Dodington Park

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Dodington Park
Gloucestershire

Bath Lodge: entrance to Dodington Park
Location
Grid reference: ST75257986
Location: 51°31’2"N, 2°21’29"W
Village: Dodington
History
Built 1798 and 1816
For: Christopher Bethell Codrington
by James Wyatt
Country house
Palladian
Information
Owned by: James Dyson

Dodington Park is a country house and estate in Dodington, in Gloucestershire.

The house was built by James Wyatt for Christopher Bethell Codrington (of the family of the Codrington baronets). The family had made their fortune from sugar plantations in the Caribbean and were significant owners of slaves. It remained in the Codrington family until 1980; it is now owned by the inventor and businessman James Dyson.

The estate comprises some 300 acres of landscaped park with woods, lakes, lodges, a dower house, an orangery, a church, and a walled kitchen garden. Formal gardens adjoin the main house.

The house is a Grade I listed building[1] and the landscaped park is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens]].[2]

Location

Dodington Park is in the parish of Sodbury in Gloucestershire. The village of Dodington adjoins the western entrance of the estate, which is set on the western edge of the southern Cotswolds.

The eastern boundary of the estate is the A46 road, which connects Bath (in Somerset) to Stroud, with the northern boundaries bordered by the A432 road from Chippenham to Sodbury. A lane connecting Dodington village to the A46 forms the southern boundary of the estate.[2]

History

The Codrington family acquired the Dodington estate in the late 16th century, when the great house was a large gabled Elizabethan house and adjoining church. In the 18th century the family became extremely wealthy from their sugar plantations in the British West Indies, and expanded and developed the estate.[3]

The grounds of 593 acres were laid out around 1764 by Capability Brown and were modified in 1793 by William Emes and John Webb.[1]

The main house was built by James Wyatt between 1798 and 1816 for Christopher Bethell Codrington. It is built in the Roman classical style from Bath stone and has a slate roof. Each facade is different, the south front having seven bays separated by Corinthian pilasters. From the north west corner of the house, a curving conservatory acts as a covered approach to the church, which was also rebuilt by Wyatt.

A formal garden was added in 1930.[1][4] The interior of the house features decorative plasterwork by Francis Bernasconi.[5]

The house was listed as being 52,000 sq ft in size at the time of its 2003 sale.

Betteshanger School moved to Dodington Park for the duration of the Second World War.[6]

Dodington Park was opened to the public in the 1950s due to the increasing financial pressures on the Codrington family of maintaining the estate. The Times listed the house as open from 1 May to 30 September in the summer of 1955 with entry costing 2s 6d.[7] The house received financial grants for maintenance from the Ministry of Works in 1955.[8]

An adventure playground for children, a carriage museum and a narrow-gauge railway had been built on the site to attract visitors by the 1970s. The local council denied planning permission to build a pleasure park in 1982, with the decision costing the immediate loss of 20 staff. In the wake of the decision Sir Simon Codrington said that "Every generation of Codringtons since the sixteenth century has fought tooth and nail to keep the estate" with Sr Simon and his wife being reduced to occupying only a single bedroom and kitchen in the house with an electric fire for heating.[9]

The estate was put up for sale in October 1983 by estate agents John D. Wood and had sold by the following February at undisclosed price, with offers over £1 million having been sought previously.[10][11] The Codrington archives which documented three generations of the family and their relationship with agriculture and slavery in the West Indies for two centuries were sold in the late 1970s.[12]

In 1981, Dodington Park was the subject of the final episode of the BBC 2 series Arthur Negus Enjoys in which Arthur Negus and architectural historian John Martin Robinson visited the house.[13]

After Codringon

Dodington Park was sold in 1993 to an unnamed property developer.[14]

It was subsequently bought in 2003 by the inventor and businessman James Dyson for a price believed to be £20 million.[15] The estate was believed to be 300 acres at the time of the 2003 sale. Dyson constructed an underground swimming pool underneath the orangery without planning permission in 2011. The existence of the pool was subsequently revealed to planning officers in 2015 after a tip off, and Dyson was forced to retrospectively apply for planning permission, which was granted in October 2016.[16]

Points of interest within the estate

Dodington's parish church, St Mary, stands within the estate, adjacent to the house.

A curved orangery with a black and white stone floor adjoins the west of the house, to which it is directly accessed by glass doors. The Pevsner Architectural Guides, described the placing of the curved orangery in relation to St Mary's church as a "perfect example of Regency picturesque".[17]

Thehouse is Grade I listed. Other Grade I listed buildings within the estate are:

  • St Mary's Church[18]
  • Orangery[19]
  • Dower house[20]
  • Bath Lodge, at the southern part of the estate.[21]
  • Stables[22]

The wall, railings and gate piers near the Bath Lodge are listed Grade II.[23] Chippenham Lodge and its terrace walls and the northern gateway to Dodington Park are listed Grade II*.[24] The gates and walls surrounding the kitchen garden toward the north of the park are listed Grade II, as is the Garden Cottage.[25][26]

By the lake in the gardens stands a Fishing Lodge, listed Grade II, to the north-west of the house.[27] The bridges to the south and the north of the lodge are both Grade II listed, as are the wall and piers to the west of the Fishing Lodge.[28][29][30]

