Mount Edgcumbe

Mount Edgcumbe
Mount Edgcumbe House
Creation time :	1547-1553
Geographical location	50 ° 21 '16 "  N , 4 ° 10' 35"  W Coordinates: 50 ° 21 '16 "  N , 4 ° 10' 35"  W.

Mount Edgcumbe is the name of a manor house with a surrounding landscaped park in Cornwall in Great Britain . Classified as a cultural monument on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest Grade II since 1966 , Mount Edgcumbe House is located in southeast Cornwall near Maker-with-Rame on the Rame Peninsula and is famous for its Grade I landscaped park, which today serves as a country park .

history

Piers Edgcumbe acquired the family's lands, including the southeastern part of the Rame Peninsula, through his marriage to Joan Dynham , the widowed heir of the Durnford family, in 1493 . In 1515 he received permission from Henry VIII to create a 125-hectare deer park there. Around 1545, the king had the Blockhouse , a small coastal fortification built not far from Deer Park , to defend Plymouth Sound . Piers Edgcumbe's son, Richard , had the manor built as the new family seat between 1547 and 1553. For the first time in the case of an English manor house, the choice of the building site was not so much the defense options as the location and the view. The client had to go into debt for the spacious construction. The house was considered so magnificent that the commander of the Armada , the Duke of Medina Sidonia , wanted to use it as his residence after the conquest of England. During the English Civil War , the then owner Piers Edgcumbe was a partisan of the king, which is why the manor house was attacked by parliamentary troops and badly damaged. Piers Edgcumbe had fortified Maker's church and finally surrendered to Fairfax in 1644 . The manor house was expanded in the 18th and especially in the 19th century by the landlords who were elevated to Earls of Mount Edgcumbe in 1789 . The formal gardens, laid out towards the end of the 17th century, were converted into a large landscaped park, mainly under the 1st Earl and 2nd Earl of Mount Edgcumbe , for which the property was famous as early as the 18th century. In the 19th century some small areas on the banks of the Plymouth Sound had to be sold, which were needed for the construction of Fort Picklecombe , Polhawn Fort and other coastal fortifications of the new fort belt around Plymouth .

The Blockhouse , a 16th century coastal fortification

In an attack by the German Air Force on Plymouth on April 22, 1941, the mansion was also hit by fire bombs and burned out. Numerous portraits and some of the furnishings were destroyed by the fire, but some paintings and furniture were saved from the house. In preparation for the invasion of Normandy , American troops camped in the park in 1944, and the 110th Field Artillery of the 29th Infantry Division set out from Barn Pool for France in 1944 .

Reconstruction of the mansion began in 1958 according to plans by Adrian Gilbert Scott , the exterior was restored by 1964. The 7th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe sold the house and park to Cornwall and the City of Plymouth in 1971. Since then, the park has been open to the public all year round as a country park and is jointly managed by Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council. The Edgcumbe family lived in the house until 1987, and since 1988 the manor house and the adjacent Earls Garden can be visited from April to September. The Friends of Mount Edgcumbe as a development association support the park administration, offer guided tours through the park and collect donations.

investment

When it was rebuilt after its destruction in World War II, the exterior of the manor house was restored in the Tudor style of the 16th century, the additions and changes from the 18th and 19th centuries were not rebuilt. The house has four two-storey wings made of red sandstone that enclose an inner courtyard. The square complex has four three-story, octagonal corner towers. The outer walls and towers are crenellated, the roofs sloping flat.

The farm buildings and stables from the late 18th century are located about 100 m southwest of the manor house.

The summer house in the English garden

Interior decoration

During the reconstruction, the prewar state was not restored, but the 6th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe had the house built as a residence for his family with concrete ceilings, bright rooms and the comfort of that time. The rooms, including the two-story great hall, the drawing room and the library, are furnished with furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries and contain Chinese and English porcelain from the 18th century, as well as an extensive collection of paintings with portraits by Joshua Reynolds , Godfrey Kneller and Peter Lely as well as paintings by Gaspard Poussin , Gerard van Edema and Willem van de Velde , which were saved from the burning house or from the other family seat, Cotehele House . Among the most important treasures are three large tapestries with hunting scenes hanging in the dining room, which were probably made for the manor house in Flanders in the mid-16th century.

Garden and park

After a deer park with a herd of fallow deer had been created as early as 1515 , the landscape park was created in the 18th century. For this purpose, serpentine paths along the cliffs, visual axes in the forests and numerous buildings were created. The park was already famous in the 18th century for its layout and structures and for its views over the coast, which were often used as a painting motif.

In 1976 the International Camellia Society donated 70 species of camellia to the park to be planted in the gardens. The following year the collection was expanded to include 100 species from David Trehane's Garden near Truro , which were planted in the amphitheater. Due to the mild climate, the plants thrive well. Since then, the collection has grown steadily and now includes around 1000 species, which is considered the National Camellia Collection .

The Italian garden

The gardens

The Earl's Garden was built the mansion in the 18th century east. It contains old and rare trees such as a 400-year-old linden, a Turkey oak and a Pinus pseudostrobus , which stand next to a garden shed and an exotic shell seat. The Victorian East Terrace offers a wide view of Plymouth Sound.

