Dodington Park, South Gloucestershire, Bath Lodge - geograph

Dodington Park is a

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 ...

and estate in Dodington,

South Gloucestershire South Gloucestershire is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, South West England. Towns in the area include Yate, Chipping Sodbury, Thornbury, Filton, Patchway and Bradley Stoke, the latter three forming part ...

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 ...

. The house was built by

James Wyatt James Wyatt (3 August 1746 – 4 September 1813) was an English architect, a rival of Robert Adam in the neoclassical and neo-Gothic styles. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1785 and was its president from 1805 to 1806. Early life W ...

for

Christopher Bethell Codrington Christopher Bethell-Codrington (until 1797 known as Christopher Codrington; October 1764 – 4 February 1843) was a British politician, planter and amateur cricket player who served as a MP in the British Parliament. In 1792, he inherited from ...

(of the

Codrington baronets There have been two baronetcies created for members of the Codrington family, one in the Baronetage of Great Britain and one in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. The family was for a long time connected with Dodington Park. The Codrington b ...

). The family had made their fortune from

sugar plantations in the Caribbean Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean, Caribbean islands were covered with Sugarcane, sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main ...

and were significant owners of slaves. It remained in the Codrington family until 1980; it is now owned by the British businessman

James Dyson Sir James Dyson (born 2 May 1947) is a British inventor, industrial designer, farmer, and billionaire entrepreneur who founded Dyson Ltd. He is best known as the inventor of the dual cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner, which works on the princip ...

. The estate comprises some 300 acres of landscaped park with woods, lakes, lodges, a dower house, an orangery, a church, and a walled kitchen garden. Formal gardens adjoin the main house. The house is

Grade I listed 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 ...

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, an ...

and the landscaped park is Grade II* listed on the

Register of Historic Parks and Gardens The Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England provides a listing and classification system for historic parks and gardens similar to that used for listed buildings. The register is managed by Historic England ...

. The

dower house A dower house is usually a moderately large house available for use by the widow of the previous owner of an English, Scottish or Welsh estate. The widow, often known as the "dowager", usually moves into the dower house from the larger family h ...

orangery An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very large ...

, and St Mary's Church which all adjoin the house are also each individually Grade I listed, as is the Bath lodge at the southern part of the estate. The wall, railings and gate piers near the Bath lodge are listed Grade II. Chippenham Lodge and its terrace walls and the northern gateway to Dodington Park are listed Grade II*. The gates and walls surrounding the kitchen garden toward the north of the park are listed Grade II, as is the Garden Cottage.

Location

Dodington Park is in the parish of Dodington in

South West England South West England, or the South West of England, is one of nine official regions of England. It consists of the counties of Bristol, Cornwall (including the Isles of Scilly), Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Cities and ...

. The village of Dodington adjoins the western entrance of the estate, which is set on the western edge of the southern

Cotswolds The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

. The eastern boundary of the estate is the

A46 road The A46 is a major A road in England. It starts east of Bath, Somerset and ends in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, but it does not form a continuous route. Large portions of the old road have been lost, bypassed, or replaced by motorway developmen ...

, which connects Bath to

Stroud Stroud is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District. The town's population was 13,500 in 2021. Below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, at the meeting point of the Five ...

, with the northern boundaries bordered by the

A432 road A43 or A-43 may refer to: Military * Curtiss A-43 Blackhawk, an American prototype aircraft * Douglas A-43 Jetmaster, an American prototype aircraft * Black Prince (tank), an experimental British heavy tank * Advanced Landing Ground A-43, an airf ...

from

Chippenham Chippenham is a market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village ...

to Sodbury. A lane connecting Dodington village to the A46 forms the southern boundary of the estate.

History

Dodington House, Gloucestershire 1984 (geograph 5284347)

The

Codrington family Codrington may refer to: Places * Codrington, Barbuda ** Barbuda Codrington Airport ** Codrington Lagoon * Codrington, Gloucestershire, England * Codrington, Ontario, Canada * Codrington, Victoria, Australia ** Codrington Wind Farm, Victoria ...

acquired the Dodington estate in the late 16th century, when it was home to a large gabled Elizabethan house and adjoining church. In the 18th century the family became extremely wealthy from their sugar plantations in the British West Indies (see

History of the British West Indies The term British West Indies refers to the former English and British colonies and the present-day overseas territories of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean. In the history of the British West Indies there have been several attempts at poli ...

