Northington Grange is a mansion near New Alresford, Hampshire, England. It is owned by Lord Ashburton's family and is under the guardianship of English Heritage. The exterior of the building is open to the public and the village of Northington is nearby. Grange Park Opera stage a festival at The Grange during June and July each year.
Visitors have included George IV, Lord Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle.
Set in a landscaped park with an ornamental lake, it was originally built in 1670 by architect William Samwell for Sir Robert Henley, to replace the existing modest house known as The Grange. William Samwell's design was a four storey red brick residence. In 1804, the current owner, Henry Drummond, commissioned William Wilkins to remodel the house in a Greek revival style, which involved rendering the house in Roman cement, and building a podium which turned the original ground floor rooms into basement rooms. William Wilkins also built a portico of Greek Doric columns, six in width and two deep, based on a temple in Athens known as the Theseion, and adapted another monument, the Choragic Monument of Thrasyllus, for the side elevation.[1]
Henry Drummond sold Northington Grange in 1817 to the Baring family, before the works were completed. In 1820, a single storey west wing was built by Robert Smirke, and in 1823 Charles Robert Cockerell built an Orangery in the form of another Greek revival temple. The Orangery made advanced use of iron and glass with rainwater collected from the roof channelled through internal columns into a reservoir to supply the Orangery itself.[2] Frederick Pepys Cockerell added a second storey to Smirke's west wing in 1852 and these works were followed in 1868 by further extensions and modernisation of the interiors by John Cox.
In 1890 the Orangery was converted into a picture gallery and ballroom, and The Grange and 600 acres of the park were sold in 1934 to Charles Wallach, whose fortune had been made from the medicinal uses of paraffin.
In 1964 The Grange was bought by John Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton, who placed it into the guardianship of English Heritage in 1975.
In 1998, Grange Park Opera staged their first summer festival at The Grange. In 2002 a new theatre was built inside the old Orangery by Studio E Architects, which won the RIBA Award 2004, RIBA Conservation Commendation 2004, Georgian Group Award for Best New Building in a Georgian Context 2004 and was shortlisted for the Crown Estate Conservation Award 2004.[3]