Compton Place is a mansion house in the parish of

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the la ...

, East Sussex, England. It was rebuilt from 1726 by Sir Spencer Compton (later 1st

Earl of Wilmington Earl of Wilmington was a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1730 for the politician Spencer Compton, 1st Baron Wilmington, who later served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1742 to 1743, during the reign of George ...

), to the design of the architect Colen Campbell, and was completed after Campbell's death by

William Kent William Kent (c. 1685 – 12 April 1748) was an English architect, landscape architect, painter and furniture designer of the early 18th century. He began his career as a painter, and became Principal Painter in Ordinary or court painter, bu ...

History

The predecessor Elizabethan/Jacobean mansion house on the site was called East Borne or Borne Place and was the seat of Sir William Wilson, 1st Baronet (c. 1608–1685). The tenant from 1714 was Spencer Compton, Treasurer to George, Prince of Wales. In 1724 Compton liked the place well enough to purchase the house and estate outright and to rename it Compton Place; the Prince of Wales was Colen Campbell's chief patron, and it was natural for Spencer Compton to turn to him for its design. The E-shaped plan, of which the central range had been doubled in depth in the seventeenth century, was retained. Campbell presented a plan for the south elevation, which was modified in the execution, but he was principally involved in remaking the interiors, where his presence is commemorated in the stucco portrait bust of him in the soffit of the bay window at the south end of the Gallery, which is the sole surviving contemporary image of the Scottish architect; the plasterwork is associated with the "three Germans" alluded to in the correspondence from Lord Wilmington's gardener William Stuart, one of whom is thought to have been the Anglo-Danish stuccator Charles Stanley. The London plasterer John Hughes supervised the plasterwork. Carving in the house was by the London carver John Richards. Opening out of the south end of the Gallery are state bedroom with alcoves. Engravings of the alcove and the compartmented ceiling of the East Bedroom (later called the "Duchess's Bedroom") appear in Campbell's ''Five Orders''. The Duke's Bedroom", "one of the most opulent examples in England", has a stucco relief following

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, nea ...

's '' Venus and Adonis''; there are smaller stucco relief panels of ''Paris with Helen'' and ''Diana with Endymion''. Sir Spencer was created

in 1728. At his death in 1743, Compton Place passed to his nephew the 5th Earl of Northampton. It then passed by marriage in 1759 to

George Cavendish, 1st Earl of Burlington George Cavendish, 1st Earl of Burlington (31 March 1754 – 9 May 1834), styled Lord George Cavendish before 1831, was a British nobleman and politician. He built Burlington Arcade. Background Cavendish was the third son of William Cavendish, ...

. He renovated the building in 1806. when the brick and

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

exterior was faced with stucco and composition and a Doric peristyle added to the bay window. The estate passed down to his grandson 7th Duke of Devonshire, who from 1859 laid out the new town of

on the south half of the estate. More recently the park north and east of the house has been laid out in

golf course A golf course is the grounds on which the sport of golf is played. It consists of a series of holes, each consisting of a tee box, a fairway, the rough and other hazards, and a green with a cylindrical hole in the ground, known as a "cup". ...

s of the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, (founded in 1887), whose first president was William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, and the dukes continue to be presidents; the two golf links are named for the Duke of Devonshire and his eldest son, the Marquess of Hartington.Royal Eastbourne Golf Club
/ref> In 1954, as part of the 11th Duke's retrenchment following the 80% death duties levied on his father's estate, the house was let to a language school, and its successor remains in residence as of 2009.

Notes

{{Reflist, 2 Country houses in East Sussex Grade I listed buildings in East Sussex Grade I listed houses Buildings by Colen Campbell Buildings and structures in Eastbourne

History

See also

Notes