For some reason, Newark Park had never been on my radar as an important visit and often got pushed aside in my planning in favour of more high-profile properties. In fact, even for this long weekend, I had scheduled Dyrham Park and Prior Park Landscape Gardens for two of the days and it was only at the last minute that I realised Newark Park was within easy striking distance and could make up a third strand in my ‘parky’ tour of South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.
Newark served as an important lesson in not dismissing properties out of hand, however, as this was a fascinating location with an interesting history, spectacular views and excellent staff and volunteers. From the moment we arrived at visitor reception, we were welcomed with open arms (not literally, that would be a bit weird!) and provided with all the information we needed to make the most of our day, while every other person we met after that was equally as friendly and helpful.
The property is not overflowing with valuable artefacts, so a full glossy guidebook is perhaps unnecessary, but Newark put some of the bigger properties to shame as it supplies a cheaper ‘short guide’ that cost me just £2 and gave me all the facts I needed to supplement everything else that I learned while on site (which was quite a lot to be going on with anyway). Perhaps a shorter leaflet of this kind would serve at other locations while full guidebooks are being updated and reprinted?
We had been given some inside info by a Newark volunteer we met at Dyrham, so as soon as we arrived, we signed up for a basement tour, places for which were running out fast. With time to spare before our slot, we took a stroll around the gardens, which include a formal walled garden alongside the house, then pleasure grounds that trail down the steep hillside, passing a folly in the woods, to reach the lake and its neighbouring summer house. Works are ongoing to rebuild a crinkle-crankle wall at the foot of the slopes, while there is a good exhibition of sculptures nearer the house.
Newark Park house is actually poised on the edge of an apparent precipice, so taking a photo of the south front of the building requires a serious uphill angle (see above)… or a trip to the opposite side of the valley with a monumentally powerful zoom lens! I am not complaining, though, as the views from the front terrace, and in fact from the house’s south windows, are spectacular and few would argue that this was not an excellent spot to build one’s home.
It was not originally constructed as a home, however, as Sir Nicholas Poyntz of nearby Acton Court first built the property as a hunting lodge. With four storeys (a basement and three upper floors) and a flat roof, it was the perfect vantage point from which to watch the chase across the hills and valley floor. Later commentators suggested that it was also a place for Sir Nicholas to ‘keep his whores’ as his marriage was not a happy one. Either way, Newark (Sir Nicholas’ ‘new worke’) had a relatively inauspicious start in life.
One of Newark’s excellent visitor experiences is the guided talk based around a model of the building. The volunteer pulls apart the ‘jigsaw’ of the house and then discusses each part of its gradual expansion across the centuries. The hunting lodge was first built in 1550, with some expansion in the 17th century and much larger additions and modernisations in the 1790s when it was owned by the Clutterbuck family. They added Georgian aspects as well as Gothic elements such as the south-side portico and the battlements on the roof, and created the symmetry of the building’s core, with some false windows added to fit the design. The property was rented out from 1867, and in the 1890s, the then tenant Annie King added the servants’ wing to the north front. Newark in its current format was complete.
This was by far the end of the tale, however. The last Clutterbuck owner left the house to the National Trust in 1949 in honour of her son who was killed in the First World War (his plane was shot down by the Red Baron), and it is apparently still a registered War Memorial. After this, the Trust didn’t know what to do with Newark and leased it to a nursing home in the 1950s and 60s. This was fairly disastrous and both house and garden had deteriorated considerably by the time its white knight came along.
This white knight was Robert ‘Bob’ Parsons, a keen architect and connoisseur of antiques, who tenanted the property from 1970 until his death in 2000, paying only a token rent of £1 a year with the proviso that he covered the cost of all repairs and renovations he wanted to make. Parsons was raised in Texas and had been stationed in East Anglia in WWII where he developed a love of Britain and its architecture. He studied at Harvard on his return to the US but then relocated to England in 1950. When Newark Park was seeking a repairing tenant, Bob was an ideal candidate. Today, the house is presented very much as it would have been when Bob was living there and I fell in love with several of the rooms, most notably the Dining Room with its striking landscape paintings and the bold Thai screen on one wall. My taste in art appears to match Bob’s quite closely in fact and I saw very few paintings that I would not have been happy to have on my own walls.
Bob – later assisted by his partner Michael who joined him at Newark in the 1980s – kept many of the features important to each period of the house’s history, so it feels very much like a jigsaw in its interiors as well as its structure. The many different pieces (or rooms) all interlock neatly, however, to make a house that is full of interest and also feels like a comfortable home. The Tudor Bedroom retains its original 16th century stone fireplace and garderobe drop toilet, while some of the mullioned windows on the back of Poyntz’s hunting lodge can still be seen inside the house where later additions brought them into the interior. Meanwhile, the Georgian Neo-Classical entrance hall sports curved doors, Doric columns and a frieze of swags and ox skulls. The Clutterbucks’ time at Newark is also marked by the family’s window on the first-floor landing with its 18th century painted glass.
The basement of the house is only accessible on a guided tour, but this is recommended as it further emphasises the jigsaw build, with both Tudor and Georgian kitchens on show. It is a fairly atmospheric space, and the short tour includes some other little gems about the property’s life across the ages, from basic Tudor living through to the modern filming of Tess of the D’Urbervilles for television.
The peacocks wandering the grounds were another welcome addition by Bob Parsons so keep an eye out for them. Hopefully, the visitor reception staff managed to encourage the nomadic peahen and chicks out of the car park and back into the safety of the garden. I am not sure what the mother hen was thinking. Perhaps the instruction being imparted to the youngsters was ‘never come here again’ and ‘do NOT play in traffic’.
Before you leave, make sure you take a look up at the roof so you don’t miss ‘Spike’, the golden dragon weathervane, who is a survivor from the original Tudor lodge. Just think of all the things he must have seen from his perch over the past 470 years. If only he could talk!
Highlights: A jigsaw house; comfortable atmosphere; views; peacocks!
Refreshments: Hot chocolate with cream and a slice of Victoria sponge cake
Purchase(s): Short guide
Companion(s): Sarah
National Trust Challenge 