Corsham Court

CORSHAM COURT The approach to Corsham Court leads from the High Street, through the stables either side of the main gates, to the house. Its pleasure grounds are to the north, east and south-west and are separated from the park to the north and east by a ha- ha. The Elizabethan house was built in 1582 for Thomas Smythe and it had not been altered when it was bought by Paul Methuen in 1745. In 1760 Methuen commissioned Lancelot Brown to carry out some complex architectural work. Brown focused on designing wings in three different styles Jacobean, gothick and neo- Palladian to the Methuen’s existing house as well as changes to the garden. Brown also planted The Great Walk, an old-fashioned straight avenue to the north, flanked by cedars and an ornamental plane tree. As the track entered into Mynte Wood, it was crossed by a footpath so Brown created an ornamental arch of petrified stone to allow the family and guests to walk underneath. Brown also built an orangery (later demolished), a ha-ha to divide the garden from the park, a gothic bath house, and enlarged the stew ponds to make a pear-shaped lake. It would seem that Methuen and Brown fell out as in 1763, Methuen refused to pay Brown until he had inspected Brown’s ‘vouchers’. On his death in 1795, Methuen’s son Paul Cobb commissioned Humphry Repton to produce a Red Book to correct the ‘mistakes’ made by Brown. Sadly, the Corsham Red Book has been lost but Repton copied comments from the work in Observations on Theory in 1805. Repton believed that the approach to Corsham should be addressed first, stressing the ‘impropriety of improving the grounds without previous attention to the style, character, and situation of the house’. He continued: VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com At the time Corsham House was erected, instead of the modern houses now placed in the centre of parks, distant from every other habitation, it was the glory and pride of an English baron to live in or near the town or village…some of its fronts might look into a garden, lawn, or park, where the neighbours could not intrude. Yet even these views, in some instances, were confined, formal, and dull, by lofty walls and clipped hedges…and hence it often happens, that a large old house consists of discordant parts, mixed together, without any attempt at unity either in date or character of building. As Paul Cobb Methuen wanted to increase the size of the house, Repton introduced Methuen to his ‘connexion’ John Nash. Repton worked with Nash on the project, claiming: ‘that it is hardly possible to ascertain to whom belongs the chief merit of the design’. Nash also embellished Brown’s Gothic Bath House. With regards to the grounds, Repton’s first suggestion was to fill in the Brownian lake near the house and create one stretching away into the Park. But Repton’s dimensions were ignored and Mr Dudley Clarke, the contractor, used his own figures. Like Brown earlier, Repton’s time at Corsham ended abruptly when Methuen queried the accounts pointing out an error. In 1967, Lord Methuen commissioned Ernest Tew to add a summerhouse to the back of the Bath House by using medieval stonework from a house that had been demolished in Bradford-on-Avon. The entrance is now closed but originally it was possible to climb through a steep dark passage at the back of the Bath House, into the light of the summerhouse. In 1983, an arboretum was planted to the west of the North Walk by Simon Pryce; it contains a variety of exotic trees and is laid out around a sixteenth-century conduit. The house is still owned by the Methuens, with James Paul Archibald Methuen- Campbell, the eighth generation to live there. He succeeded to the Corsham Estate on the death of the 7th Baron Methuen in 2014. Bath Spa University has a long history with Corsham Court with the Bath Academy of Art moving there in 1946. When visiting, make a detour to the lake and park which can be accessed from the car park to the garden. VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com .

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