Wilbury_House
Wilbury House or Wilbury Park is an 18th-century Neo-Palladian country house in the parish of Newton Tony, Wiltshire in South West England, about 8.7 miles (14 km) northeast of Salisbury. It is a Grade I listed building,[1] and the surrounding park and garden are Grade II listed.[2]
The park is immediately north of Newton Toney village, on both banks of the River Bourne, and extends north beyond the house into Cholderton parish.[2]
The house was built around 1710 by and for William Benson, a country esquire and amateur architect, in the style of Inigo Jones.[1][3] It was a modest country villa, single-storey with basements and attics. The south front was based on John Webb's 1661 Amesbury Abbey,[1] where Benson had been a tenant.[4] The original design for the house was featured in Vitruvius Britannicus in 1715.[5] Pevsner describes Benson's design as "the first, not Neo-Palladian, but Neo-Inigo-Jones house in England".[6]
Fulke Greville seems to have largely rebuilt the house in 1781.[7] There were further changes in the next century, turning it into a substantial house. An 1813 engraving in The Beauties of England and Wales shows a pediment on the south portico which is no longer present, and a different arrangement of windows above it.[8]
The present two-storey house has its entrance on the north side, where a three-bay porch on Ionic columns was probably added c.1800–1810. The seven-bay south front, overlooking the gardens, is flanked by large pavilion-like rooms added c.1760, partly octagonal and projecting forward. In the centre, the three-bay portico has Corinthian columns and a door of c.1770. The octagonal extensions have balustraded parapets, and the rest of the house has a cornice and low parapet, with six urns on the south side.[1][7]
After the renovations overseen by Miranda Guinness in the early 21st century, the whole is faced with a pale yellow lime render.[7][9]
Benson based the internal layout on Palladio's Villa Pojana;[10] Orbach describes the double-height hall, with panelling and plasterwork, as "splendid",[7] and when the house was listed at Grade I in 1953, the description stated that it has an "outstanding period interior of the early 18th century", with improvements later that century.[1]
Benson sold the house and manor sometime after 1629, and they passed through several owners.[11] Around 1739 the property was bought by Fulke Greville (1717–1806), Sheriff of Wiltshire for 1744, and later MP for Monmouth and a minor diplomat.[1] Greville sold it c.1783, and from 1803 it was owned by Sir Charles Malet; it would remain in the Malet family for over a century.
Sir Charles (1752–1815) had been created a baronet in 1791 for his diplomatic services in India, while an official of the East India Company. His son Alexander (1800–1886) was also a diplomat, as was the 4th baronet, Edward (1837–1908). Sir Harry, 7th baronet (1873–1931) sold all his landholdings in the parish around 1925: three farms were sold separately, and workers' houses were bought by their tenants,[12] while the house, its park, Home farm and Warren farm were sold to J. A. St. G. F. Despencer-Robertson. That land was bought in 1939 by Edward Grenfell, 1st Baron St Just, a partner in the merchant bank Morgan, Grenfell & Co., MP for the City of London and a director of the Bank of England.[11]
Peter Grenfell (1922–1984) inherited the property from his father in 1941, and his second wife Maria Britneva – a Russian-born actress who became Tennessee Williams' literary executor – continued to live there until her death in 1994. The actor Rupert Everett, a friend of Maria, described the Wilbury estate in his memoir as "tumbledown".[13] During her ownership, a formal garden was laid out south of the house.[2]
Following Britneva's death in 1994, the house was bought in 1996[2] by Miranda Guinness, widow of Benjamin Guinness of the Dublin brewing family. She engaged the architects Peregrine Bryant to carry out careful restoration between 1998 and 2004,[7][9][14] and redesigned the gardens.[2] The house was inherited by her son Rory in 2010.[15]
The main entrance to the grounds is south of the house, on the edge of Newton Tony village. Here is a lodge built in 1909 in classical style, with pedimented gables disguising its flat roof, and a loggia behind Tuscan columns.[16]
A park was laid out around the house in the 18th century, with avenues, vistas and woodland.[2] It is possible that William Benson or Henry Hoare, a later owner, may have engaged the landscape designer Charles Bridgeman (1690–1738); he is known to have worked at Amesbury Abbey.[17]
North-east of the house, an avenue leads to a small octagonal summerhouse with a domed roof, built over an ice-house. It was built around 1710 and restored in 1899 and again after 1998, and is Grade II* listed.[18] Other garden features include an 18th-century flint grotto, in woods south-west of the house.[19]
In 2002, the house and estate were in divided private ownership.[2] The house is private and not open to the public, except for specific tours.[15]
The house was the filming location as Pendersleigh, the country house where Maurice visits his friend Clive, in the 1987 film Maurice.[20] Lady Maria St. Just, an actress and trustee of the estate of Tennessee Williams, was a friend of Merchant and Ivory. In 1979 they had been weekend guests at Wilbury Park, which made an impression on James Ivory, and he chose this location for the film.
