Lydiard Park

[1] Surviving features from the 18th century include a semi-underground listed ice house[5] and a walled garden,[6] with a bronze sundial at its centre.

In 1943,[4] Councillor and Alderman Francis Akers bought the estate and the dilapidated house at auction and sold the whole to the local authority, the Corporation of Swindon, for £4,500.

[7] In 2005, Swindon Borough Council received £3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund towards a restoration project which included reinstating a two-acre lake.

The portraits include works by William Aikman, Michael Dahl, John Greenhill, Cornelius Johnson, Godfrey Kneller, Sir Peter Lely, Jonathan Richardson and Maria Verelst.

The house, with its collections of furniture and art – including painted wall panels by Lady Diana Beauclerk – is open to the public in the summer months.

[18] The dereliction of the hall and the declining fortunes of the St John family formed the backdrop of the 1967 novel The Heir of Starvelings by American writer Evelyn Berckman.