Crowsley Park House

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Crowsley Park House

Crowsley Park House is a country house in the village Crowsley , about 3 km north of Reading in southern England county of Oxfordshire with a 64-hectare park. Since 1943 the property has been owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which operates signal receiving stations there and in nearby Caversham Park .

The country house from the beginning of the 18th century is located on a demarcated plot of land within the property and is still in private hands today. English Heritage has listed it as a Grade II Historic Building.

architecture

The two-story house with 10 bays is built of red bricks and has a simple tiled roof. The central building with 8 bays is flanked by two towers with crenellated parapets . In the middle there is a vestibule with a double-leaf entrance door. Over the middle three bays is a flat stepped gable in which a coat of arms is embedded.

The Baskerville Legacy

The Baskerville family was among the previous owners of Crowsley Park . One of the family members, Henry Baskerville , was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1847 . Stories about the family and their association with wild dogs inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of Baskerville , published in 1901/1902. It plays Sir Henry Baskerville an important role.

The connection to the Baskervilles is preserved in the statues of the "hellhounds" with spears through their mouths, which sit on the stone pillars of the entrance gates to the park and above the front facade of the country house.

A pub in the nearby village of Lower Shiplake is called The Baskerville Arms .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Shiplake, Oxfordshire Shiplake, Oxfordshire . Directory of Oxfordshire, 1852. HigherBound.net. Retrieved May 4, 2016.
  2. ^ A b Crowsley Park House, Binfield Heath . British Listed Buildings. Retrieved May 4, 2016.
  3. ^ Brian Erwin: Baskerville Family History . Peter Baskerville Rance. Retrieved May 4, 2016.
  4. ^ Dennis Faulkner: My Life and Times as a BBC Engineer 1942-1945 . Part 4 November 21, 2005.

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 46.9 ″  N , 0 ° 57 ′ 8 ″  W.