Cirencester Park is a country house in the parish of

Cirencester Cirencester (, ; see below for more variations) is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, and is the seat of the Bathurst family, Earls Bathurst. It is a Grade II* listed building. The gardens are Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

History

Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst, (16 November 168416 September 1775), of Bathurst in the County of Sussex, known as The Lord Bathurst from 1712 to 1772, was a British Tory politician. Bathurst sat in the English and British House of Commons f ...

(1684–1775), inherited the estate on the death of his father, Sir Benjamin Bathurst, in 1704. He was a

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

and statesman who made his wealth from his involvement in the slave trade through the Royal Africa Company and the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

. From 1714 Benjamin Bathurst devoted himself to rebuilding the house formerly known as Oakley Grove, which probably stands on the site of Cirencester Castle, and laying out the parkland of what would become Oakley Park. In 1716, Bathurst acquired the extensive estate of Sapperton from the Atkyns family, including Oakley Wood, and went on to plant one of the finest

landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...

s in England, complete with park buildings, walks, seats, grottoes and ruins. They include Alfred's Hall, now taken to be the earliest recorded

Gothick 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 ...

garden building in England, which is also a grade II* listed building. Allen Bathurst was raised to the peerage as a baron in 1711 and an

earl Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word ''eorl'', meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form '' jarl'', and meant "chieftain", particula ...

in 1772, and was a patron of art and literature no less than a statesman. The poet

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...

was a frequent visitor to Cirencester House; he advised on the lay-out of the gardens and designed the building known as Pope's Seat in the park, which commands a splendid view of woods and avenues.

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...

was another appreciative visitor. The house contains portraits by Lawrence,

Gainsborough Gainsborough or Gainsboro may refer to: Places * Gainsborough, Ipswich, Suffolk, England ** Gainsborough Ward, Ipswich * Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a town in England ** Gainsborough (UK Parliament constituency) * Gainsborough, New South Wales, ...

, Romney, Lely, Reynolds, Hoppner, Kneller and many others, and a set of giant marble columns carrying busts, which are genuine antiques, collected in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

by Lord Apsley, the son of the third earl, at the time of the

Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna (, ) of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon B ...

in 1814. There were additions to the house by Sir Robert Smirke about 1830. Subsequent earls were patrons of the Arts and Crafts movement, when

Ernest Gimson Ernest William Gimson (; 21 December 1864 – 12 August 1919) was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". Today his reputati ...

and the Barnsley brothers, Sidney and Ernest, settled at Pinbury Park on the Cirencester estate in 1894.

Norman Jewson Norman Jewson (12 February 1884 – 28 August 1975) was an English architect-craftsman of the Arts and Crafts movement, who practised in the Cotswolds. He was a distinguished, younger member of the group which had settled in Sapperton, Glouce ...

joined them in 1907, and describes his life as a student of Gimson in Sapperton in his classic memoir, ''By Chance I did Rove'' (1952). The estate includes much of the villages of Sapperton and Coates, including Pinbury Park, and lays claim to containing the principal source of the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

Apsley House Apsley House is the London townhouse of the Dukes of Wellington. It stands alone at Hyde Park Corner, on the south-east corner of Hyde Park, facing south towards the busy traffic roundabout in the centre of which stands the Wellington Arch. I ...

, at Hyde Park in London, was built by the architect

Robert Adam Robert Adam (3 July 17283 March 1792) was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his ...

for

Lord Chancellor The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. Th ...

Henry Bathurst, then known as Lord Apsley, and later the second Earl Bathurst. In 1807, the house was purchased by Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, who in 1817 sold it to his brother,

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish people, Anglo-Irish soldier and Tories (British political party), Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of Uni ...

who presented his portrait, today still in Cirencester House). The house has the tallest yew hedge in Britain. The semi-circular hedge, which is wide and long, is believed to have been planted in about 1710. The tonne of clippings produced by its annual trimming are sold to pharmaceutical companies who use extracts as a key ingredient of

Docetaxel Docetaxel (DTX or DXL), sold under the brand name Taxotere among others, is a chemotherapy medication used to treat a number of types of cancer. This includes breast cancer, head and neck cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer and non-small-cell ...

, a chemotherapy drug used to treat breast, ovarian and lung cancer.

Listed buildings and structures

Aside from the Grade I listed gardens and Grade II* listed main house, several other buildings and structures are listed on the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

Grade II*

* Alfred's Hall *Hexagon *Ice House *Pope's Seat *Queen Anne's Monument

Grade II

*Horse Temple *Ivy Lodge and attached farm buildings and wall *Four stone piers *Round Tower and attached wall *Shelter Shed *Square Tower *Stable range and attached mounting block *The two Horse Guard pavilions

References

{{Reflist * Nicholas Mander, ''Country Houses of the Cotswolds'' (Aurum Press, 2008)

External links