Woodchester Park

Woodchester Park is a long, steep valley of woods and pasture a few miles west of Nailsworth, below Nympsfield on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. Down its floor runs a chain of five lakes, made soon after 1809 by the Woodchester Mansion Trust's account, and at its head stands the unfinished Victorian Woodchester Mansion. The National Trust has owned the park since 1994, and it is free to walk in.

History

The valley has been a park for more than four hundred years, and almost every owner changed it.

A Tudor deer park

In 1564 the Crown granted Woodchester Park to the Huntley family of Frocester, who enclosed the valley with a wall about 7 miles long to make a deer park. They built a hunting lodge around 1612, the earliest house known on the site. In 1631 the lodge was sold to the Ducie family, who spent the next two centuries turning it into a Georgian house called Spring Park and the valley into a landscape around it.

The lakes

The great landscape gardeners came to look. Capability Brown visited in 1782, and his assistant John Speyers surveyed a plan with six lakes, though Brown died the next year and the plan was probably never carried out. Humphry Repton was consulted in 1809, and shortly afterwards the lakes were made by damming the stream that runs down the valley, the Woodchester Mansion Trust says (Parks and Gardens UK notes an estate plan showing ponds by 1782). His son, John Adey Repton, improved the house around 1830, and probably designed the boathouse on Old Pond for the first Earl Ducie. When the second earl inherited in 1840 the house needed repairs costing about £8,000; the family chose to concentrate on their estate at Tortworth, and the park was put up for sale in 1843.

William Leigh and the unfinished mansion

William Leigh, a wealthy convert to Roman Catholicism, bought the estate in 1845 for £170,000. Pugin condemned the old house, and work began on a new one in the mid-1850s to designs by Benjamin Bucknall, a young local architect who blended the ideas of the French theorist Viollet-le-Duc with Cotswold building in stone. Leigh died in 1873 with the house unfinished, and his son Willie found completing it was not feasible. It was left as it stands, without floors or ceilings in many rooms, which is why it is now a place to see how a Victorian house was built.

The twentieth century

The Leighs sold the estate in 1922. In the Second World War troops were based in the park to train in bridge building, and access was restricted. From the 1950s the mansion was leased and kept weatherproof, then neglected from the mid-1970s, while conifer plantations grew up round the lakes. Stroud District Council bought the mansion and its pasture in the late 1980s, and the Woodchester Mansion Trust was set up to run it; the National Trust bought the park in 1994. Historic England registers it as a park of special historic interest, Grade II. In July 2023 the Trust opened a new entrance, Tinkley Gate, on the old Thistledown Farm at the top of the valley, with a car park and café; it takes its name from one of the park's five entrances of the eighteenth century.

What to see

The lakes are the heart of the park. The walk leaflet's map names them Brick Kiln Pond, Old Pond and Middle Pond, with Kennel Pond and Parkmill Pond further down the valley. Around them the valley mixes woodland, meadow and pasture; the National Trust's boathouse walk notes a pasture restored from conifer plantation in 1997. On the dam of Old Pond stands the boathouse, a small rustic building of stone and brick with a boat dock below and a timber oriel over the boat opening.

At the head of the valley is the mansion, a Grade I Gothic house in limestone, its clock tower dated 1858; greater and lesser horseshoe bats roost in it, and on its open days you can watch them on camera.

Visiting

The park is free to walk in, and non-members pay £4 a day to park, by card, cash or the JustPark app, with one ticket good at both car parks, and National Trust members park free. Tinkley Gate has a car park, a welcome centre, a café and accessible toilets; the Buckholt car park is at the top of the valley, open dawn to dusk by the National Trust's listing. The National Trust asks for dogs to be kept on a lead at all times, as livestock graze the park. The ground is uneven and steep in places, so wear walking shoes or boots, and expect a long climb back to the car. The mansion's trust warns there is no phone signal at the house. At Tinkley Gate there is accessible parking a short walk from the welcome centre, where two of Countryside Mobility's all-terrain Tramper scooters are free to use, 10am to 12.30pm and 1pm to 3.30pm every day; booking ahead is strongly recommended (01453 860037).

The mansion is run separately by the Woodchester Mansion Trust, with its own opening days and charges. On its open days a free minibus runs on the hour from 11am, when volunteers are available, from the foot of the steps at the Buckholt car park down to the house.

Getting there

The Buckholt car park is off the B4066, the road along the escarpment between Stroud and Dursley, near Nympsfield and Coaley Peak; Tinkley Gate is on Tinkley Lane (GL10 3UH). Do not follow signs or satnav for Woodchester Park or the mansion's postcode, which can take you to the wrong end of the valley. On foot, the Woodchester Park and boathouse walk, a 6km circuit without stiles, goes down past the mansion, round Middle Pond and back by the boathouse.

Nearby

Woodchester Mansion is inside the park. For somewhere to stay, Woodchester Valley Vineyard has stays about a mile from the walk's route, and the Amberley Inn, at Amberley, has rooms looking over the Woodchester valley. Across the Nailsworth valley rise the commons above Stroud: Rodborough Common and Minchinhampton Common with its long barrow, Whitfield's Tump. On the escarpment to the north is Selsley's hilltop church, All Saints, and our guide to the Cotswolds with children has more places for a family day out.