The 20 houses in Secret Houses of the Cotswolds are as follows:
1 Asthall Manor, an early seventeenth-century manor house
where the famous Mitford sisters grew up, with a romantic garden
designed by the Bannermans in 1998 and host to a bi-annual
sculpture exhibition.
2 Broughton Castle is a medieval moated house, remodelled in
the Tudor period, with gatehouse, great hall, and medieval chapel;
it had been inherited by the Fiennes family in 1451, who live there
still. William Fiennes wrote a successful non-fiction book about
growing up at the castle with his ill brother. Shakespeare in Love
and Wolf Hall were both filmed here.
3 Burford Priory is a stately sixteenth-century house on the
edge of the picturesque town of Burford; home of the Speaker of the
Long Parliament, between 1949 and 2008 it was home to nuns and
monks, but has since then been restored as a family home by Matthew
Freud.
4 Campden House near Chipping Campden is a traditional
gabled Cotswold country house, dating back to the seventeenth
century, remodelled in the nineteenth, and then restored and
adapted by arts and crafts architect Norman Jewson, with gardens
laid out with advice from Rupert Golby.
5 Chavenage is a picturesque sixteenth-century manor house
near Tetbury with strong Civil War associations and home to the
Lowsley-Williams family since the 1890s, who run it as a
traditional estate, familiar today as ‘Trenwith’ from the recent tv
series of Poldark were filmed.
6 Cornwell Manor, a delightful mid eighteenth-century
Palladian house with terraced gardens, was restored in the late
1930s by architect Clough Williams-Ellis of Portmerion fame, and
has been home since the 1950s to the Ward family.
7 Duck End House is a miniature early seventeenth-century
manor house restored by art expert Philip Mould (presenter of
BBC1’s Fake or Fortune?) and his wife Catherine. It was previously
owned by Penelope Lively the novelist who wrote many of her novels
here.
8 Daneway House, near Sapperton, is a fourteenth century
manor house and a 1670s short tower, admired and restored by early
twenty-century arts and crafts idealists, Ernest Gimson and Sidney
Barnsley; it has been admired by artists and writers ever
since.
9 Duns Tew Manor is a lovely example of a smaller classical
early eighteenth-century Cotswolds house, recently remodelled and
extended, with a seventeenth-century dovecote and extensive new
gardens, to create a comfortable family houses for the twenty-first
century.
10 Frampton Court, a handsome and little altered 1730s
classical house, with a part-baroque, part-Palladian character, a
centre block with pavilions wings, built for the same family who
own it now, landowners in this place since the twelfth
century,
11 Hilles House, the Arts and Crafts hilltop home near
Painswick designed by the arts and crafts architect Detmar Blow for
himself, still lived in by the Blow family, and made famous by the
late Issie Blow, fashion guru.
12 Hillside Farm is a new country house on the edge of the
Oxfordshire village of Adlestrop, built for a family to designs by
Craig Hamilton, in a neo-classical style, with interiors of a
modern lightness and home to a collection of modern art
13 Notgrove Manor, a little known manor house and estate
village, with extensive gardens, owned by the Acland family, and
hidden away in a remote bowl valley
14 Owlpen Manor is the ideal small medieval and Tudor manor
house of the Cotswolds district, lovingly restored by Sir Nicholas
and Lady Mander since the 1970s, with its remarkable terraced
gardens dating to the early eighteenth century.
15 Sarsden House, a 1680s house extended and remodelled in
phases in the early nineteenth-century, by Humhrey and George
Repton; recently restored by Tony and Rita Gallagher, and
previously the home of MP Sean Woodward.
16 Stanway House, a romantic medieval and Jacobean manor
house, remodelled in the 1720s, and still in the hands of the
family who have owned it since the sixteenth century, the home of
the Earl of Wemyss, who has recently restored the
eighteenth-century water garden and single jet fountain of
300ft.
17 Sudeley Castle, once home to Queen Katherine Parr, the
surviving wife of King Henry VIII, it had become ruinous before
being restored by the Dent-Brocklehurst family in the nineteenth
century, the current chatelaine Lady Ashcombe has carried out a
major restoration. Sudeley is one of the inspirations for
Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle.
18 Upton House, near Tetbury was built in the 1730s, and is
one of the finest classical houses of the Cotswolds, where
Kenneth Clark hosted artists in the second world war; recently
restored and extended by Roger Seelig it epitomises an English
ideal.
19 Wardington Manor a handsome gabled, originally early
seventeenth-century manor house near Banbury restored after a major
fire in 2004 and now owned by the Elworthy family, and the base of
Bridget Elworthy’s ‘Land Gardeners’.
20 Wormington Grange, near Broadway, was begun in the 1770s,
with a new neo-classical entrance front added in the 1820s, to form
a stately country house, now home of furniture expert John Evetts ,
who has formed a collection of pictures for the house.
Jeremy Musson is an architectural historian, writer and broadcaster who worked for Country Life for twelve years, first as Architectural Writer and then as Architectural Editor. He has a particular enthusiasm for the late-seventeenth-century and early-eighteenth-century English county houses and has visited all the surviving works of Vanbrugh. He is the author of The Country Houses of Sir John Vanbrugh, The English Manor House: from the Archives of Country Life and How to Read a House. Born in London in 1965, he now lives with his family in Cambridge.
'Some real gems, including a seventeenth-century manor house and a
remodelled medieval moated house. The owners of each take their
role as guardians seriously.'
*House & Garden*
‘Unless you’re lucky enough to be on dinner party terms with the
owners, there are many historic treasures you’re unlikely to ever
peer behind the doors of, but thanks to this beautiful book all
that has changed. Sumptuous full-colour images lovingly laid out
across spreads to great effect, showing everything from seeping
lawns to personal, quirky details. Just gorgeous.’
*Cotswold Life*
'Fascinating (mostly privately owned) castles, estates, palaces and
manor houses in this much-loved area that have shaped the English
identity.'
*Country Life*
'Any lover of the Costwolds would find this book a very attractive
and informative addition to their library.'
*Historic House*
‘A fabulous choice for lovers of traditional architecture, grand
house interiors and all-round nosey parkers.’
*Reclaim Magazine*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |