Crowcombe Court
Crowcombe Court is a mansion in Somerset , United Kingdom . The property, a Grade I protected cultural monument, is located in the Quantock Hills northeast of the village of Crowcombe, approximately 12 km northwest of Taunton .
history
In the place of the manor house there was a manor house since the late 13th century at the latest. This property , named after the owner family Crowcombe Biccombe , was acquired in 1568 by Thomas Carew († 1604) as the husband of the heiress Elizabeth Biccombe , one of the daughters of Hugh Biccombe . Carew's great-grandson John Carew († 1686) had a formal baroque garden laid out around the manor house from 1676 . His great-grandson Thomas Carew inherited the property in 1719. He had the old mansion demolished in 1724 and began building a new mansion about 250 meters away, parts of the stones being reused. The design for the new house came from Thomas Parker from Gittisham in Devon , the house was completed in 1739 by Nathaniel Ireson . The cost of building the stately property is estimated at around £ 6000. In the second half of the 18th century, James Bernard († 1805), the heir and son-in-law of Thomas Carew, had the baroque garden transformed into an English landscape garden. After the death of James Bernard, George Warrington inherited the property, whereupon he took the name Carew . Around 1870, minor alterations were made by the architect Edward M. Barry . The property remained in the family's possession, partly in female succession, until the main building was partially destroyed by fire in 1963. After several changes of ownership, the neglected property was restored at the beginning of the 21st century. Today the house is privately inhabited again, the representative rooms can be visited on request and serve as a venue for celebrations and conferences. The mansion has been protected as a Grade I monument since May 22, 1969, and the surrounding garden and park has been a Grade II cultural monument since June 1, 1984.
description
Exterior
The rectangular, symmetrical mansion is built in the style of the rural English Baroque from bricks with sandstone facings. The main house consists of a basement floor made of quarry stone, two full floors and an attic floor . The flat lead roof is hidden by a balustrade . On the courtyard and garden side, the house has a central projectile with a simple triangular gable and four pilasters ; a stone staircase leads to the main floor on the courtyard side. There is a two-storey extension on the southwest side. The east facade is kept simpler, on the west side the elongated, two-storey former stables form another courtyard. Its simpler buildings are covered with slate hip roofs, the southern wing has a copper ridge turret with a weather vane .
Interior
During the restoration since the beginning of the 21st century, some of the state rooms have been restored, including the entrance hall with ceiling and wall stucco in the Rococo style . The ballroom, rebuilt by Edward Barry in the early Victorian style around 1870, has a colored stucco ceiling and a magnificent marble fireplace, probably from Stowe House . Other restored rooms include the stairwell with additional stucco decor and a wooden staircase, as well as the dining room with the Carews coat of arms painted on the ceiling. The basement has a brick vault.
Garden and park
Crowcombe Court gardens are separated from the village by a wall to the south and hedges to the southeast. From the parish church, through a pillar-framed driveway, an approximately 200 m long driveway led from the south towards the center of the manor house. The house is surrounded by a five-hectare garden, with a pond and a walled garden south of the stables and a Folly in the Gothic Revival style include and a stone bridge in the northeast. The landscaped garden with extensive meadows borders the village of Crowcombe to the south and west and merges into approximately 95 hectares of woodland to the north and east, which is separated from the surrounding agricultural land by hedges and ditches in the east, north and west. The garden and the surrounding forest slope partly steeply from northeast to southwest to the house, from the higher area there are several viewpoints of the surrounding landscape up to the coast of North Somerset. The gardens fell into disrepair since the 1960s, and the paths and facilities have only been restored since the 21st century.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Historic England: Crowcombe Court. Retrieved June 6, 2017 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 7 '30 " N , 3 ° 13' 49.8" W.