history
continued ...
After his wife's death in 1852 at age 37, the Earl traveled
extensively before returning to indulge his passion for
building. His interests as an amateur architect and civil
engineer were directed toward his home with an almost lunatic
quirkiness. He tunneled his back drive under his gardens,
built the extraordinary Bavarian tower, flooding the park
so as to make it rise out of a moat; and designed the brilliantly
colorful horseshoe cloisters and twenty four horseshoe bridges.
Throughout his estate and around the village structures
were built in the same idiosyncratic style of flint with
bands of brick quatrefoils, often with machicolations and
polychrome round-headed windows. Indeed such was the standard
of excellence that the Earl won the medal for brick making
at the Crystal Palace in 1851.
On his death in December 1893, the estate passed to his
son, Lionel, who sold it to Thomas Sopwith (the famous aircraft
designer) in 1919. Six years later it was sold again and
became a girl's Boarding School called St. Michaels. In
1938 the Central Electricity Board purchased the property.
It was recently sold to a computer company.
