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Petworth House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Petworth House in Petworth, West Sussex, England, is a late 17th-century mansion, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s by Anthony Salvin. The site was previously occupied by a castle founded by Henry de Percy, the 13th-century chapel and undercroft of which still survive.
Today's building houses an important collection of paintings and sculptures, including 19 oil paintings by Turner, who was a regular visitor to Petworth, paintings by Van Dyck, carvings by Grinling Gibbons and murals by Louis Laguerre.
It stands in a 700 acre (2.8 km²) landscaped park, known as Petworth Park, which was designed by 'Capability' Brown. The park is one of the more famous in England, largely on account of a number of pictures of it which were painted by Turner. It is inhabited by the largest herd of fallow deer in England. There is also a 30 acre woodland garden, known as the Pleasure Ground.
For the past 250 years, the house and the estate have been in the hands of the Wyndham family — currently John Max Henry Scawen Wyndham, 2nd Baron Egremont & 7th Baron Leconfield. He and his family live in the south wing, allowing much of the remainder to be open to the public.
The estate was handed over to the nation in 1947 and is now managed by the National Trust under the name "Petworth House & Park".
- Petworth House is home to the Petworth House Real Tennis Club. (Many such private estates held real tennis courts.)
- Turner, Roger, Capability Brown and the Eighteenth Century English Landscape, 2nd ed. Phillimore, Chichester, 1999, pp. 130- 132.
- Petworth House & Park information at the National Trust
- Aerial photo — the Pleasure Ground is the wood immediately to the north of the house.
- Other map sources