Compton Park House

En un regard

Le château en bref

Some twelve kilometres west of Salisbury, in the Nadder valley, Compton Park House is a manor house that for more than three centuries was the seat of the Penruddocks, Wiltshire gentry linked to the Earls of Pembroke of Wilton. Built beside the parish church, on the old manorial site, the house overlooks a park derived from a former medieval deer park, embellished with a lake formed by damming a stream. Its present appearance dates from around 1780, when Charles Penruddock wrapped the 17th-century house in a symmetrical east front of limestone, crowned with battlements and opened on the ground floor by Venetian windows, around a crenellated porch with a Tudor arch. This restrained Gothic Revival conceals remarkable interiors: a drawing room fully panelled around 1700 and carved in the tradition of Grinling Gibbons, a dining room with an Adam-style ceiling and an early 18th-century staircase with twisted balusters. The family name remains attached to the Royalist rising of 1655, led by Colonel John Penruddock, who lost his life in it. Sold in 1930, the estate has since been privately owned and is not open to the public.