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Interior:

Plan of the House
Entrance & Oak Staircase
Somerset Room
Square Dining Room
Grand Staircase
Beauty Room
Marble Hall
Little Dining Room
Carved Room
Red Room
North Gallery
South Corridor
Central Corridor
North or Square Bay
Chapel
Bedrooms

Exterior:

East Front & Courtyard
North Front
West Front
Petworth Park

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Petworth House

 

 

 

The Park, Pleasure Ground and Estate

 

 

The history of Petworth park reaches back into the Middle Ages, as Horace Walpole realised when he described it as 'Percy to the backbone'. William, 8th Baron de Percy (1193-1245) had a 'new small park in which is his cunegaria [rabbit warren]'. In 1499 the 5th Earl of Northumberland added 105 acres, and in the course of the 16th century more common land was enclosed until, by 1621, the park was about 400 acres (it is now 700 acres).

In 1574 the 8th Earl of Northumberland's surveyors noted two main parks, both of which were scantily planted with oak and beech. The little park, to the north-west of the house, was about 220 acres and contained '72 deare'.

 

Its central feature, still known as Arbour Hill, had 'divers pleasant walks'. From this vatage point it was possible to view the progress of stag-hunting in the valley beneath. Henry VIII erected a banqueting house here when Petworth became crown property after the execution and attainder of Thomas Percy in 1537.

This view of c.1730 attributed to Pieter Tillemans shows the huge greenhouse and terraced garden laid out to the north and west of the house by the Proud Duke (private collection)

The 8th Earl laid out 'new walkes' to the north of the house (the birch or 'birchen' walks) and these were later incorporated into the Pleasure Ground. He constructed the huge quadrangular stables and riding school to the west of the house. By 1635 the hill running east to west from the north end of the house to the lake was terraced in ramparts or 'rampires', and this work was continued by the 10th Earl in 1636.

The Orangery stood at the north end of a rectangular walled orange garden, which covered an acre of ground stretching northwards from the chapel cloister at the north end of the house. Immediately to the west of the walled orangery garden was the flower garden, dominated by a great greenhouse to the north. In front of the greenhouse was a parterre with at least two lead statues with a central fountain served by a fountain house on the top of the terraces. The fountain house doubled as a banqueting house and was provided with a polished marble table carved by Selden in 1696.

Most of the 6th Duke's landscaping was obliterated in the return to 'nature' undertaken by 'Capability' Brown in the 1750s, and in the storm of 1987, but some of his sweet chestnuts and oaks still stand on the plateau above the former terraces. Brown's patron was the 2nd Earl of Egremont, who lost little time after inheriting Petworth in 1750 in commissioning Brown to survey the park (1751).

Brown's five contracts, worth £5,500 (beginning in 1753 and ending in 1765, two years after the 2nd Earl's death), resulted in one of his supreme creations, which was to be further developed and enriched by the 3rd Earl and his successors in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today Brown's plan remains the backbone of the Trust's management of the park, but such was the extent of the 3rd Earl's and later planting that the post-1987 storm survey concluded that none of Brown's trees had survived to be blown down by the winds.

The park as it stands today. This view is taken by the lake which is on the west front of the house.

The 2nd Earl's lake (above) is said to have cost £30,000 and required regular attention to stem the loss of water. The labour costs were such that it was said in Petworth that 'it might have been covered with copper at as little expense'. The 3rd Earl was hailed as 'one of the fathers of modern English agriculture' and was the friend of the famous agriculturalist Arthur Young. In the early 1790s the 3rd Earl began to reclaim the wooded Stag Park. Previously 'an entire forest scene', about 750 acres were 'enclosed and divided into proper fields' after the timber had been sold, 'the underwood grubbed, and burned with charcoal on the spot' and the land had been drained.

The park not only contained deer, but also improved strains of cattle , sheep and even pigs. Egremont had been active in planting both the park and Pleasure Ground from at least 1773, and in 1804 alone he purchased no fewer than 12,000 ash, fir, larch, birch and hornbeam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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