Clumber Park, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Clumber appears in the Domesday Book as Clunbre and was farmed by a Norman tenant as two manors. Both Worksop Priory and Newstead Abbey (see description of this site elsewhere in the Register) held land at Clumber until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. In 1545, Henry VIII granted to Roger and Robert Taverner and their heirs 'the lands at Clumbre, late belonging to Newstede at 11s per annum' (Throsby 1790). John Holles, fourth Earl of Clare, created first Duke of Newcastle in 1694, petitioned Queen Anne in 1709 for 'a licence to make a Park in the Forest of Sherwood in the County of Nottingham for her Majesties Service during her life to contain at Least 3000 Acres of his Own lands of Inheritance' (Patent Rolls); the licence was granted. A hunting lodge was built in the early 18th century, shown on a map of 1738 (guidebook). When John Holles was killed in 1711, Clumber was inherited by his nephew, Thomas Pelham (died 1768), later Thomas Pelham-Holles, who became the first Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1715 and first Duke of Newcastle under Lyme in 1756, with a special remainder to the earldom of Lincoln. Clumber had been used as a hunting estate stocked with red deer but by 1761 work had begun on extending the old hunting lodge into Clumber House to designs by Stephen Wright. Thomas Pelham's nephew, Henry Fiennes-Clinton Pelham-Clinton, ninth Earl of Lincoln, became second Duke of Newcastle under Lyme (1720-94) in 1768 and garden buildings and a lake were added over the next twenty years. Thomas Pelham-Clinton, third Duke of Newcastle under Lyme died in 1795, a year after inheriting the title, his son, Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, becoming fourth Duke of Newcastle under Lyme at the age of ten. Alterations were made to the house in 1814, and in the 1820s and 1830s further changes were made to the house, garden, and park. Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, a member of Sir Robert Peel's ministry and later Colonial Secretary, became the fifth Duke of Newcastle under Lyme in 1851. The estate village of Hardwick was laid out around 1854 to the east of the lake. By the 1860s, pleasure grounds were laid out and a design for a chapel in the grounds was made by T C Hine. The Duke died in 1864 and was succeeded by his son Henry Pelham Alexander Pelham-Clinton, the sixth Duke of Newcastle under Lyme, a noted sportsman who died in February 1879. Henry Pelham Archibald Douglas Pelham-Clinton inherited as the seventh Duke of Newcastle under Lyme. A fire in March 1879 destroyed parts of the house and the central area was rebuilt by Charles Barry the younger. In 1886, the Chapel of St Mary the Virgin was built. A fire in 1912 burnt out the upper storeys of the north wing but these were subsequently rebuilt. The Duke died in 1928 and his widow closed the House. Henry Francis Hope Pelham-Clinton-Hope, the seventh Duke's brother, became the eighth Duke of Newcastle under Lyme but at his request, the House and grounds passed to his son, Henry Edward Hugh Pelham-Clinton-Hope, the Earl of Lincoln. The estate deteriorated and in 1937 there was a series of sales which included the antique garden ornaments. The House was demolished in 1938, as were the terraces and parterres, and in a demolition sale all the structural elements of the gardens were sold. The Earl of Lincoln planned to build a new house at Clumber but the park was requisitioned by the Army during the Second World War and used as an ammunition dump and testing ground for trench-digging machines. The eighth Duke died in 1941 and the Earl of Lincoln became the ninth Duke of Newcastle under Lyme.

The National Trust purchased Clumber Park in 1945 and it remains (1999) in their care. Since taking over the estate the National Trust have restored many features in the gardens and parkland. Some of the remaining buildings in the centre of the site are used for visitor facilities.