Estcourt Park, Shipton Moyne, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Walter de la Estcourt acquired the estate in 1303 and it remained in his family until its sale in 1996.

In the early 16th century, Thomas Estcourt created a park. A large manor house was built in the mid-16th century by Edmund Estcourt this being shown in an engraving by Johannes Kip of around 1712 (Atkyns 1712). Kip depicts the house standing in formal gardens and orchards set in a park crossed by avenues, with a lane giving access to the gateway in the south side of the second of two courts which extended from the south front. An estate map of 1770 shows an avenue leading south across the fields to a gateway which presumably formed part of this earlier landscape. In 1769 Thomas Estcourt (died 1818), a distant relative of the original family, inherited. The house by this time was in poor repair, but it was not until 1776 when Estcourt obtained a private Act of Parliament enabling him to sell other property, that money was available for a new residence. The somewhat scattered Estcourt estates were consolidated by exchange and a new park, with a lake and ornamented with fir trees, was laid out within the former field system. William Donn, who had recently designed the Abbey House, Cirencester, was invited to prepare plans but he fell into a dispute with Estcourt and was probably not the final architect. The foundation stone of the new house was laid in October 1776, the site being about one kilometre to the north of the old house, the site of which became Park Farm (outside the area here registered). The old house was pulled down in 1779 and a plan of the park and Home Farm dating back to about 1815 shows the park with broadly the same layout that it retained into the late 20th century.

Thomas' son, Thomas Grimston Bucknall Estcourt carried out works to modernise the house in the late 1820s and early 30s, possibly adding a third storey (Kingsley 1989). There is a payment in the estate accounts to 'Wyatt', probably Lewis William Wyatt, perhaps for further alterations to the house (E Banks Associates 1997). William Andrews Nesfield (1793- 1881) was called in to provide proposals for altering the lake, producing two sketches, both dated 1850, one of the proposed treatment of the water, the other a sketch showing possible improvements to the view north from the house. T G B Estcourt's son, Thomas Henry Sutton Estcourt (1801-76; took his wife's family name of Sotheron in 1839, combining the names in 1855 to become Sotheron-Estcourt) inherited on the death of his father in 1853, and immediately employed Thomas H Wyatt to make improvements to the house including the addition of a bow window, billiard room, and conservatory. Wyatt, who had a family connection with the Estcourts (his wife, they married in 1853, was G B Estcourt's sister), instigated improvements which included extensive work to the estate buildings and the rebuilding of the church in 1864-5 (Verey 1970). Nesfield was kept on, and changes to the grounds continued including the laying out of a formal garden in 1854, and the creation of a new waterfall (Kingsley 1992). Following the death of T H Sotheron-Estcourt, the estate passed to his nephew, George Thomas John Estcourt (1839-1915), created Baron Estcourt in 1903, next being inherited by his cousin Edmund Walter Estcourt. Four years later Edmund transferred the property to his son, Thomas Edmund Sotheron-Estcourt in whose hands it remained until his death in 1958. The house was demolished in 1964 under the ownership of T D G Sotheron-Estcourt who subsequently, in 1996, sold the estate. It remains (1999) in private ownership.