Caversham Park & Caversham Manor, Oxfordshire (Now Berkshire), England

Caversham Park

Caversham Park, located in the Reading suburb of Caversham, originally a part of Oxfordshire but since 1911 has been in Berkshire, is a Victorian stately home but its history goes back at least as far as Norman times when after the conquest, William the Conqueror gave the estate, then called Caversham Manor, to Walter Giffard, a distant relative. The entry for the manor in the Domesday Book described a property of 2,400 acres. It was a fortified manor house or castle and was probably closer to the Thames than the present building.
In the late 1100s the estate passed to William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke and Protector of the Realm. Marshall, who in his final years acted as de facto regent under the reign of a young Henry III, died in 1219 in Caversham Park.

Later it was occupied by the Earls of Warwick. In 1542, Sir Francis Knollys, the treasurer of Queen Elizabeth I purchased the estate but it was over forty years later that he eventually moved in when he had completely rebuilt the house slightly to the north. Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Anne of Denmark were both entertained here by Sir Francis' son, William Knollys, the Earl of Banbury.

Although it later became the home to Royalist, The Earl of Craven, it was ironically used to imprison Charles I having been confiscated during the Civil War. Following the Civil War it was in such a poor state of repair that it was demolished.

In 1718, a friend of The Duke of Marlborough, William Cadogan 1st Earl Cadogan commenced rebuilding of the house and tried to rival the duke's gardens at Blenheim Palace. When the house burned down during the latter part of the 18th century a smaller house was built in its stead and this in the 1780s was enlarged and fashioned to resemble a Greek temple by Major Charles Marsack, who was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1787.

The Garden

In 1770 Thomas Whately described in his Observations on Modern Gardening, the artful solution to its restrictive setting "confined within a narrow valley, without views, buildings or water",lavishing praise for the unequivocal statement of being a road to a grand house. "The approach to Caversham, though a mile in length, and not once in sight of the house, till close upon it, yet can never be mistaken for any other way than it is". "Crossing the whole breadth of a lovely valley; the road is conducted along the bottom, continually winding in natural easy sweeps, and presenting at every bend some new scene to the view ... insensibly ascending, all the way". It finally "rises under a thick wood in the garden up to the house, where it suddenly bursts out upon a rich, and extensive prospect, with the town and the churches of Reading full in sight, and the hills of Windsor forest in the horizon."

Thomas Jefferson, the future third President of the United States, visited Caversham Park In April 1786, along with other places described by Whately, in search of inspirations for his own gardens at Monticello and other architectural projects. Jefferson's account in his Notes of a Tour of English Gardens reads like this:

"Caversham. Sold by Ld. Cadogan to Majr. Marsac. 25. as. of garden, 400. as. of park, 6 as. of kitchen garden. A large lawn, separated by a sunk fence from the garden, appears to be part of it. A straight broad gravel walk passes before the front and parallel to it, terminated on the right by a Doric temple, and opening at the other end on a fine prospect. This straight walk has an ill effect. The lawn in front, which is pasture, well disposed with clumps of trees."

Accompanying Jefferson was John Adams, his close friend and predecessor as US president. Adams' observations describe the route taken and more general descriptions:

"Mr. Jefferson and myself went in a post-chaise to Woburn farm, Caversham, Wotton, Stowe, Edgehill, Stratford upon Avon, Birmingham, the Leasowes, Hagley, Stourbridge, Worcester, Woodstock, Blenheim, Oxford, High Wycombe, and back to Grosvenor Square... The gentlemen's seats were the highest entertainment we met with. Stowe, Hagley, and Blenheim, are superb; Woburn, Caversham, and the Leasowes are beautiful. Wotton is both great and elegant, though neglected"

Current building

In 1850, architect Horace Jones erected the current building following a fire. He took inspiration from Italian baroque palaces. He much later designed London's Tower Bridge. Its then owner William Crawshay II, an ironmaster nicknamed the 'Iron King', had the house rebuilt over an iron frame, an early example for this technique. Jones inserted his seven bay block between two colonnades of 1840 by John Thistlewood Crew[(called J. T. Crews by Pevsner and English Heritage) which apparently survived the fire.

Part of the building was used During the First World War as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. In 1923 The Oratory School bought the house and about 120 hectares (300 acres) of the estate's remaining 730 hectares (1,800 acres). The principal of the school was Edward Pereira. The legacy of the estate's days as a school remain with a chapel building and graves for three boys, one of whom died in World War II in 1940, the other two having died from accident and sickness in the 1920s.

The residential area of Caversham Park Village was developed in the 1960s on some of the parkland.

BBC Monitoring

BBC Monitoring operations room

World War II almost saw it requisitioned for wounded soldiers or some similar hospital as it was in World War I but with government Grant-in-Aid funds the BBC purchased the property in Spring 1943 and transferred its Monitoring Service here from Wood Norton Hall, near Evesham in Worcestershire. Similtaneously the BBC acquired Crowsley Park nearby to act as the service's receiving station. Caversham Park and Crowsley Park continue to function in that role today. BBC Radio Berkshire is also based at Caversham Park.

In major building works in the 1980s, the BBC restored the old interior, removed utilitarian brick buildings put up alongside the mansion during the war, converted the orangery for use as a listening room and editorial offices, and built a large new west wing. A further major building project in 2007–08 saw the west wing converted to house all of Monitoring's operational staff.

A large 10-metre (33 ft) diameter satellite dish was erected in the grounds in the early 1980s. Later painted green (rather than white) to make it less obtrusive, it and the mansion house are prominent local landmarks, overlooking the Thames and the eastern part of Reading. Shortwave aerials in front of the house were removed.

In the 1980s, the formal name of the service was shortened to "BBC Monitoring".

Caversham Court

Caversham Court, also known as The Old Rectory was the second great house of the parish, after Caversham Park. Found on the site of the old Chapel of Our Lady of Caversham which in Medieval times was an important pilgrimage centre for the worship of the Virgin Mary.

A Tudor house was originally built after the Dissolution of the Monasteries around two courtyards. It gained the nickname of 'The Striped House' due to its timber-framing. The staircase dating from 1638 had bullet holes evident from a Civil War attack and an ornate ceiling of decorated plasterwork. These were preserved during the rebuilding programmed carried out by Pugin in 1840 for the' Simonds family who were renown for brewing. Pugin created a castellated facade with fretwork balustrading and 'Norman' style porch featuring a figure of Cardinal Wolsey on top. This did not last a further hundred years however as it was demolished in 1933 and the area is now a public park.

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