Wrest Park

Wrest Park

Wrest Park is an exceptional rarity – a magnificent house of the 1830s, set in an outstanding restored garden landscape originating in the 17th century. The house itself is remarkable, a near unique example of 19th-century English architecture following the style of an 18th-century French chateau. Its grounds are a glorious amalgam of three centuries of English garden design, and contain one of the few remaining formal gardens of the early 18th century. For over 600 years the Wrest estate was home to one of the leading aristocratic families in the country, the de Greys. Each generation left its mark on the estate.

The family reached its greatest prominence when Edward IV made Edmund Grey his Lord Treasurer in 1463 and then Earl of Kent in 1465. More than 200 years later the formal gardens and the canal known as the Long Water were created by Amabel Benn, together with her son, Anthony, the 11th Earl, and his wife, Mary.In the early 18th century Anthony’s son, Henry, Duke of Kent (1671–1740), laid out what is now Wrest’s most exceptional feature, its massive formal woodland garden, enclosed on three sides by canals. He employed leading architects and garden designers – including Nicholas Hawksmoor, Thomas Archer, Batty Langley and William Kent – to create an ordered landscape of woodland avenues ornamented with statuary and garden buildings. These included Thomas Archer’s baroque pavilion, with its trompe l’œil paintings by Mark Anthony Hauduroy.

On the duke’s death his granddaughter Jemima, Marchioness Grey (1723–97), inherited the estate. She showed a keen interest in the gardens. In 1758 she brought in ‘Capability’ Brown, a leader of the new English landscape style of the time, to soften the edges of the garden and remodel the park while preserving the heart of the formal layout. Brown himself realised that to do more ‘might unravel the Mystery of the Gardens’.

Brown’s work is commemorated by the ‘Capability’ Brown column, built for Jemima by Edward Stevens. Jemima also added a Chinese temple and bridge, the Mithraic altar and a bathhouse

The Pavilions

Thomas Archer’s pavilion was designed and built between 1709 and 1711 and provided the duke with a pleasure house that was both a focus and a viewing point for the gardens.

One of the most stunning features of the pavilion’s Great Room – a large circular room with a domed ceiling – is its trompe l’œil wall-paintings by Mark Anthony Hauduroy. Trompe l’œil is a style of painting made popular in the 18th century which uses ‘tricks of the eye’ to make the painted objects appear three-dimensional. Using this effect Hauduroy mimics architectural features such as a coffered dome ceiling, fluted Corinthian columns, and niches which contain large urns and are flanked by classical statues. The paintings also include the de Grey coat of arms and family portraits, which are thought to celebrate the elevation of Henry Grey, then owner of Wrest Park, to the dukedom in 1710.