Avebury Manor
| Avebury Manor | |
|
National Trust | |
|---|---|
 Avebury Manor from the south | |
| Grid reference: | SU099699 |
| Location: | 51°25’44"N, 1°51’31"W |
| Information | |
| Website: | Avebury |
Avebury Manor is an early 16th-century manor house with a surrounding garden in Avebury in Wiltshire.
Today the house and garden are owned by the National Trust and opened in part to the public as 'Avebury Manor and Garden'.
Visitor attraction
The manor house is privately occupied, and part is open to the general public. The house was leased and restored by Alexander Keiller who took an intense interest in Avebury Stone Circle in the late 1930s.[1] The garden was completely redesigned in the early 20th century. The topiary and other formal gardens are contained within walls and clipped box, creating numerous "rooms".
In 2011, Avebury Manor became subject of the BBC One programme The Manor Reborn. During the course of the programme, Avebury was refurbished by a group of experts, in collaboration with the National Trust.
History
The earliest parts of the present house were probably built after Sir William Dunch (1508–1597) of Little Wittenham in Berkshire purchased the estate in 1551. It was some way from most of his lands which centred on Wittenham, but he appears to have purchased it because of an interest in ancient monuments such as the Avebury Stone Circles. In the 1580s, he passed it on to his younger son, Walter Dunch. The latter's daughter, Deborah, Lady Moody, grew up at the manor (before emigrating to America and founding Gravesend in Brooklyn in 1645).
The house has had many extensions and changes over the centuries, the final addition to the manor is the West Library. The library was added by the Jenner family who occupied the house in the early 20th Century.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Avebury Manor) |
- Avebury information at the National Trust
- National Heritage List 1033785: Avebury Manor
References
- ↑ Aslet, Clive: Village of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages That Made the Countryside (Bloomsbury, 2010) ISBN 978-0-7475-8872-6 p 9: "Taking a lease on Avebury Manor, he joined the ranks of the restorers who were transforming the manor houses of Southern England into the visual equivalent of romantic poetry, releasing the spirits of history that had been locked up in them by insensitive alterations"