Bagshot Park
Bagshot Park eleven miles south of Windsor, is a royal residence at Bagshot, Surrey, is the current home of the Earl (Prince Edward) and Countess (Sophie) of Wessex. (Grid reference: SU 9164) Bagshot Park is on Bagshot Heath, a fifty square-mile tract of formerly open land in Surrey and Berkshire. It is only a few miles from Sunninghill Park, the former residence of the Duke of York.
Prince Edward renovated Bagshot Park as a residence for himself and as a base for his film production company, Ardent Productions, until he closed the business. The estate is farmed.
History
The original Bagshot Lodge[1] was built 1631-33[2] as one of a series of small lodges designed for King Charles I by Inigo Jones. It was remodelled to designs of James Paine for the 3rd Earl of Albemarle, 1766-72,[3] and altered in 1798 by Sir John Soane[4] for William Duke of Clarence (later King William IV), who lived there till 1816.
Bagshot Park was subsequently used by Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester, nephew of King George III. The duke added pieces of property between the estate and Sunningdale; his widow, Princess Mary, daughter of King George III, continued to live there after his death until she moved out in 1847.[5] The original house was demolished in 1877-78[6]
A new building was completed in 1879: it has 120 rooms. The 1881 census records an equerry and 26 servants living in the main house: an under butler, a housekeeper, 4 valets, 2 lady's maids, 2 dressers, a cook, 3 kitchen maids, 3 housemaids, 3 footmen, a page, a porter, a scullery maid, two other junior posts and a soldier. A coachman and 7 grooms lived in the stables. Two other domestic staff lived in one of the lodges, 3 agricultural workers lived in another, and one gardener is recorded as living on the estate.[7] This was the principal residence of the Duke of Connaught, son of Queen Victoria, from 1880. The duke had a long and successful military career, rising to become Inspector-General of the Forces. He was subsequently Governor-General of Canada 1911-1916. The Duke of Connaught died at Bagshot Park in 1942.
The house was thereafter the regimental Headquarters and depot of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department, who famously placed a notice by the pond reading "Do not walk on the water". They in turn vacated the building shortly before the Earl of Wessex took over the tenancy from the Crown.
Although the house was criticised by the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner for being ugly[8], Bagshot Park was the most adventurous royal house to be created since the death of the Prince Consort in 1861, and is a remarkable monument in the history of Indian taste in Britain. An Indian billiard room wing, which inspired the more famous Durbar Room at Osborne House, was prefabricated in India and installed in the 1880s, the result of the Duke of Connaught's Indian tour, when the Duke met Lockwood Kipling and asked him to design a billiard room in Indian taste. The craftsmen who assembled and installed the room at Bagshot were housed in a tent in the grounds.[9].
Notes
- ^ Not the present Lodge of Bagshot Park, visible on the public road at the entrance to the drive.
- ^ History of the King's works iv.
- ^ Colvin 1995, "James Paine">
- ^ Dorothy Stroud, Sir John Soane, Architect, 1984.
- ^ Flora Fraser, Princesses: the six daughters of George III 57
- ^ Colvin 1995: "James Paine", "Sir John Soane".
- ^ Bagshot Park.
- ^ N. Pevsner, Surrey in series Buildings of England
- ^ Judith Flanders, A Circle of Sisters.
References
- Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 3rd ed. (Yale University Press) 1995