Cowdray Park is a

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

at the centre of the Cowdray Estate in

Midhurst Midhurst () is a market town, parish and civil parish in West Sussex, England. It lies on the River Rother inland from the English Channel, and north of the county town of Chichester. The name Midhurst was first recorded in 1186 as ''Middeh ...

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...

. The park lies in the

South Downs National Park The South Downs National Park is England's newest national park, designated on 31 March 2010. The park, covering an area of in southern England, stretches for from Winchester in the west to Eastbourne in the east through the counties of Hamp ...

. The estate belongs to

Viscount Cowdray Viscount Cowdray, of Cowdray in the County of Sussex, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1917 for the industrialist Weetman Pearson, 1st Baron Cowdray, head of the Pearson conglomerate. He had already been create ...

, whose family have owned it since 1909. It has a golf course, and it offers clay pigeon shooting and corporate activity days, as well as the more traditional activities of agriculture, forestry and property lets.

History

The estate was owned by the

Bohun family The de Bohun then Bohun family is an English noble family of Norman origin that played a prominent role in English political and military history during the Late Middle Ages. The swan used by the family and their descendants as a heraldic badge ...

from approximately 1185. Sir David Owen, son of

Owen Tudor Sir Owen Tudor (, 2 February 1461) was a Welsh courtier and the second husband of Queen Catherine of Valois (1401–1437), widow of King Henry V of England. He was the grandfather of Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty. Background Owe ...

, built

Cowdray House Cowdray House consists of the ruins of one of England's great Tudor houses, architecturally comparable to many of the great palaces and country houses of that time. It is situated in the Parish of Easebourne, just east of Midhurst, West Sussex s ...

in the 16th century. His son sold the estate to William FitzWilliam, 1st Earl of Southampton in 1529. His half-brother Sir Anthony Browne inherited the estate in 1542. Browne's son Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu inherited in 1548. The 7th Viscount employed

Capability Brown Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English la ...

to landscape the park in 1770. The park and gardens are

Grade II* listed 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 ...

. On 25 September 1793, a fire destroyed Cowdray House, reducing it to its present ruined state. The ruins are Grade I listed. In 2005 the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

awarded a grant of £2.7m towards the cost of stabilising the ruins and they were opened to the public on 31 March 2007. The 7th Viscount's daughter married

William Stephen Poyntz William Stephen Poyntz (20 January 1770 – 8 April 1840) was an English Whig and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1800 and 1837. Early life Poyntz was the son of William Poyntz of Midgham (d.1809) by his ...

. On his death, the estate was purchased by

George Perceval, 6th Earl of Egmont Admiral George James Perceval, 6th Earl of Egmont (14 March 1794 – 2 August 1874), known as the Lord Arden between 1840 and 1841, was a British naval commander and Tory politician. Background Egmont was the third but eldest surviving son of C ...

. The present house was built by his son

Charles Perceval, 7th Earl of Egmont Charles George Perceval, 7th Earl of Egmont (15 June 1845 – 5 September 1897) was a British peer and Conservative Party politician of the Victorian era. On 19 September 1868, he was commissioned a cornet in the 2nd Regiment of the Royal Bucki ...

in the 1870s. It was purchased in 1909 by Weetman Pearson, later 1st Viscount Cowdray, who restored the house. His son made further alterations in 1927. During the Second World War it was occupied by the Royal Army Service Corps. After the war, architect Percy Wheeler made alterations for the 3rd Viscount. The house was refurbished by the 4th Viscount from 1995. It is Grade II listed. Numerous other aspects of the estate are listed. In May 2009 Lord Cowdray sought to turn the house into a country house hotel, but the project was abandoned when Cowdray failed to find a business partner. Cowdray moved to another family property at

Fernhurst Fernhurst is a village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, on the A286 Milford, Surrey, to Chichester road, south of Haslemere. The parish includes the settlements of Henley Common, Kingsley Green and Bell Vale ...

.Midhurst and Petworth Observer, 21 May 2009 The following year, in September 2010, the house was put on the market for £25 million, not including the rest of the estate. Michael Pearson, the fourth

, claimed that he did not want his son to inherit the burden of maintaining the house. However, as of September 2011, Lord Cowdray had not found a buyer for the house and it was withdrawn from sale. It was later converted to a hotel and venue. The collection housed within Cowdray Park was auctioned ''in situ'' by

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

over three days, between 13 and 15 September 2011. Among the objects sold were furniture, silver, paintings, tapestries and porcelain, with a portrait previously identified as

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

(but now considered more likely to be

Catherine Howard Catherine Howard ( – 13 February 1542), also spelled Katheryn Howard, was Queen of England from 1540 until 1542 as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. She was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, a cousin to Anne Boleyn (the se ...

, ''née'' Carey, Countess of Nottingham) achieving the highest auction price of £325,250. In total, the auction raised £7.9 million.

Cowdray Park Polo Club

The estate is home to the Cowdray Park

Polo Polo is a ball game played on horseback, a traditional field sport and one of the world's oldest known team sports. The game is played by two opposing teams with the objective of scoring using a long-handled wooden mallet to hit a small hard ...

Club, which describes itself as the "Home of British Polo". The club was founded in 1910. The Cowdray Gold Cup tournament was inaugurated in 1956.

Notes

External links

Cowdray EstateCowdray Park Polo ClubRemarkable trees in Cowdray Park
{{coord, 50.98724, N, 0.71619, W, , display=title Polo clubs in the United Kingdom Country houses in West Sussex Sports venues in West Sussex Clubs and societies in West Sussex