Biddlesden Park is a country house at
Biddlesden
Biddlesden is a village and civil parish in Aylesbury Vale district in north-west Buckinghamshire, England on the boundary with Northamptonshire. It is about east-north-east of Brackley, Northamptonshire and north-west of Buckingham. The Ri ...
in north-west
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...
. It is a Grade II*
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
.
History
The house, which lies on the site of an old Cistercian abbey, was built by John Sayer, in the
Georgian style
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarchs of the House of Hano ...
in 1727.
The staircase dates from the same period. The house then passed to
Ralph Verney, 2nd Earl Verney
Ralph Verney, 2nd Earl Verney PC, FRS (1 February 1714 – 31 March 1791), was a member of the Verney family of Middle Claydon and a British politician.
From 1737 until 1752, when he succeeded to the earldom, he was styled Lord Fermanagh. ...
before it was acquired, on Verney's death in 1791, by George Morgan, who was
High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire
The High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, in common with other counties, was originally the King's representative on taxation upholding the law in Anglo-Saxons, Saxon times. The word Sheriff evolved from 'shire-reeve'.
High Sheriff, Sheriff is the olde ...
. The house remained in the ownership of the Morgan and then the Morgan-Grenville family for most of the 19th century. It was bought by Lieutenant Colonel Reginald Badger in around 1932 and then remained in the Badger family for many years before passing to Mrs. Elizabeth Maud Gordon. It was then comprehensively renovated in the 1980s.
[
The church of St Margaret of Scotland is situated in the grounds of Biddlesden Park.]
References
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Country houses in Buckinghamshire