In the lower park near Cremyll , formal gardens were laid out in 1750 instead of a “wilderness garden” from the late 17th century. The complex, which is now over 3 hectares in size, now contains several gardens in different styles:

• a French garden with cut yew hedges, boxwood parterren and geometrically laid out flower beds,
• The English garden, built around a summer house built in 1729, with lawns, flower beds and groups of trees, including exotic trees such as old cork oaks , magnolias , ginkgo trees and a bluebell tree ,
• an Italian garden with a fountain, statues and a double flight of stairs. The orangery , built around 1760, was also destroyed by the bombing in 1941, and the old orange trees were also destroyed. After the reconstruction it is now used as a restaurant,
• Since members of the Edgcumbe family also live in America and New Zealand, the gardens were supplemented in 1989 by a garden with American trees and plants as well as a New Zealand garden with corresponding plants and an artificial geyser ,
• The Jubilee Garden was laid out in 2002 in honor of Queen Elizabeth II 's 50th anniversary to the throne .

Country Park

The 350 hectare park is located on a headland west of Plymouth Sound and south of Hamoaze . To the east and south the park is bounded by Plymouth Sound and Cawsand Bay, while to the north and northwest the road leading to Cremyll forms the boundary. The coastal strip belonging to the park extends west to the headland of Rame Head and Whitsand Bay , in the north the strip borders on agricultural land. The hilly terrain slopes steeply to the sea in the south and east, while it slopes more gently in the north to Cremyll, the total coastline of the park is over 11 km long.

Folly with a view of Plymouth

Much of the park consists of the manor's historic landscaped park, which is considered the oldest landscaped park in Cornwall. Earl's Drive , a driveway laid out in 1788, runs through the park from the mansion along the coast to Maker Church , the Edgcumbes family church. In 1823 the trail was extended to Penlee Point . There are numerous structures, pavilions and facilities in the park, including:

• the avenue , a triple avenue of linden and oak that was first laid out in the late 17th century and replanted in the 20th century and leads from Cremyll to the north facade of the manor house,
• Thomson's Seat , about 130 m southeast of the Italian garden , a pavilion built around 1760 in the style of a Greek temple with Doric columns in memory of the poet James Thomson ,
• the Garden Battery , a battery originally laid out in 1747 for a gun salute with 21 captured French cannons. The battery was converted into part of the fort belt around Plymouth in 1862/63 and equipped with 7 9-inch guns. The outdated guns were dismantled towards the end of the 19th century and replaced by four, from 1911 two 12-pounder rapid-fire cannons . The old salute cannons were set up again above the coastal fortification as Earl's battery ,
• the amphitheater , a series of ponds in a small valley that overlooks Plymouth Sound. The slopes are planted with camellias, to the east is Milton's Temple , built in 1755 , a rotunda with Ionic columns , which is provided with inscriptions from Milton's Paradise Lost ,
• the Blockhouse , a small coastal fortification that was built under Henry VIII around 1545 as a coastal fortification. The small fortress consists of a two-storey square tower with loopholes,
• a Bronze Age burial mound in Barrow Park west of the manor dates back to the 12th century BC. And was redesigned in the 18th century to a Prospect Mound , a conically shaped viewing hill and eye-catcher,
• The Folly , an artificial ruin at Raveness Point about 650 m southeast of the mansion , which was built in 1747 from stones from the medieval chapels St. George and St. Lawrence from Stonehouse in place of an obelisk,
• the Queen Adelaide's Grotto at Penlee Point is an artificial cave dating from the 18th century. After a visit by the Queen in 1827, it was expanded into a folly in the style of a Gothic chapel,
• Above the grotto is the Penlee Point Battery , a former coastal gun battery from the 19th century that was dismantled and filled in in the 1970s. The site is now a nature reserve of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust ,
• the 93 m high headland of Rame Head is crowned by a small chapel from the 14th century.

The herd of fallow deer living in Deer Park is descended from the animals in the deer park mentioned in 1515.

Other parts of the park are still very natural. A 14 km section of the South West Coast Path runs through the park from Cremyll to Whitsand Bay .

Trivia

The house and park were often visited by the royal family and other distinguished guests. Among others were Karl II. And his brother Jakob II. , Georg III. and his wife Sophie Charlotte , Wilhelm IV. and his wife Adelaide , Victoria and her husband Albert , Napoleon III. , Edward VII and his wife Alexandra as guests in Mount Edgcumbe. The last visit of a king was in 1933, when George V and his wife Mary together with their son, who later became George VI. and his daughter Elisabeth visited Mount Edgcumbe.

The house and garden were used several times as filming locations for Rosamunde Pilcher films, including Eine special Liebe (1996), Coast of Dreams (2001), Paradise of Dreams (2002), Wherever You Go (2009), Sunday Children (2010) and The Secret of the White Dove (2011).

Web links

Commons : Mount Edgcumbe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Mount Edgcumbe House and Country Park website
• The National Heritage List: Mount Edgcumbe
• The National Heritage List: Mount Edgcumbe House

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mount Edgcumbe House. In: The National Heritage List for England. Retrieved November 27, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Mount Edgcumbe. In: The National Heritage List for England. Retrieved February 23, 2013 . 
3. ^ Paul Holden: Mount Edgcumbe. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 19, 2013 ; Retrieved February 24, 2013 . 
4. ↑ Nowel, Ingrid: England (DuMont What you can do), DuMont travel publishing, Ostfildern, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7701-7630-4 , page 362
5. ^ Rame Heritage: Edgcumbe Gallery. Retrieved March 21, 2013 . 
6. ↑ BBC - Your Paintings - Mount Edgcumbe House. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 15, 2016 ; accessed on February 23, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ BBC - Your Paintings - Mount Edgcumbe House. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 25, 2013 ; accessed on February 23, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Victorian Forts: Garden and Earl's battery. (PDF; 81.4 kB) Accessed March 23, 2013 . 
9. Jump up ↑ Pilcher Locations: Mount Edgcumbe House. Retrieved February 23, 2013 .