Ugbrooke Park, Chudleigh, England

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

 HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Castle Dyke Camp, an Iron Age earthwork within the park at Ugbrooke indicates early occupation of the site. In the late 11th century Chudleigh became the site of a rural palace for the bishops of Exeter, and in 1282 'a house and cerytain lands at Ugbrooke' were annexed to the Precentor of Exeter. In 1547 the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector, obtained a lease of ecclesiastical property at Chudleigh from Bishop Voysey, and in 1550 Ugbrooke was sold to Sir Piers Courtenay of Powderham Castle, Devon. When Sir Piers' widow died in 1604 Ugbrooke passed to her grandson, Thomas Clifford (1572-1634).

Thomas Clifford's grandson, also Thomas, supported the Crown during the Civil War, and in 1660 was elected to Parliament as Member for Totnes. Knighted in 1664, Sir Thomas was a leading political figure and served as one of Charles II's five principal ministers in the 'Cabal' Ministry in 1669. Sir Thomas was created Lord Clifford of Chudleigh in April 1672, and in November 1672 became Lord Treasurer. The following year he announced his conversion to Catholicism, resigned his public offices and retired to Ugbrooke where he died later the same year, leaving £2000 in his will to complete the rebuilding of the house.

Hugh, second Lord Clifford (d 1730) came of age in 1684 and added to the woodlands at Ugbrooke and made improvements to the park, in particular planting several formal avenues in the late 17th and early 18th century (Pearson Associates 1993), which were shown on a survey by William Doidge in 1740. John Dryden was entertained at Ugbrooke and reputedly wrote The Hind and the Panther (1687) in the park. During the minority of Hugh, fourth Lord Clifford, between 1732 and 1747 the family fortune was depleted through mismanagement, and it was only in 1760 that he was able to commission plans for the rebuilding of the house from Robert Adam (1728-1792). The new house was begun in 1760 and finished in about 1769 when the chapel and library wing was completed, also to designs by Adam.

Ugbrooke was shown with a house set in a park on Donn's Map of Devon (1765) but there is no evidence that Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) was consulted by Lord Clifford until about 1770 when the reconstruction of the house was complete, and at a time when Brown was working at neighbouring Mamhead Park, and at Tixall Hall, Staffordshire for Lord Clifford's brother (Pearson Assocs 1993).

The fourth Lord Clifford died in 1783, and was succeeded by his son, Hugh Edward, who suffered from ill health and died at Munich in 1793. His younger brother Charles, a talented amateur artist and patron of Francis Towne, Varley, Prout and Bampfylde and other artists succeeded as sixth Lord Clifford. His son, who succeeded as seventh Baron in 1831, married Mary Weld, daughter of Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle, Dorset, created Cardinal Weld in 1830, and spent much of his time in Italy, with Ugbrooke being used by several religious bodies.

In 1858 the eighth Lord Clifford resumed residence at Ugbrooke, but with the estate in a near bankrupt state he was able to make only modest changes to the House and grounds. The family fortune was gradually restored before his death in 1880, but successive death duties in 1918 and 1924 again depleted the estate. During the Second World War Ugbrooke was let to an evacuated school, and from 1945 to 1952 it was used as a hostel for disabled Polish soldiers. From 1952 until the succession of the twelfth Lord Clifford who returned from Australia in 1957, the House was unoccupied, with the ground floor used as a granary. A programme of restoration was implemented by the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth Lords Clifford from 1957 to about 1995, and a restoration scheme for the landscape was approved in 1993, following extensive storm damage in 1990.

Today (1999), Ugbrooke remains in private ownership, with Lawell House in separate private ownership.