Wivenhoe House, (also known as Wivenhoe Park), Colchester, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

The Wivenhoe estate was owned by the Rebow family from 1733 until 1902. When Issac Lemyng Rebow died in 1734 his son, Issac Martin Rebow was only two and it was not until he was twenty-seven years of age and married that he started to build a house within the park inherited from his father. In 1758 Rebow commissioned Thomas Reynolds to design the house and seven years later employed the landscaper Richard Woods to design a new park, the laying out of which did not commence until 1776. Issac died in 1781 and was succeeded by his eldest daughter Mary Hester. Mary's husband, Francis Slater, assumed the name of Rebow when they married in 1796. Mary and Francis extended the park and commissioned Constable to make a series of drawings and a painting of the park in 1816.

When Francis died in 1845 the estate passed to his son-in-law John Gurdon (who also assumed the name Rebow). John Gurdon commissioned the architect Thomas Hopper to remodel the House in 1846 and William Andrews Nesfield (1793-1881) to advise on the relocation of the coach roads and entrances and to advise on the planting of the park and the flower garden. John Gurdon died in 1870 and passed the estate, along with extensive debts, to his son Hector Gurdon Rebow, who retired away from Wivenhoe and sold the estate in 1902 to Charles Edmund Gooch.

Neither C E Gooch nor his son Charles Michael made many alterations to the House or the landscape, which were occupied by the army during both the First and the Second World War. The estate was sold by the Goochs to the University of Essex in 1964 and the western half of the park (outside the area here registered) is now covered by an extensive range of university buildings. The House, converted into a conference centre in 1977, was extended by the architect Bryan Thomas in 1986-1988. A large car park has been put in below the north front.

The site remains (2000) in the single ownership of the University.