Northwick Park is a residential estate and business centre near

Blockley Blockley is a village, civil parish and ecclesiastical parish in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England, about northwest of Moreton-in-Marsh. Until 1931 Blockley was an exclave of Worcestershire. The civil and ecclesiastical paris ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

, England. The estate is built in the grounds of the former family seat of the Rushout family, the

Barons Northwick Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knig ...

. The Northwick Park mansion, now divided into residential accommodation, is a Grade 1

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

In medieval times Northwick was a collection of smallholder's cottages surrounding a mansion owned by the Childe family. In 1683 it was bought by Sir

James Rushout Sir James Rushout, 1st Baronet (22 March 1644 – 16 February 1698), of Northwick Park, Worcestershire, was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1670 and 1698. Rushout was the fifth but only surviving son o ...

, Bt, the son of a rich Flemish merchant, who carried out extensive remodelling in 1686. The 4th Baronet continued the work, commissioning the architect Lord Burlington to design a Palladian east front and entrance hall in the 1730s. The 5th Baronet, later Baron Northwick, employed architect John Woolfe to carry out further improvements c.1828 and

William Emes William Emes (1729 or 1730–13 March 1803) was an English landscape gardener. Biography Details of his early life are not known but in 1756 he was appointed head gardener to Sir Nathaniel Curzon at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire. He left this post ...

to landscape the parkland. It then passed down in the family to the 3rd Baron Northwick, whose widow in 1912 left the estate to her grandson, Captain George Spencer-Churchill, who moved into the mansion. Because the area was under the authority of the

Bishops of Worcester A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

, it was actually a small enclave of the county of

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

surrounded by

- and is shown that way on all maps prior to 1931, when such enclaves were rationalised. The estate includes the site of the former hamlet of Northwick. During the Second World War, Northwick Park was an American field hospital. It became a camp for Polish displaced persons until the 1960s.

Northwick Park collection

The second Baron was an avid collector of works of art, antiques and coins. Much of his collection was housed at Thirlestaine House in Cheltenham and in 1848 he published a catalogue of his holdings there. Although he died intestate and therefore his collection was sold after his death, many items were repurchased by the 3rd Baron. This collection passed to the Spencer-Churchill family. After the death of Captain EG Spencer-Churchill, the collection was sold by Christie's in 1965. Items from this collection can be found in the National Gallery, London and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. The provenance of items from the collection can be investigated using published catalogues of the 1859 sale, the 1864 sale and the 1965 sale. There is also an inventory of the collection produced in 1921 by

Tancred Borenius Carl Tancred Borenius (14 July 1885, Vyborg – 2 September 1948, Coombe Bisset) was a Finnish art historian working in England, who became the first professor of the history of art at University College London. He was a prolific author, and recog ...

References

External links

Extract from National Gazetteer, 1868
{{coord, 52, 1, 41, N, 1, 45, 20, W, scale:100000, display=title Hamlets in Gloucestershire Grade I listed houses in Gloucestershire Cotswold District