Westwood House

[8] The gatehouse is immediately in front of the house at some little distance in advance; the gate has a red brick lodge on each side of it with ornamental gables and pinnacles.

[8] The stables and servants' offices were a short distance in the rear of the house, and the kitchen garden covers the site of the long since demolished convent.

[8] Writing in 1891 Laura Valentine commented that the house was in the centre of a large and well-wooded park, with a lake of some size to the east, and a lovely avenues of grand old trees radiating from it.

[4] The Pakington family seat was in the adjacent village of Hampton Lovett, but that house was burnt down during the English Civil War so they moved to Westwood.

[4][1][9] During the latter part of the war and the Interregnum the house was the residence of Sir John Pakington (1621–1680), an ardent Royalist who was tried for his life by the Parliament; his estates were sequestered, and he was greatly plundered, but he ultimately compounded with the Parliamentary Committee for £5,000.

His house was the refuge of learned men who support the King's cause: Dr. Henry Hammond found shelter with him, as did the Bishops Morley, Fell, Gunning.

[8] In the 19th century the house was the residence of John Pakington, 1st Baron Hampton, a British Conservative politician, who before he lost his Droitwich seat in the Commons in 1874 and was raised to the peerage held a number of government posts.

In 1902 his son Herbert Perrott Murray Pakington, the 3rd Baron Hampton, sold Westwood House to Edward Partington, a paper mill industrialist.

Although the area had been shown as Prestone on the original survey plan, Queensland Governor George Bowen decided to name the town Westwood in honour of Lord John Pakington's role as Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1852.