Canons Ashby House
| Canons Ashby House | |
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National Trust | |
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 Front of Canons Ashby House | |
| Location: | 52°9’4"N, 1°9’29"W |
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Canons Ashby House is a Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house in Northamptonshire, located in the village of Canons Ashby, about eleven miles south of the town of Daventry in that county. It has been owned by the National Trust since 1981 when the house was close to collapse and the gardens had turned into a meadow.[1] "The Tower" of the building is in the care of the Landmark Trust and available for holiday lets.
History
The house had been the home of the Dryden family since its construction in the 16th century, of whom came the poet John Dryden; the manor house was built in approximately 1550 with additions in the 1590s, in the 1630s and 1710. John Dryden had married Elizabeth Cope in 1551 and inherited, through his wife, an L-shaped farmhouse which he gradually extended. In the 1590s his son, Sir Erasmus Dryden completed the final north range of the house which enclosed the Pebble Courtyard.
The interior of the house is noted for its Elizabethan wall paintings and its Jacobean plasterwork. It has remained essentially unchanged since 1710 and is presented as it was during the time of Sir Henry Dryden, a Victorian antiquary with an interest in history.
The house sits in the midst of a formal garden with colourful herbaceous borders, an orchard featuring varieties of fruit trees from the 16th century, terraces, walls and gate piers from 1710. There is also the remains of a mediæval priory church (from which the house gets its name).
Louis Osman (1914–1996), an architect and accomplished British goldsmith lived at Canons Ashby from 1969/70 to 1979. Whilst there, Osman made the coronet which was used at the investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales in 1969. They also made the gold enameled casket that held the Magna Carta which was on view in the United States Capitol, Washington, DC in 1976 for the United States Bicentennial.[2]
Gervase Jackson-Stops, who was the Architectural Adviser to the National Trust for over twenty years, broke fresh ground when he fought for the rescue of the then decaying manor-house in the 1980s. This was the first time that the Trust used government funds rather than the traditional family endowment to save an historic house.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Canons Ashby House) |
- Canons Ashby House - information at the National Trust
References
- ↑ National Trust publication Near You for the East Midlands, summer 2013, accessed 23 May 2013
- ↑ Washington Post: Original Magna Carta and replica get a cleaning 20 August 2010, accessed 23 May 2013