West Wycombe Park
The house, a Grade I listed building,[1] was given to the National Trust in 1943 by Sir John Dashwood, 10th Baronet (1896–1966), an action strongly resented by his heir.
West Wycombe Park, architecturally inspired by the villas of the Veneto constructed during the late-Renaissance period, is not one of the largest, grandest or best-known of England's many country houses.
Compared to its Palladian contemporaries, such as Holkham Hall, Woburn Abbey and Ragley Hall, it is quite small, yet it is architecturally important as it encapsulates a period of 18th-century English social history, when young men, known as dilettanti, returning from the Grand Tour with newly purchased acquisitions of art, often built a country house to accommodate their collections and display in stone the learning and culture they had acquired on their travels.
[5] In 1724, Dashwood bequeathed this square conventional house to his 16-year-old son, the 2nd Baronet, also Francis, who later inherited the title Baron le Despencer through his mother and is perhaps best known for establishing the Hellfire Club close to the mansion, in the West Wycombe Caves.
Between 1726 and 1741, Dashwood embarked on a series of Grand Tours: the ideas and manners he learned during this period influenced him throughout his life and were pivotal in the rebuilding of his father's simple house, transforming it into the classical edifice that exists today.
[7] Of all the 18th-century country houses, its façades replicate in undiluted form not only the classical villas of Italy on which Palladianism was founded, but also the temples of antiquity on which Neoclassicism was based.
While the marriage is not completely unhappy, the Palladian features are marred by the lack of Palladio's proportions: the east portico is asymmetrical with the axis of the house, and trees were planted either side to draw the eye away from the flaw.
[8] The opposite (east) end of the house, designed by Roger Morris and completed c. 1755,[16] appears equally temple-like, but this time the muse was the Villa Rotunda in Vicenza.
[17] The principal façade is the great south front, a two-storey colonnade of Corinthian columns superimposed on Tuscan, the whole surmounted by a central pediment.
[21] The principal reception rooms are on the ground floor with large sash windows opening immediately into the porticos and the colonnades, and therefore onto the gardens, a situation unheard of in the grand villas and palaces of Renaissance Italy.
The mansion contains a series of 18th century salons decorated and furnished in the style of that period, with polychrome marble floors, and painted ceilings depicting classical scenes of Greek and Roman mythology.
Of particular note is the entrance hall, which resembles a Roman atrium with marbled columns and a painted ceiling copied from Robert Wood's Ruins of Palmyra.
The landscape architect Thomas Cook began to execute the plans for the park, with a nine-acre man-made lake created from the nearby River Wye in the form of a swan.
Planting and the shape of the landscape is used, alongside follies and man-made water features, to create pleasant vistas and set pieces centred on a building, straight avenue, serpentine walk, or viewpoint.
[34] In the later years of the 18th century, the 5,000 acres (20 km2) of grounds were extended to the east, towards the nearby town of High Wycombe, and Humphrey Repton completed the creation of the gardens, until they appeared much as they do today.
Following the dedication of the West portico as the temple of Bacchus in 1771, Dashwood and his friends dressed in skins adorned with vine leaves and went to party by the lake for "Paeans and libations".
[46] On another occasion, during a mock sea battle on the canal, the captain of the snow, "attacking" a battery constructed on the bank, was struck by the wadding of a gun and suffered an internal injury.
[50] He became religious in the last years of his life,[51] holding ostentatiously teetotal parties in West Wycombe's gardens in aid of the "Friends of Order and Sobriety" – these would have been vastly different from the bacchanalian fêtes given by his uncle in the grounds.
[55] Sir George died childless in 1862, and left his wife, Elizabeth, a life tenancy of the house[56] while the title and ownership passed briefly to his brother and then a nephew.
Sir Robert embarked on a costly legal case against the executors of Lady Dashwood, which he lost, and raised money by denuding the estate's woodlands and leasing the family town house in London for 99 years.
[63] Living a semi-estranged life from her husband, occupying opposite ends of the mansion, she frequently gave "large and stylish" house parties.
The house also served as a convalescent home, while a troop of gunners occupied the decaying service wing, and the park was used for the inflation of barrage balloons.
[67] His efforts included the installation of a huge equestrian sculpture as the focal point of a long tree lined vista from the house.
On close inspection, it proves to be a fibre glass prop found at Pinewood Studios by the 11th Baronet who paid for it with 12 bottles of champagne.
[70] The house can be hired as a filming location, and, in addition to agricultural and equestrian enterprises, there is a large pheasant shoot with paying guns.
The park, a natural amphitheatre,[71] is often the setting for large public concerts and firework displays, and the mansion is available for weddings and corporate entertainment.
[72] While the estate remains in private hands, the National Trust owns the house and gardens, the park, the village of West Wycombe, and the hill on which the Dashwood mausoleum sits.