) and expanded and developed the estate. The grounds of 240 ha were laid out around 1764 by

Capability Brown Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English la ...

and were modified in 1793 by

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 ...

and John Webb. The main house was built by

between 1798 and 1816 for

. It is built in the Roman classical style from Bath stone and has a slate roof. Each facade is different, the south front having seven bays separated by Corinthian pilasters. From the north-west corner of the house, a curving conservatory acts as a covered approach to the church, which was also rebuilt by Wyatt. A formal garden was added in 1930. The interior of the house features decorative plasterwork by

Francis Bernasconi Francis Bernasconi (1762 – 1 January 1841), aka Francisco Bernasconi, was an English ornamental carver and plasterer of Italian descent. He became one of the most successful ornamental carvers and plasterers in Georgian Britain. Early life Fr ...

. The house was listed as being in size at the time of its 2003 sale. A curved

with a black and white stone floor adjoins the west of the house, to which it is directly accessed by glass doors. The 1999 ''Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds'' edition of the

Pevsner Architectural Guides The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...

, described the placing of the curved orangery in relation to St Mary's church as a "perfect example of Regency picturesque". The church of St Mary adjoining the house is listed Grade I. The Fishing Lodge, listed Grade II, is to the north west of the house. The bridges to the south and the north of the lodge are both Grade II listed, as are the wall and piers to the west of the Fishing Lodge. The walls on the bridge and tunnel entries to the north west of the house are listed Grade II. The lodge to the north west of the house is listed Grade II, as are its gate piers and their gates. The stables are listed Grade I, and a barn to the north of the stables is listed Grade II. The walls, piers, and bridge to the west of St Mary's churchyard entrance are listed Grade II, as are the walls and railings and gates attached to the West of the church. The Summer House to the south of the Dower House is listed Grade II. The Cascade Building at the eastern end of the lake is listed Grade II*. The ornamental pigeon loft to the east of the cascade building is listed Grade II. In the formal gardens to the east of the house, a pair of pedestals and urns are listed Grade II, as are an urn and pedestal to the west of the house. The garden ornaments on the south of the house are listed Grade II as is the

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its con ...

to the west. Betteshanger School moved to Dodington Park for the duration of the Second World War. Dodington Park was opened to the public in the 1950s due to the increasing financial pressures on the Codrington family of maintaining the estate. ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' listed the house as open from 1 May to 30 September in the summer of 1955 with entry costing 2 s and 6 d. The house received financial grants for maintenance from the Ministry of Works in 1955. An adventure playground for children, a carriage museum and a

narrow-gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard-gauge railway, standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum r ...

had been built on the site to attract visitors by the 1970s. The local council denied planning permission to build a pleasure park in 1982, with the decision costing the immediate loss of 20 staff. In the wake of the decision, Sir Simon Codrington said that "Every generation of Codringtons since the sixteenth century has fought tooth and nail to keep the estate" with Sr Simon and his wife being reduced to occupying only a single bedroom and kitchen in the house with an electric fire for heating. The estate was put up for sale in October 1983 by estate agents John D. Wood and had sold by the following February at undisclosed price, with offers over £1 million having been sought previously. The Codrington archives which documented three generations of the family and their relationship with agriculture and slavery in the West Indies for two centuries were sold in the late 1970s. Dodington Park was the subject of the final episode of the 1981

BBC 2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

series ''Arthur Negus Enjoys'' in which

Arthur Negus Arthur George Negus, OBE (1903–1985) was a British television personality and antiques expert, specialising in furniture. Biography Negus was born in Reading, Berkshire, to Amy Julia Worsley and father Arthur George Negus Sr, a cabinet mak ...

and architectural historian

John Martin Robinson John Martin Robinson FSA (born 1948) is a British architectural historian and officer of arms. He was born in Preston, Lancashire, and educated at Fort Augustus Abbey, a Benedictine school in Scotland, the University of St Andrews (graduating ...

visited the house.

Post Codrington

Dodington Park was sold in 1993 to an unnamed property developer. It was subsequently bought in 2003 by the British inventor and businessman

for a price believed to be £20 million. The estate was believed to be 300 acres at the time of the 2003 sale. Dyson constructed an underground

swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...

underneath the orangery without planning permission in 2011. The existence of the pool was subsequently revealed to

planning officers in 2015 after a tip off, and Dyson was forced to retrospectively apply for planning permission, which was granted in October 2016.

Location

History

Post Codrington

References

Further reading