Woodchester Mansion

Woodchester Mansion

Large country house, circa 1854–1868, designed by Benjamin Bucknall for William Leigh. Constructed in ashlar limestone with ashlar chimneys and stone slate roof in High Victorian Gothic style. The building is arranged around a small courtyard, comprising a main two-storey range with attic in an L-plan to the south, a chapel to the east, a secondary range to the west, and a service range to the north built into the hillside.

The south front features three parapet gables above buttressed walls. An eight-window fenestration runs symmetrically across the front. The ground floor has four-light wide mullioned and transomed windows with shouldered arched lower lights and trefoil-headed upper lights. The upper floor has three-light wide windows with trefoil-headed upper lights. Paired cross windows in the attic gables are surmounted by quatrefoil vents. Mullioned cellar windows are visible. Continuous drip moulds above the windows run over the buttresses; alternating buttresses carry realistically carved animal gargoyles that channel water from a coped channel running down the buttress below stone gutters on carved stone brackets. Paired ridge-mounted chimneys with circular shafts crown the composition.

The east side displays three main gable ends. The central gable terminates the chapel and features simple fin-like buttresses and elaborate flowing tracery in a five-light east window. The chapel has three-light windows on the south side and a single window on the north, both with matching tracery. The gable end of the main south range contains a large off-centre single-storey canted bay window with large mullioned and transomed windows to each face. Diagonal corner buttresses with attached shafts and winged animal gargoyles support this feature. A trefoil-headed lancet-pierced parapet crowns the bay. A large pointed relieving arch above the bay is echoed by a drip mould. Remaining fenestration is mixed mullioned or transomed, with upper lights having separate hoodmoulds. The service range gable end to the right displays scattered mullioned casements, bold diagonal buttresses, and ridge-mounted stone vents.

The west side is highly varied, resulting from the large gable end of the main range to the right, a buttressed return wing at the centre, and the service range to the left with a projecting wing. A belfry tower set behind this range dominates, featuring a tall coped hipped roof, carved cresting, and an iron weather vane. Tall stone louvred belfry openings pierce the tower.

Within the courtyard, a buttressed west end of the chapel contains a spherical triangular window with rose tracery and two two-light windows below with Decorated tracery. A central gabled projection to the rear of the main range has stepped trefoil-headed stair lights and much leaded glazing.

The interior retains a fine tierceron chapel vault with individually carved flower bosses. Most of the house interior remains incomplete; arched stone fireplaces and doorways are being installed. The main range includes one room with completed stone vaulting, whilst other areas have only springing in place. Round arched moulded rere-arches frame the main front windows. Simpler vaulting runs through the staircase and corridors. Numerous stone fittings include a bath and a tunnel-vaulted shower with an animal gargoyle water outlet.

Leigh purchased Woodchester Park from Lord Ducie in 1845, demolishing the 18th-century mansion that previously stood on the site. Bucknall, a young local architect greatly influenced by Viollet-le-Duc from an early age and later his English translator, brought a rational approach to Gothic architecture to this commission, which represents his most thorough application of such principles. The house, never completed, is partially glazed and completely roofed, and stands as one of the most remarkable houses of its period, uniquely exhibiting its construction process. The large landscaped park (possibly by Capability Brown) also contains a boat house and The Tower.