Caversham Park

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Country house of Caversham Park to the southeast

Caversham Park is a country house with park in Caversham , a suburb of Reading in the English county of Berkshire . Caversham Park are BBC divisions concerned BBC Monitoring and BBC Radio Berkshire housed.

history

Caversham Park's history dates back at least to Norman times when Walter Giffard , a distant relative of William the Conqueror , received the property after the conquest of England in 1066. The property, then called Caversham Manor , was a fortified mansion or castle , probably closer to the Thames than the current house. The property was mentioned in the Domesday Book ; the entry is 9.7 km² and is worth £ 20. The property went to the Marshal of England William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke at the end of the 12th century . Marshall, who in the last years of his life was the de facto regent under the reign of the young King Henry III. served, died in Caversham Park in 1219.

The property later belonged to the Earls of Warwick . In 1542 it was bought by Sir Francis Knollys , the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Queen Elizabeth I. But he only moved there over 40 years later and had the house completely rebuilt a little further north. Sir Francis Knollys' son William , the Earl of Banbury , hosted and entertained Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Anne of Denmark here.

The royalist William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven, later lived here . The house was confiscated during the English Civil War and served as a prison for King Charles I. After the Civil War, the manor house was demolished because it was in poor condition.

Caversham Park printed 1790–1799 by W. and J. Walker

William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan , began rebuilding the house in 1718. As a friend of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough , he tried to plant gardens that rivaled those of Blenheim Palace . The house burned down at the end of the 18th century and was replaced by a smaller house. Major Charles Marsack had it extended in the 1780s in the style of a Greek temple, including an impressive Corinthian colonnade . Marsack was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1787 .

This house also burned down in 1850.

The garden

In 1770, in his Observations on Modern Gardening , Thomas Whately describes the approach to Lord Cadogan's Caversham Park as an example, an artful solution to its delimiting location "crammed into a narrow valley with no vistas, buildings or water". He praises the unambiguous design as an access road to a magnificent house: “The approach to Caversham, from which, although it is a mile long, one cannot even see it until shortly before reaching the house, cannot be mistaken for another route as it is. ”“ The road crosses the entire width of a beautiful valley, runs along the bottom of the valley, winds in natural, light curves and presents a new scene to the gaze in every bend (...) incessantly rising all the way ". It “finally ascends in a dense forest in the garden of the house, where it suddenly breaks out upon a rich, expansive view from which one has in full view the town and churches of Reading, as well as the hills of the forest of Windsor am Horizon."

In April 1786, Thomas Jefferson , who was to become the third president of the United States, visited Caversham Park and other places described in Whately's treatise to seek inspiration for his own gardens in Monticello and other architectural projects. Jefferson, who was an astute observer, wrote in his Notes of a Tour of English Gardens :

“Caversham. Sold by Ld. Cadogan to Majr. Marsac: 25 acres of garden, 400 acres of park, 6 acres of kitchen garden. A large lawn , separated from the rest of the garden by a sunken fence , seems to be part of it. A straight, wide gravel path runs in front of the facade and parallel to it, bordered on the right by a Doric temple, on the other side with a fine view. The straight path gives a bad impression. The lawn in front, which is a willow , is beautiful and has some groups of trees. "

Jefferson went on a tour in the company of John Adams , his close friend and predecessor in the US presidency. Adam's observations were far less detailed. But it does provide a more complete description of their route:

“Mr Jefferson and I rode a stagecoach to Woburn Farm , Caversham, Wotton , Stowe , Edgehill , Stratford-upon-Avon , Birmingham , The Leasowes , Hagley , Stourbridge , Worcester , Woodstock , Blenheim , Oxford , High Wycombe and back to Grosvenor Square (...) The seats of the nobles were our greatest entertainment. Stowe, Hagley and Blenheim are superb, Woburn, Caversham and The Leasowes are beautiful. Wotton is both great and elegant, if neglected. "

Today's building

Caversham Park from a distance (see also the BBC satellite antenna on the right)

The current building, which was inspired by Italian baroque palaces , was built by the architect Horace Jones , who much later also built London's Tower Bridge , after the fire of 1850. The then owner of the property, William Crashay II , a steel baron known as Iron King , had the house rebuilt with steel girder scaffolding, an early example of this technique. Jones placed a main block of seven bays between two colonnades that John Thistlewood Crew had created in 1840 and which apparently had survived the fire.

During the First World War , part of the building served as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. In 1923, The Oratory School bought the house and about 120 acres of the 730-acre estate. The director of the school was Edward Pereira . A chapel and three graves of boys remain from the time of the school on the property. One died in 1940, during World War II , the other two had died of an accident and illness in the 1920s.

The Caversham Park Village residential area was created in the 1960s on part of the park property.

A prominent landmark from the A2390 north to Reading, near the junction with the A4, Caversham Park is dominant on a wooded hill across the Thames. The country house has been listed by English Heritage as a Grade II Historic Building.

BBC monitoring

During the Second World War, the British Ministry of Health requisitioned Caversham Park and initially wanted to convert it into a hospital. But then the BBC bought the property with money from the government's Grant-in-Aid Fund and, in the spring of 1943, relocated its foreign media monitoring service from Wood Norton Hall near Evesham , Worcestershire . The nearby property, Crowsley Park House , was bought by the BBC at the same time for use as the department's receiving station. Caversham Park and Crowsley Park are still used for these purposes today. BBC Radio Berkshire is also located in Caversham Park.

In the 1980s, the BBC had the old interiors restored, old bricks that had been built next to the country house during the war removed, the orangery converted into a listening room and offices for the publisher, and a new, large west wing built. In another major renovation project, this west wing was redesigned in 2007-2008 to accommodate the entire staff of BBC Monitoring .

A large satellite antenna 10 meters in diameter was set up on the property in the early 1980s. The satellite dish, which was initially painted white, was later painted green to make it less noticeable. Shortwave antennas in front of the house were dismantled.

In the 1980s, the unit's formal name was shortened to BBC Monitoring .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The London Gazette , February 10, 1787. p. 69. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
  2. ^ Thomas Whately: Observations on Modern Gardening . T. Payne. Pp. 138-144. 1770. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  3. ^ Thomas Whately: Observations on Modern Gardening . T. Payne. S. 144, 1770. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  4. ^ A b Thomas Whately: Observations on Modern Gardening . T. Payne. Pp. 140, 1770. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  5. ^ Thomas Whately: Observations on Modern Gardening . T. Payne. S. 142, 1770. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  6. ^ Thomas Jefferson: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson . University of Virginia Press, Rotunda. 2008. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  7. ^ John Adams, Charles Francis Adams: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography, continued. Diary. Essays and controversial papers of the Revolution . Little, Brown ,. 1851. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  8. ^ GC Boase: Jones, Sir Horace (1819-1887) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Online edition, 2004. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  9. ^ Caversham Park (in Oxfordshire) . Royal Berkshire History. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  10. ^ Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840 . London 1978. p. 240.
  11. ^ Caversham Park . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
  12. ^ Caversham Park (bbc Records), Reading . British Listed Buildings. Retrieved April 26, 2016.

Web links

Commons : Caversham Park  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 49.8 "  N , 0 ° 57 ′ 26.6"  W.