Lasborough Park

Lasborough Park is a small country house in the valleys south of Kingscote, in the South Cotswolds between Nailsworth and Tetbury. James Wyatt built it in 1794 for Edmund Estcourt, in a castle-like Gothic style with four battlemented corner towers, and it stands in a park laid out over a medieval deer park. It is listed Grade II and is a private home.

History

Lasborough is an old manor: it was in being by the eleventh century, and its manor house is recorded from 1319. The manor house that stands today, Lasborough Manor below St Mary's church, was built in about 1610 for Sir Thomas Estcourt; it was long a farmhouse and is now a private house, listed Grade II*.

The Estcourts

Thomas Estcourt bought the manor in 1598, and his family held it until 1826. In about 1794 Edmund Estcourt had the architect James Wyatt design a new house in the middle of the park. Wyatt's original plans, which were not followed exactly, still hang in the library in the north-east corner of the house.

The Holfords

From 1844 to 1927 the estate belonged to the Holford family. The house was altered and enlarged in the nineteenth century, and the listing suggests the Holfords may have lived here while they were building Westonbirt House, near what is now Westonbirt, the National Arboretum. More of the park was replanted in their time. In the 1950s the estate was owned by a timber company, which cleared some of the trees.

What to see

From the footpath you see the main front: a symmetrical range of two storeys with a three-storey canted bay in the middle under a battlemented parapet, and four square corner towers, battlemented above a corbel table. The windows are large stone mullions. Behind is a big U-shaped wing added in the nineteenth century, with a many-sided porch at its east corner.

The park round it was laid out in the late eighteenth century in the English landscape manner, over the old deer park, with belts of trees and single parkland trees and pleasure grounds to the south-west. Inside, which visitors cannot see, the listing records plain classical plaster friezes, probably Wyatt's, a cantilevered stone stair with an iron balustrade in the south-west tower and a marble fireplace in the drawing room.

Visiting

Lasborough Park is private, and so is its park. It is seen from the public footpath only; keep to the path and close gates behind you. The house shows best from the climb out of Ozleworth Bottom.

Getting there

The house is reached on foot. The Kingscote, Ozleworth and Lasborough walk starts from the Hunters Hall Inn on the A4135 at Kingscote, and passes the house on a long field path near the end, 7.5 miles (11.9km) round. The inn has a car park at the rear; the Cotswolds National Landscape, which publishes its own shorter walk from the inn, says walkers have the inn's permission to park there and asks them to call in before or after, so ask at the bar if you are leaving the car for the walk. Walkers report sheep and lambs in the fields, so keep dogs on a lead, and in the summer of 2026 they found long grass and nettles on the field paths in the second half.

Nearby

On the same walk are the Norman church of St Bartholomew at Newington Bagpath, beside its castle mound, and St Nicholas at Ozleworth, with its six-sided tower. The Holfords' monuments are in St Catherine's at Westonbirt, beside their great house, and to the east the medieval Beverston Castle is another private house seen from outside. For a meal or a bed, the Hunters Hall Inn is at the start of the walk, and Calcot Manor is a hotel and spa a short drive north-east.