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Coworth House, Berkshire, England
Coworth House, located in Sunningdale, near Ascot is a late 18th Century house recently gutted and rebuilt for use as a hotel.
History
Cowarth House was a new house at the time of the American Declaration of Independence and contemporary with Captain Cook's third and last world voyage, being first built in 1776. It is named for and situated in the Hamlet of Coworth originally situated within the parish and manor of Old Windsor. There was also a Coworth House in British Columbia during the reign of Victoria and Hurst Park ran the 'Coworth Stakes' each July between 1930 and World War II. The Roman Road called 'The Devil's Highway' which runs from London to Silchester passes through the estate for half a mile of its length.
In 1066 Edward the Confessor granted the land on which Coworth House stands to Westminster Abbey but William the Conqueror repossessed it from the Abbey in exchange for lands in Essex and in theory the manor of Old Windsor remains still with the Crown.
James I leased it to Richard Powney in 1606. In 1737 his great grandson, Penyston Powney, was administering it . After his death in 1757, his son and heir, Penyston Porlock Powney, became the Crown lessee, and was still appearing as such in records when Coworth House was constructed in 1776.
The land on which Coworth House stands was conveyed in 1770 by William Hatch and Elizabeth his wife, who were presumably Powney's agents or sub-tenants, to one William Shepheard, a prosperous East India Merchant. No records survive to confirm as much, but in all likelihood it was William Shepheard who six years later constructed the dwelling seen today.
When Shepheard died about 1810, Coworth House passed to his son, also called William, whose executors sold it before 1836 to George Arbuthnot (1772–1843), a Scottish colonel who served in Madras. The 1841 census finds Arbuthnot sharing the house, perhaps as two distinct entities perhaps not, with the family of his nephew and son-in-law, John Alves Arbuthnot (1802–1875), a director of the London Assurance Company and of the London and Colonial Bank.
John Alves Arbuthnot, born 3 October 1802 in Queen street, Edinburgh, was a son of Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet and married Mary (1812 - 1859), his cousin. John and Mary went on to have eleven children and John became a founding partner of Messrs Arbuthnot Latham & Co and in 1873 was High Sheriff of Berkshire.
He inherited Coworth House from his uncle and died here, aged seventy-three, 20 August 1875 , leaving a personal estate 'sworn under £400,000. He gave Coworth House – then called Coworth Park – to his daughters, 'for as long as more than two shall remain unmarried', then to his eldest son, William Arbuthnot (1833–1896) who at the time of his father’s death was living on the estate with his family at Park Lodge.
William Arbuthnot spent his formative years in India where in 1858 he married Adolphine, the second daughter of Edward Lecot, the French Consul at Madras. During that time, he worked for the family mercantile bank, Arbuthnot & Co., founded at Madras in 1810 and occupying the handsome pillared-and-pedimented Arbuthnot Building, replaced in the 1960s by a high-rise block.
Adolphine died in the year of her marriage. Seven years later, William married (Margaret) Rosa, the eldest daughter of John Campbell of Kilberry, Argyll, with whom he had three daughters, Mary, Alice and Rosa, but no son. The family also owned a London town-house, No. 28 Park Crescent, an impressive curvilinear block of Nash dwellings overlooking Regent’s Park.
On Monday 9 June 1879, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the future Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, arrived at Coworth House from Paris to attend the approaching race meeting at Ascot. It is thought that on this occasion they stayed at Coworth for a week and then spent another week in June 1883, again for the racing, and perhaps on other occasions also. By coincidence, some fifty years later, Edward’s grandson, the short-reigned Edward VIII, would occupy Fort Belvedere, Surrey, a property adjacent to Coworth House.
William Arbuthnot sold Coworth House in 1883 to William (afterwards Sir William) Farmer (1832 - 1908) and moved to Ham Manor, Newbury, where he died, aged sixty-two, 9 February 1896. Framer, who was Sheriff of London 1890–1891, and High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1895, was Master of the Gardeners' Company in 1898. Soon after this Coworth House was purchased by Edward George Villers Stanley (1865-1948), Lord Stanley who in 1908 succeeded his father as 17th Earl of Derby. Having won the Derby, named after the 12th Earl, three times and the Oaks also three times and taking the St. Leger on six separate occasions with his horses he was understandably best known as a luminary ofthe Turf and member of the Jockey Club but he also twice held the office of Secretary of State for War and served as Ambassador to France.
Coworth House became the home of Lord Derby's widow, Alice Stanley, Countess of Derby (1862–1957), upon his death in 1948. She was the youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Manchester, and a lady-in-waiting to her friend, Queen Alexandra. Following the death of Lady Derby on 24 July 1957, aged ninety-four Coworth was advertised for sale in The Times and was converted to use as a Roman Catholic convent school. The next owner is thought to have been Vivian 'White' Lloyd, who died in 1972.
The house was later converted into offices by entrpreneur Harold Bamberg, a director of the travel agency Sir Henry Simpson Lunn Limited (later to become Lunn Poly travel, then become part of Thomson Holidays) and chairman of British Eagle Airways. After the Second World War, he was one of several entrepreneurs, including Jack Jones and Alex Bristow, who pioneered the principle of cheap flights for all, and in doing so paved the way for Freddie Laker and his successors.
In April 2011, Prince Azim of Brunei launched Coworth Park Hotel as a BIA-owned hotel managed under the Dorchester Group as part of its Dorchester Collection.
Sources, references and further reading:
Main Reference WIKI Berkshire Information shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License - see Creative Commons Licenses