Ashton Court

Ashton Court
General information
Town or city	Bristol
Country	England
Construction started	1633
Client	Smyth family

Ashton Court

Shown within Bristol (above) and England.

Ashton Court (grid reference ST553723) is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. Although the estate lies mainly in North Somerset, it is owned by the City of Bristol. The estate is the venue for a variety of leisure activities, including the now-defunct Ashton Court festival, Bristol International Kite Festival and the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. It is home to charity The Forest of Avon Trust. Bristol's weekly parkrun event (a free, timed 5 km run organised by volunteers) is held at Ashton Court every Saturday morning at 9am.

Early History

Ashton Court dates back to before the 11th Century. It is believed that a fortified manor stood on the site which was owned by Geoffrey de Montbray, Bishop of Coutances after it was given to him by William the Conqueror. In the Domesday Book it is referred to as a wealthy estate owned by the Bishop of Countances with a manor house with a great Hall and Courtyards entered through gatehouses. The property passed through successive owners and at the end of the fourteenth Century it was considerably improved when Thomas De Lions obtained a permit to enclose a Park for his manor. The house was owned by the Choke family for some time and after that in 1506 it was sold to Sir Giles Daubney who was a knight and a Chamberlain of Henry VII. Henry VIII gave the estate to Sir Thomas Arundel in 1541and four years later in 1545 Sir Thomas sold it to John Smyth. The Smyth family owned the property for the next 400 years.

Thomas and Florence Smyth

Thomas Smyth (1609-1642) was the first member of the family to make major alterations and additions to the original manor house. He was a Member of Parliament and a successful lawyer. In 1627 at the age of only eighteen he married Florence daughter of John Poulett, 1st Baronet Poulett of Hinton St George. A painting of the couple is shown on the right.

In 1635 Thomas added a new southern front which was in the style of Inigo Jones. It was described by Collinson in 1791 in the following terms.

“The front is in length one hundred and forty three feet and consists below of three rooms; the western one of which is a fine apartment ninety-three feet long and twenty feet wide and contains several family and other portraits. The back part of the house is very ancient and the court leading to the park westward is called Castle Court from its having been embattled and still retaining an old gateway similar to those adopted in baronial mansions. The second court contains some of the offices and its entrance from without is under a low doorway between two lofty turrets one of which contains a bell and clock. The stables and corresponding offices in the front court are of ancient date. The whole contributes to a very venerable and picturesque building.

The description above was accompanied by an engraving of the house which is shown on the left.

Further major additions were made to the building by Sir John Hugh Smyth (1734-1802). He inherited the estate in 1783 and added the new library to the north west of the house. Sir John also asked the famous landscape designer Humphry Repton for advice about the east front of the house. Repton drafted a plan but Sir John’s death halted any further work on the house. However Repton’s landscape designs were implements by Sir John’s successor Sir Hugh Smyth. In his book Repton gave a detailed description of the old and newer parts of the house before the library additions and included a drawing of the eastern front of the house as he saw it in about 1790.

Sir John Smyth

Sir John Smyth (1776-1849) was said to be responsible for the remodeling of the house by Esme Smyth, the last resident of Ashton Court. In about 1940 she had an interview with Raymond Gorges who was researching a book and gave him an engraving of the house which shows the additions that she said were made by Sir John. The engraving is shown on the left.

Sir John was a bachelor. He was said by Lady Emily Smyth to be devoted to horses and kept an extensive stud. His importance as a major builder of Ashton Court is verified by John Evans who in 1828 wrote a book about Bristol and its surrounding area. He said:

“This seat of Sir John Smyth is a stately edifice … It has of late been much enlarged with stables nearly as extensive as the house and also a park enclosed by a wall which is twelve feet high in the lowest part. Two handsome lodges have also been added, one of them built from a gothic design.”

Sir John died in 1849 and little building work was done until Sir Greville Smyth inherited the property.

Sir Greville and Lady Emily Smyth

Sir Greville Smyth made major alterations and additions to house. He inherited the property in 1852 and remained a bachelor until he was 48 years old. During that time he undertook extensive renovations. He also kept a very impressive garden which was described in detail in gardening magazines and newspapers.

In 1872 he commissioned the well- known architect Benjamin Ferrey to make additions which were described as follows.

“The Western Wing has been rearranged but the principal parts of the works have been concentrated in the central portion of the buildings. This part has been raised considerably and in a great measure rebuilt and is surmounted by two octagonal towers which rise to a height of 72ft. There is a covered passage running the south side of the courtyard which opens out into the court by the arcading of five bays."