- Hussey, Christopher. English Country Houses: Early Georgian, 1715-1760 . 1955. pp. 16–17. Country Life Limited, London.
- Kidd, Charles; Williamson, David (Editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage. 1990. pg. P 1081. Debrett's Peerage Limited, London. ISBN 0312046405
- Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, 95th Annual Edition. 1969. pg. 1733. Kelly's Directories Ltd, London.
- Irish Georgian Society Newsletter. Summer 2004, pg. 6. Irish Georgian Society, Dublin.
- Colvin, Howard Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840. 1995. pg. 122. Yale University Press, New Haven. ISBN 0300072074
- Pym, John. Merchant Ivory's English Landscape: Rooms, Views, and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. 1995. pg. 60. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0810942755
- Historic England. "Wilbury House (1300348)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
- Historic England. "Wilbury House: Park/Garden (Grade II) (1001245)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 20 August 2019.
- "Wilbury Park (Wilbury House) (Newton Toney Manor)". DiCamillo. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
- "Wilbury House, Wiltshire". Patrick Baty. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
- Campbell, Colen (1715). Vitruvius Britannicus, Vol I: p.5 and plates 51,52 – via Internet Archive.
- Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (revision) (1975) [1963]. Wiltshire. The Buildings of England (2nd ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 573–4. ISBN 0-14-0710-26-4.
- Orbach, Julian; Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (2021). Wiltshire. The Buildings Of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. p. 785. ISBN 978-0-300-25120-3. OCLC 1201298091.
- "Antique Prints of Wilbury". www.rareoldprints.com. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
- "Wilbury Park, Wiltshire". Peregrine Bryant.
- Stutchbury, Howard E. (1967). The Architecture of Colen Campbell. Manchester University Press. pp. 11–14. ISBN 978-0-674-04400-5.
- Baggs, A. P.; Freeman, Jane; Stevenson, Janet H. (1995). "Parishes: Newton Tony". In Crowley, D. A. (ed.). A History of the County of Wiltshire, Volume 15. Victoria County History. University of London. pp. 143–153. Retrieved 25 December 2022 – via British History Online.
- Everett, R. (2008). Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins. Little, Brown Book Group. Chapter 49. ISBN 978-0-7481-0978-4. Retrieved 25 December 2022.
- "La vie intérieure: Maurice and Wilbury Park". lavieinterieure.blogspot.com. Archived from the original on 7 July 2013.
- "Visit: Wilbury Park, Wiltshire". The Georgian Group. September 2019. Archived from the original on 20 July 2019.
- Historic England. "Newton Toney Lodge (1135692)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
- Willis, Peter (2002). Charles Bridgeman and the English Landscape Garden. Studies in architecture. Elysium. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-904712-04-9. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
- Historic England. "Summer House at Wilbury House (1313163)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
- Historic England. "Grotto, approximately 190m south-west of Wilbury House (1135693)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
- The Recorder, Vol. 15 (2016) pp5–7 – Wiltshire Record Society, article with summaries of inventories