Cound Hall

En un regard

Le château en bref

Cound Hall is a country house from the very beginning of the 18th century, set in the Shropshire countryside south-east of Shrewsbury, near the village of Cound and the River Severn. Listed Grade I by Historic England since 1958, it is one of the most distinctive examples of English provincial Baroque. The house was built in 1703–1704 for Edward Cressett, whose family then left its old seat of Upton Cressett Hall, considered too isolated, for a site closer to the county town. The design is attributed to John Prince, a surveyor later active on the Harley estates in Marylebone. The red-brick main block with stone dressings, nine bays by five, is articulated by a giant order of Corinthian pilasters. After the Cressetts and their heirs the Thursby-Pelhams, the house passed to the McCorquodales; the novelist Barbara Cartland lived there in the late 1920s. Divided into flats in the mid-20th century, then left empty and placed on the register of buildings at risk, it was rescued from 1996 by the Waller family, who restored it and live there. It is now a private residence not open to the public.