Wrest Park is a country estate located near Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England. It comprises Wrest Park, a Grade I listed house
Wrest Park is a country estate located near Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England. It comprises Wrest Park, a Grade I listed country house, and Wrest Park Gardens, also Grade I listed, with formal gardens surrounding the mansion. It is thought that Thomas Carew (1595–1640) wrote "To My Friend from Wrest" in 1639 that described the old house later demolished. The present house was built in 1834–39 designed by owner Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey, an amateur architect who was the first president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, inspired by buildings he had seen on trips to Paris. He based his house on designs published in French architectural books such as Jacques-François Blondel's Architecture Française (1752). Wrest has some of the earliest Rococo Revival interiors in England. Reception rooms in the house are open to the public. In the Wrest Park Gardens there is the Thomas Archer Pavilion at the end of the Long Canal. The Park has an early eighteenth-century garden, spread over 92 acres which was probably originally laid out by George London and Henry Wise for Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent, then modified by Lancelot "Capability" Brown in a more informal landscape style. The park is divided by a wide gravel central walk, that extends as a long canal that leads to a Baroque style pavilion designed by Thomas Archer and completed in 1711. The interior of the pavilion is decorated with an impressive Ionic columns in trompe-l'œil. Boundary canals were altered to take the more natural shape by Capability Brown, who worked there between 1758 and 1760, and who also ringed the central formal area with a canal and woodland. The gardens and garden houses were mapped by John Rocque in 1735.[4] During the later 18th and 19th centuries, the Bath House, an orangery and marble fountains were added. In the autumn of 2007 English Heritage announced that the Wolfson Foundation had pledged up to £400,000 towards the restoration of a number of the key features of the Wrest P
Size: 5627px × 3537px
Location: Wrest Park, Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England, UK
Photo credit: © Philip Chapman / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
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