Beckley Park

Today it is the home of Amanda Feilding and the main headquarters of her Beckley Foundation[1] which is doing research on the benefits of certain types of drugs, including cannabis and LSD.

First mentioned in 1347, the lodge was re-built in 1376 for King Edward III; the moats, hall buttresses date from the late 14th century.

[5] The park and lodge passed to the Norreys family, whose head in the late 17th century was created Earl of Abingdon.

The moats were probably part of medieval garden features, which possibly extended into the wider landscape of the surrounding former deer park.The Listing document provides a summary of the history of the property including this coverage of the early years:[8] Beckley Park, known as Lower Park Farm in the C19 and early C20, is first recorded in 1175-6, having been for some time part of the capital seat of the Honour of St Valery, that is, the main property of the St Valery family.

This work is assumed to have resulted in the present triple moats (VCH 1957; Taylor 1996).After numerous years in ruin, the property was bought on November 18, 1920, by the first international woman architect[citation needed] Clotilde Kate Feilding (1874-1937) and restored by Clotilde and her husband, Percy.

Clotilde was the daughter of Henry Bennet Brewster of the Palazzo Mattei in Rome and the Baroness Julia von Stockhausen.

[9][10] In 2005 Beckley Park was used as the set for one of the opening scenes of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire[3] in which Frank Bryce runs through the garden to The Riddle House.

[8] Built of dark red brick diapered with black headers and stone dressings, it is of two storeys plus cellars and attics.

It is a narrow house, only one room thick, with the most prominent features being the three full-height, projecting gabled towers on the east, garden front, overlooking the former central moated island.