enlargement works carried out around 1875 for Edward Portman, 1st Viscount Portman, who had acquired it in 1873. The house remained in the Portman family until 1944 when it was accepted in lieu of death duties by the Crown Estate, however Mrs Portman remained at the house until her death in 1951.[5]
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 the Heritage Lottery Fund.[6]
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, and the Rear HQ 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.[7]
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.[8]
Hestercombe was the American 801 Hospital Centre after D-Day until the end of the war.[8][9]
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.
When the house and gardens were inherited by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde (1720–91) in the 18th century, a Georgian landscape garden was laid out, containing ponds, a grand cascade, a gothick alcove, a Tuscan temple arbour (1786),[10] a mausoleum, and a rustic "witch house". Bampfylde, an amateur architect of talent, designed a Doric temple for the grounds, 1786.[10] A Victorian formal parterre was added near the house by Henry Hall in the 1870s. A new 1.5 hectare [11]
The Edwardian garden was laid out by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens between 1904 and 1906 for the Hon E.W.B. Portman,[12][13] resulting in a garden "remarkable for the bold, concise pattern of its layout, and for the minute attention to detail everywhere to be seen in the variety and imaginative handling of contrasting materials, whether cobble, tile, flint, or thinly coursed local stone".[14] The "Great Plat" combined the patterned features of a parterre with the hardy herbaceous planting espoused by Miss Jekyll.[13][15] Lutyens also designed the orangery about 50 m east of the main house [16] between 1904–09, which is now Grade I listed,[17] as are the garden walls, paving and steps on the south front of the house.[18]
Since October 2003, the landscape and gardens, extending to over 100 acres (0.40 km2), have been managed by the Hestercombe Gardens Trust, a charity set up to restore and preserve the 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 (160,000 m2), 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.
| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
| Area of Search | Somerset |
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| Grid reference | ST242287 |
| Interest | Biological |
| Area | 0.08 hectare (8,600 sq ft) |
| 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.[19] It has been designated as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).[20]
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