Thoresby Park, Mansfield, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

A 19th-century country house set beside mid-19th-century formal gardens by Anthony Salvin and pleasure grounds by Edward Milner, surrounded by parkland of the late 17th century, with 18th-century alterations by Francis Richardson, possibly Lancelot Brown in 1768, and by Humphry Repton who produced a Red Book in 1791.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Thoresby Park stands in a rural setting about 9 kilometres south-east of Worksop and 3 kilometres north-west of the village of New Ollerton. The undulating, roughly 800 hectare site is bounded to the north by a deep woodland belt, beyond which lies the south boundary of Clumber Park (see description of this site elsewhere in the Register), and to the south and west by further extensive woodlands. To the east, part of the boundary is formed by woodland and part by the A614, with Perlethorpe village lying just beyond the centre of the eastern boundary plantation. A minor country road cuts through the park to the north of the Hall, connecting the villages of Haughton in the north-east to Budby in the south-west.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

C Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus III, (1725), pp 81-2

J Throsby, Thoroton’s History of Nottinghamshire republished with large additions (1790) [facsimile edition 1972), pp 342-6

H Repton, The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1803)

J C Loudon (editor), The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton (1840, reprinted 1969), pp 70, 161-4, 217, 203

C Holme, Gardens of England in the Midland and Eastern Counties (1908)

Architect Hist 4, (1961) pp 11-20; 6, (1963), pp 103-4

D Stroud, Humphry Repton (1962)

D Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), p 242

N Pevsner and E Williamson, The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire (2nd edition 1979), pp 348-51

Country Life, 165 (28 June 1979), pp 2082-5; 166 (5 July 1979), pp 18-21; 180 (18 September 1986), p 876

J Harris, The Artist and the Country House (1979)

J Anthony, Gardens of Britain 6, (1979), pp 158-60

G Carter et al, Humphry Repton (1982), p 160

S Daniels, Humphry Repton (1999), pp 47, 160-4

Maps

Estate plan, 1680 (Nottinghamshire Archives)

Estate plan, 1738 (Nottinghamshire Archives)

OS Old Series 1" to 1 mile, published 1840

OS 6" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1899

OS 25" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1899; 3rd edition published 1920

Archival items

Humphry Repton, Red Book for Thoresby Hall, 1791 (private collection)
 

Description written: October 2000

Redrafted: June 2001

Amended: October 2001

Edited: February 2002