River Coln southwest of Ablington Manor (geograph 3162838)

Ablington Manor is a Grade I listed country house in Potlicker's Lane, Ablington within the parish of

Bibury Bibury is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is on the River Coln, a Thames tributary that rises in the same (Cotswold) District. The village centre is northeast of Cirencester. Arlington Row is a nationally notable a ...

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 ...

, England. The estate was owned by the Howse family, until John Coxwell purchased it in 1574. Coxwell built the house in 1590, and alterations and additions were added in around 1780. The house is a Grade I

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 I ...

History

The Manor at Ablington was originally the property of

Gloucester Abbey Gloucester Abbey was a Benedictine abbey in the city of Gloucester, England. Since 1541 it has been Gloucester Cathedral. History Early period A Christian place of worship had stood on the abbey site since Anglo-Saxon times. Around 681, with ...

. After the dissolution of the monasteries, it was leased to the Howse family before being bought in 1574 by John Coxwell. He was a

self-made man "Self-made man" is a classic phrase coined on February 2, 1842 by Henry Clay in the United States Senate, to describe individuals whose success lay within the individuals themselves, not with outside conditions. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Foun ...

who had made his money in the wool trade. He raised his family's social status from middle class to being members of the gentry, and by the time he died, aged about one hundred, he owned he owned part of the Manor of Siddington and all of the Manor of Ablington. The manor house was built in about 1590, and his descendants lived there until at least 1829, when Charles Coxwell was the incumbent. After the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I (" Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of r ...

, the wool trade improved and a number of elegant large barns were built. The barn at Ablington Manor was one of these, and has a date stone "1727 JC", denoting the fact that the lord of the manor at the time was John Coxwell.

The house

The house is built of rubble limestone with roughcast render and a stone slate roof. It is a two-storey building with attic and cellar. The house of 1590 had a three-room plan but later additions in the seventeenth century and around 1780 enlarged this, and internal remodelling was done in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The gardens

Ablington House is set in extensive grounds. The pleasure gardens are described as "consisting of terraced lawns with parterres and a sundial, shaded by specimen trees. The gardens ran down to the River Coln which flowed under a picturesque bridge on the estate and had a summerhouse on its bank. There were also croquet, archery and tennis lawns. It became a Grade I listed building on 23 January 1952.

References

External links

Photograph of the manor from Dicamillo Companion
{{Authority control Country houses in Gloucestershire Houses completed in 1590 Grade I listed houses in Gloucestershire Tudor architecture