Toddington Manor under restoration (geograph 5272680)

Toddington Manor is a 19th-century

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 ...

in the English county of Gloucestershire, near the village of

Toddington Toddington could be *Toddington, Bedfordshire **Toddington services, M1 motorway *Toddington, Gloucestershire **Toddington railway station Toddington railway station serves the village of Toddington in Gloucestershire, England. Since 1984 it h ...

. It is in the

gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style and was designed by

Charles Hanbury-Tracy, 1st Baron Sudeley Charles Hanbury-Tracy, 1st Baron Sudeley (28 December 1778 – 10 February 1858), known as Charles Hanbury until 1798 and as Charles Hanbury Tracy from 1798 to 1838, was a British Whig politician. Early life Hanbury-Tracy was born on 28 Decemb ...

for himself and built between 1819 and 1840. Upon completion, a volume on its architecture was published by John Britton (antiquary). It is a Grade I listed building. Hanbury-Tracy was a gentleman-architect who was influenced by the work of John Carter of the Society of Antiquaries. As one of the earliest

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

houses, the building shaped the course of British architectural history in an indirect way: when the Houses of Parliament were to be rebuilt after the fire in 1834, Hanbury-Tracy headed the jury to the competition, and the architect of the winning design, Charles Barry, obviously adapted his entry to the taste exemplified in Toddington. The family owned the house until 1893 when

Charles Hanbury-Tracy, 4th Baron Sudeley Charles Douglas Richard Hanbury-Tracy, 4th Baron Sudeley PC FRS (3 July 1840 – 9 December 1922), styled The Honourable Charles Hanbury-Tracy from 1858 to 1877, was a British Liberal politician. He served as Captain of the Honourable Corps o ...

, and his writer wife Ada had to sell due to bankruptcy. +++Toddington Manor, by Kip (detail)

The last private owner, Isabel Andrews, whose husband had bought the estate in 1901, died in 1935 and it stood empty until September 1939, when it was purchased by the National Union of Teachers, who had moved out of London to avoid

air raid Air raid may refer to: Attacks * Airstrike * Strategic bombing Other uses * ''Air Raid'' (album), by the improvisational collective Air * Air Raid ''(Transformers)'', the name of three characters in the Transformers universes * ''Air Raid'' ...

s. The NUT staff both lived and worked in the building. Following

Dunkirk Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.British Army. In 1942 the Pioneer Corps built a more permanent hutted encampment, which was occupied by units of the United States Army from October 1942. In August 1943 the NUT moved back to London and the US Army took over the house as well. After the war the Congregation of Christian Brothers rented the property and in 1948 the NUT sold it to them. In the late 1970s, it was converted into an international boarding school, Toddington Manor College. In 2004, following the school's closure, planning permission to convert it into a hotel was denied after the scheme had attracted considerable local opposition. In 2005 it was purchased by the artist Damien Hirst who planned to restore it and use it as a family home and a gallery, both his own works and for his collection of works by other artists. Since 2006, Toddington Manor has been encased in what Hirst claims is the world's biggest span of scaffolding. As at 2022, the manor remains encased in scaffolding and sheeting, restoration work having stalled for over 17 years. The manor is listed on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.

References

External links

Toddington Manor entry from The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses

British Listed Buildings
(Source: English Heritage) {{coord, 51.997938, -1.948062, display=title, type:landmark_region:GB, name=Toddington Manor Country houses in Gloucestershire Gothic Revival architecture in Gloucestershire Houses completed in 1840 Grade I listed houses in Gloucestershire Structures on the Heritage at Risk register

References

Further reading

External links