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Charlecote Park
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Charlecote Park
Charlecote Park (grid reference SP263564) is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon in Charlecote near Wellesbourne, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Stratford-upon-Avon and 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Warwick in Warwickshire, England. It has been administered by the National Trust since 1946. It is a Grade I listed building and is open to the public. The park and gardens are listed Grade II* in Historic England's Register of Parks and Gardens.
The Lucy family owned the land from 1247. Charlecote Park was originally built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the original Elizabethan house remains, the present house is of mostly Victorian construction. Successive generations of the Lucy family modified Charlecote Park over the centuries until George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house in 1823 and set about recreating the house in its original Tudor style.
Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare was said to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man, and to have been brought before the magistrates.
From 1605 to 1640, the house was occupied by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Lucy, who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and for distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons each inherited the house in turn, then it fell to her grandson Sir Davenport Lucy.
High up on one wall in the Tudor great hall is the 1680 painting Captain Thomas Lucy by Sir Godfrey Kneller, dated 1680. It includes what is believed to be one of the earliest depictions of an enslaved black presence in the West Midlands. The painting includes a young black groom in the right hand background, dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust notes that "It is not known if Kneller painted this unidentified figure from a model or if it is a portrait of a real groom in Captain Lucy's household".
In 1735, a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.
The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late-18th to mid-19th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (c 1850).[citation needed]
Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d. 1845), who in December 1822 had married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, Wales, upon whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based. Seven years of major renovation and rebuilding, including an extension on the river side, were commenced in 1829 after a builder's survey had revealed grave defects in the fabric. G.H.Lucy's second son, Henry, inherited the estate in 1847 from his elder brother. In 1848, Mary Elizabeth Lucy had the "wretched old Anglo-Norman church" in the Park pulled down. A new church, built to her design, was completed and opened in February 1853.
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Charlecote Park
Charlecote Park (grid reference SP263564) is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon in Charlecote near Wellesbourne, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Stratford-upon-Avon and 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Warwick in Warwickshire, England. It has been administered by the National Trust since 1946. It is a Grade I listed building and is open to the public. The park and gardens are listed Grade II* in Historic England's Register of Parks and Gardens.
The Lucy family owned the land from 1247. Charlecote Park was originally built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the original Elizabethan house remains, the present house is of mostly Victorian construction. Successive generations of the Lucy family modified Charlecote Park over the centuries until George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house in 1823 and set about recreating the house in its original Tudor style.
Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare was said to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man, and to have been brought before the magistrates.
From 1605 to 1640, the house was occupied by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Lucy, who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and for distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons each inherited the house in turn, then it fell to her grandson Sir Davenport Lucy.
High up on one wall in the Tudor great hall is the 1680 painting Captain Thomas Lucy by Sir Godfrey Kneller, dated 1680. It includes what is believed to be one of the earliest depictions of an enslaved black presence in the West Midlands. The painting includes a young black groom in the right hand background, dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust notes that "It is not known if Kneller painted this unidentified figure from a model or if it is a portrait of a real groom in Captain Lucy's household".
In 1735, a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.
The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late-18th to mid-19th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (c 1850).[citation needed]
Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d. 1845), who in December 1822 had married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, Wales, upon whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based. Seven years of major renovation and rebuilding, including an extension on the river side, were commenced in 1829 after a builder's survey had revealed grave defects in the fabric. G.H.Lucy's second son, Henry, inherited the estate in 1847 from his elder brother. In 1848, Mary Elizabeth Lucy had the "wretched old Anglo-Norman church" in the Park pulled down. A new church, built to her design, was completed and opened in February 1853.
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