Stanage Park

Stanage Park House

The Dining-room at Stanage, c.1900's

Stanage Park is a Grade II*-listed country house set in a large park located some three miles east of Knighton, Radnorshire near the settlement of Heartsease. The extensive parkland and the house were laid out by Humphry Repton and his son, John Adey Repton, in the early nineteenth century. Repton's picturesque parkland improvements, castellated house and enclosed garden survive almost intact. The estate is the last and most complete of his three recognised Welsh landscape commissions.

History

The house was built 1803–07 by the Reptons for Charles Rogers in a picturesque castle style that was explicitly modelled on Richard Payne Knight's Downton Castle. John Repton designed an addition to the rear of the house in 1822. John Hiram Haycock added bay windows and remodelled some of the public rooms in a Tudorbethan style in 1833. Hayock later added a Gothic dining-room extension, Romanesque-style porch and the castellated stable courtyard beginning in 1845. The billiard-room, south wing and baronial tower were added about 1867 by his son, Edward Haycock, Sr. The plans for the Repton's work are recorded in a 'Red Book', still kept at the house.

Description

The house is approached through the terraced lawns on the east front and the building has landscaped woodlands with a pond to the west. North and south of the building are wooded hillsides. The eastern terraces are enclosed by a low castellated wall to ha-has and there is a 1900 summer-house at the southeastern corner of the walls. The walls are periodically interrupted with rectangular exedras with classical urns atop piers.

Associations

• The house and gardens featured in the TV drama series Blott on the Landscape.
• The area is also associated with the burial of the fifth century warlord Vortigern.

Outside links

• Location map: 52°20’22"N, 2°58’50"W
• Early Victorian map
• Parks and Gardens - Stanage Park database entry