Even more extensive alterations were made between 1884 and 1885. Shortly before he married Emily, the widow of George Oldham Edwards, he employed the notable Bath architect Major Charles Edward Davis to transform the house. The work took 18 to complete. A detailed description of the alterations was given in the Bristol Mercury. in 1885. He converted the stables in the south east wing to living areas which included a huge museum for his natural history collection. He built a grand hall with richly carved oak panels. In the west wing he built a massive carved oak staircase with twist bannisters and introduced perpendicular windows. He also built a winter garden by enclosing the clock court. This is now the Winter Garden Bar. The following description of this elaborate room with a waterfall fountain is given in this newspaper article as follows.

“This leads through two arched entrances to one of the most charming winter gardens of which any private mansion in the western counties can boast. It has been formed out of what was formerly the open clock tower court which has been supplied with a glazed iron roof. Round the tessellated flooring have been formed the gracefully curved flower borders edged with glazed tiling surmounted with rockery. This rock work covered with moss and filled in with water plants luxuriant grasses and ferns margins an ornamental sheet of water of serpentine form from the surface of which jets of water are thrown into a huge basin shell – one of the largest of the kind we have seen. It is ingeniously constructed to form a waterfall the streams descending to a second basin shell just above the sheet of water. Around this are some the choicest ferns and palms. From the roof hang clusters of incandescent laps, interspersed with baskets filled with gracefully drooping ferns and from the surface of the water lilies modestly rise."

In 1891 Lady Emily Smyth held an interview where she outlined further details of these alterations made by Sir Greville. She also gave a few details of some interesting secret rooms and passages in the medieval part of the building on the western side which she referred to as “Drax’s Kennel” and “The Fox’s Hole". Sir Greville Smyth died in 1901 and Lady Emily Smyth died in 1914.

The next and last residents of the house were Gilbert and Esme Smyth. They lived there for the next thirty years. Gilbert died in a 1940 and Esme in 1946 and the house was left to their daughter Esme Francis Cavendish. She and her husband tried to sell the house immediately in 1946 to help pay the death duties.

Recent History

During World War I, the estate was used as a military hospital, and in World War II was requisitioned by the War Office and used in turn as a Transit Camp, RAF HQ and US Army Command HQ.

The estate was the venue for the 1936 Royal Show. One of the exhibition buildings, despite its temporary nature, was an innovative piece of modernist architecture still remembered as the Gane Pavilion. It was designed by Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer as a show house for the Bristol furniture manufacturer Crofton Gane.

In 1946, the last resident of Ashton Court Dame Esme Smyth, died. After the house became derelict, it was taken over by the City in 1959. Restoration has been an ongoing process since then, but even after extensive investment by both the council and from Heritage Lottery Fund grants, presently only about a quarter of the building is occupied or usable. The available facilities of the house are rented out for business conferences, parties and weddings.

The mansion house and stables have been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building. The house is listed on the Heritage at Risk register and described as being in "slow decay".

The lower lodge to Ashton Court and attached gates, railings and bollards, which were built in 1805 by Henry Wood, are Grade II* listed buildings. The garden and perimeter walls and railings are also listed.

The estate

The estate covers 850 acres (340 ha) of woods and open grassland laid out by Humphrey Repton. It includes two pitch-and-putt golf courses, a disc golf course, an orienteering course and horse riding and mountain bike trails. There is a deer park which was started in the 14th century and extended in the 16th and 17th centuries. The park contains a great variety of wildlife; much of the site (an area of 210.31 hectares) was notified in 1998 as a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the presence of rare woodland beetles.

Ashton Court Meadow

Aerial view of Ashton Court Estate

Ashton Court Meadow (2.37 hectares) is managed as a nature reserve by the Avon Wildlife Trust. It contains a wide range of flowering plants, including wild carrot, yellow-wort and field scabious. Some unusual parasitic plants are also found here, such as common broomrape which feeds off clovers, and yellow rattle, which feeds partly off grass.

Clarken Combe

Clarken Combe, at the western edge of the estate, is a woodland area with a range of plant species, including narrow-lipped helleborine, which grows here in small numbers under beech.

Domesday Oak

In 2002 a 700-year-old oak tree, called the Domesday Oak, was selected by The Tree Council as one of 50 Great British Trees. In 2011 a crack appeared in the trunk and oak support beams were fitted to support the tree. The supports were only partly successful and a section of the tree collapsed, and the remaining part of the tree was pruned to reduce the weight of the surviving section.

See also

• List of Grade I listed buildings in North Somerset

External links

• Photos and information on Ashton Court estate