The walls on the bridge and tunnel entries to the north west of the house are listed Grade II.[31]

The lodge to the north-west of the house is listed Grade II, as are its gate piers and their gates.[32][33]

The Summer House to the south of the Dower House is listed Grade II.[34] The Cascade Building at the eastern end of the lake is listed Grade II*.[35] The ornamental pigeon loft to the east of the cascade building is listed Grade II.[36]

In the formal gardens to the east of the house, a pair of pedestals and urns are listed Grade II, as are an urn and pedestal to the west of the house.[37][38] The garden ornaments on the south of the house are listed Grade II as is the balustrade to the west.[39][40]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 National Heritage List 1211169: Dodington House
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 National Heritage List 1000566: Dodington Park
  3. ↑ Parker, Mathew: 'The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War (Hutchinson, 2011) ISBN 978-0-09-192583-3; page 362
  4. ↑ 'Lord Muck': David Smith in The Observer, 27 February 2005
  5. ↑ Beard, Geoffrey; Orton, Jeff Orton; Ireland, Richard: 'Decorative Plasterwork in Great Britain' (Routledge) ISBN 978-1-317-74288-3; page 206
  6. ↑ "Personal". The Times (48507): p. 1. 8 January 1940. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS17380904&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  7. ↑ "Summer openings of English country houses". The Times (5320OB): p. 4. 28 March 1955. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS67720316&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  8. ↑ "Memory of Keane and Kemble". The Times (53132): p. 10. 6 January 1955. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS171660326&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  9. ↑ Seton, Craig (2 November 1982). "Historic house jobs lost". The Times (60978): p. 25. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS35359586&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  10. ↑ Warman, Christopher (23 October 1983). "Property Buyers Guide". The Times (61673): p. 29. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS486772058&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  11. ↑ Warman, Christopher (15 February 1984). "Property Buyers Guide". The Times (61758): p. 29. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS486772303&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  12. ↑ Michael Wood (2001). In Search of England: Journeys Into the English Past. University of California Press. pp. 292–293. ISBN 978-0-520-23218-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=qAva0pzKe9oC&pg=PA292. 
  13. ↑ "Choice". The Times (60978): p. 25. 13 July 1981. http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=wes_ttda&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS419662061&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0. Retrieved 26 February 2018. 
  14. ↑ Anne Spackman (13 November 1993). "Property: The manor is reborn: Wealthy buyers are rediscovering the advantages, financial and social, of owning an estate, says Anne Spackman". The Independent. https://web.archive.org/web/20190507150418/https://www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/property-the-manor-is-reborn-wealthy-buyers-are-rediscovering-the-advantages-financial-and-social-of-1504063.html. Retrieved 9 October 2017. 
  15. ↑ Nicholas Hellen and Josh Boswell (28 December 2014). "Dyson bags a bigger estate than the Queen". The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dyson-bags-a-bigger-estate-than-the-queen-ttg6js3zrfl. Retrieved 9 October 2017. 
  16. ↑ Simon de Bruxelles (26 October 2016). "Dyson in hot water over marble pool". The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dyson-in-hot-water-over-marble-pool-ds52kkprs. Retrieved 9 October 2017. 
  17. ↑ Nikolaus Pevsner: Pevsner Architectural Guides
  18. ↑ National Heritage List 1211173: Church of St Mary
  19. ↑ National Heritage List 1211172: Orangery attached to North West of Dodington House
  20. ↑ National Heritage List 1290138: Dower House
  21. ↑ National Heritage List 1214012: Bath Lodge
  22. ↑ National Heritage List 1290139: Stables
  23. ↑ National Heritage List 1288729: Wall, railings and gate piers west of Bath Lodge
  24. ↑ National Heritage List 1135785: North gateway to Dodington Park, sites, quadrant walls and Chippenham Lodge and terrace walls
  25. ↑ National Heritage List 1211469: Walls surrounding former kitchen garden and gates at North end of Dodington Park
  26. ↑ National Heritage List 1290031: Garden Cottage
  27. ↑ National Heritage List 1290029: Fishing Lodge on North bank of lake
  28. ↑ National Heritage List 1211461: Bridge, flanking wall and piers South East of fishing lodge
  29. ↑ National Heritage List 1290030: Bridge, flanking wall and piers North East of fishing lodge
  30. ↑ National Heritage List 1211431: Wall and piers West of fishing lodge
  31. ↑ National Heritage List 1211177: Walls on bridge and tunnel entries North West of Dodingon House
  32. ↑ National Heritage List 1211176: Lodge North West of Dodington House
  33. ↑ National Heritage List 1211334: Gate piers and gates attached to East of Lodge North West of Dodington House
  34. ↑ National Heritage List 1211350: Summer House about 30 meters South of the Dower House
  35. ↑ National Heritage List 1211179: The Cascade Building East of Dodington House and railings
  36. ↑ National Heritage List 1211429: Ornamental pigeon loft East of Cascade Building
  37. ↑ National Heritage List 1290132: Pair of pedestals and urns about 10 meters East of Dodington House
  38. ↑ National Heritage List 1290135: Urn and pedestal West of Dodington House
  39. ↑ National Heritage List 1211171: Balustrade West of Dodington House
  40. ↑ National Heritage List 1211170: Garden ornaments on terrace south of Dodington House
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