West Wycombe Park

West Wycombe Park is a country house near the village of West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Buckinghamshire is lucky in its country houses: from the architectural perfection and purity of Stowe to the Victorian adaptation of earlier French or Tudor styles developed by the Rothschild family nearby in the Vale of Aylesbury.

First impressions of West Wycombe are that it should be situated in the hills of Tuscany, or perched as an aristocratic summer retreat looking over the sea in the Crimea. However, here it sits in Buckinghamshire, quite happy in its 18th century landscaped park, surrounded by smaller temples acting as satellites to the greater temple that is the grand neoclassical house. Of the long rectangular house, all four of its facades are columned and pedimented, three theatrically so.

However, just as at Waddesdon Manor (one hundred years younger) one can look for hints of the many French châteaux which influenced the design, so can one at West Wycombe look for the various Palladian villas of Italy. The east facade is quite definitely inspired by the Villa Capra (otherwise known as La Rotunda) at Vicenza designed by Palladio, and so the game goes on: is there a touch of the Villa Foscari? Does the north front have a hint of the Villa Farnese? Whatever the truth of the inspirations behind the various facades of West Wycombe, the whole sits perfectly as one composition.

Work began in 1740 and was finally finished circa 1800 when the older house was fully transformed. During this time the owner Sir Francis Dashwood (later Lord Despencer, and known for bringing the Hellfire Club to West Wycombe) had employed three different architects, and two landscape architects in the design of the house, and had a huge input himself. He had made the Grand Tour, seen the villas of the Italian renaissance at first hand, and wished to emulate them.

The finest architects of the day submitted plans for West Wycombe, among them Robert Adam, and indeed parts of the mansion have been attributed to him. In 1760 Thomas Cook the landscape architect began to execute the plans for the park, with a man-made lake and temples. Later Humphrey Repton was to enhance the grounds further until they appeared much as they do today.

Today, the first sight of the house is usually from the west; from this direction one end of the house appears as a small temple with a portico. The opposing end of the house appears also temple-like but this time the muse was from the Villa Rotunda.

The facade however that most people remember is the great south front - a two story colonnade of Corinthian columns, surmounted by a pediment in the centre. The architect of this elevation was John Donowell, who did the work between 1761 and 1763 (although he had to wait until 1775 for payment). This was originally the entrance front, and the front door still remains in the centre of the ground floor. This in itself is a huge deviation from the classical form: West Wycombe does not have a second floor piano nobile. The principal reception rooms are on the ground floor with large sash windows opening immediately into the porticos, and thus on to the gardens, a situation unheard of in the grand villas and palaces of Renaissance Italy.

The more severe north front is of eleven bays, with the end bays given significance by rustication at ground floor level. The centre of this facade has Ionic columns supporting a pediment.

The interior of the house has a marvellous series of 18th century salons decorated and furnished in the style of that period, with wondrous coloured marble floors, and painted ceilings depicting classical scenes.

External link

• West Wycombe page on the National Trust's website (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hbcache/property267.htm)]