Our European Adventure: Pinned by the Peacock

We visited Newark Park this weekend. Newark Park was originally a modest four level Tudor hunting lodge built between 1544 and 1556. The house was then called "New Work" and was partly constructed with building materials from the recently disassembled Kingswood Abbey, about five miles away. Disassembled because, well, you remember Henry VIII’s little spat with the Catholic Church? He had them all dissolved.

In 1600, the lodge was sold to the Low family who in 1672 significantly extended the building by the addition of a second four-story building to the west of the original lodge, which was joined to the original by a passage stairway creating an H-shaped footprint. The Lows owned Newark Park until 1722 when it was sold for £6,010 (equivalent to £846,000 / $1.3M or today) to the Harding family who after making some minor alterations sold it to James Clutterbuck. The Clutterbucks engaged the architect James Wyatt to remodel it into a four-square house in 1790. Their improvements included the creation of a formal deer-park to the south of the house and landscaping of the rest of the grounds.

The Clutterbucks left Newark in 1860 and let it out. Apparently they didn’t check references very well as the tenants decided to change a ‘few’ things in the house. You know, little things like adding servants' quarters on the north side, installing a hot-air heating system and running hot water to the second floor. When the Clutterbucks got tired of dealing with renters, they donated the property to the National Trust. When the Trust took ownership they did not open Newark Park to the public but instead let it out to tenants who ran it as a nursing home. By 1970 the house was in a state of disrepair and the gardens over-grown. The National Trust discussed taking the roof off the property and letting it fall into rubble.

When Texan architect Robert (Bob) Parsons heard about this, he approached the National Trust who agreed to let him move into the house while renovating both the house and the grounds. Our guide said that Bob Parsons had come to the UK as a service member during WWII and loved the country so much that when the war was over, he moved back over to live. He moved into the house in 1972 and lived there / worked on the house until his death in 2000. The house was then opened back to the public in 2002.

Okay, so history lesson over.

We drove up to Newark Park this afternoon & after the Tom Tom’s attempts to see how narrow a road our car can fit down (we may have nudged the ivy on the side once or twice), we arrived to find the wildlife lounging on the outer lawn.

After driving around the sheep, we parked in the lot outside the property. Adam got out of the car and start putting on his jacket. I started to get out of the car, but was greeted by this:

Eventually he walked away & I could get out of the car to walk up to the house.

The house is not the most impressive manor house we’ve been to, but the views have to be some of the best.

We took a guided tour of the gardens and took in all the impressive views.

We also came across some sheep lounging by the lake. Luckily they have a ring life preserver within reach if the gathering gets out of hand and any of them fall in the water.