place

Leigh Court

Buildings and structures in North SomersetGrade II* listed buildings in North SomersetGrade II* listed houses in SomersetGrade II listed parks and gardens in SomersetHouses completed in 1814
Use British English from September 2013
Leigh Court (geograph 4418338)
Leigh Court (geograph 4418338)

Leigh Court is a country house which is a Grade II* listed building in Abbots Leigh, Somerset, England. The grounds and park are listed, Grade II, on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England.The site was a house of rest for the monks of St Augustine's Abbey, which became Bristol Cathedral. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was granted to Sir George Norton who built an Elizabethan mansion. One of his descendants gave sanctuary to Charles II during his escape to France in 1651. The original house was demolished and rebuilt in the Regency period by Philip John Miles and became the seat of the Miles baronets. The mansion housed a collection of over a hundred paintings representing many Old Masters. In common with many country houses after the First World War, it entered a period of institutional use in 1919 under Rev Harold Nelson Burden (1859-1930) as a psychiatric hospital but was subsequently restored. The estate now offers office accommodation, conference and meeting rooms, and the house has a licence as a venue for civil wedding services. The Palladian house has a Greek Revival interior which has largely survived the various uses of the building. The grounds were originally landscaped by Humphrey Repton; part of them is now within the Leigh Woods National Nature Reserve. An organic farm has also been established based on the walled garden.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Leigh Court (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.469722222222 ° E -2.6591666666667 °
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Address

Leigh Court

Church Road
BS8 3QU
England, United Kingdom
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Leigh Court (geograph 4418338)
Leigh Court (geograph 4418338)
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Nearby Places

Sneyd Park
Sneyd Park

Sneyd Park is a suburb of Bristol, England, lying on the western fringe of Clifton Down, adjacent to the Avon Gorge and the Sea Walls observation point. It was formally twinned with Barton Hill (an area of Bristol) in 1976 as the two areas have curiously similar demographics (cite Avon County Council planning report Jan 1974). The twinning involves an annual luncheon between local resident's at the Barton Hill Settlement. It is part of the Stoke Bishop district. Home to many millionaires, Sneyd Park was originally developed in Victorian times. Many Victorian and Edwardian villas line the edge of the Downs. More modern housing has since been built down over the slope, towards Sea Mills, Bristol. Much of this development was carried out by the Stride family builders whose practice was "to purchase an estate freehold and to erect thereon their own houses, with the knowledge that none will be able to come along and dump a lot of cheap houses down in the neighbourhood, thereby spoiling the amenities of the place and detracting from the value of the houses erected by the firm." The 'Stride brothers' specialised in constructing individual style homes with the emphasis on location, finish and design. Buildings were never duplicated and no two were built to the same design. They often have solid oak interior doors, oak-panelled hallways, the hallmark Stride letterboxes and impressive staircases. Brothers Jared and Jethro Stride founded the business in the 1920s, followed by Jared's sons Arthur and Frederick, and then their sons Leslie and Raymond. In 1864 Jared and Jethro's brother Lot was killed in an accident in a sawmill in Cardiff when his hair was caught in the revolving saw. The incident made the newspapers around the world. Prior to developing Sneyd Park Edwin Stride and his sons Jared and Jethro had set up the Crown Brick Works in Shirehampton to supply bricks for the docks then under construction. Clifton Down, in the vicinity of Sea Walls, was the location of the flight, on 12 November 1910, of the first aircraft built by the Bristol and Colonial Aeroplane Company. Many thousands of Bristol's citizens flocked to see two well-known French pilots, Maurice Tétard and Henri Jullerot, give a public demonstration of the new Bristol Boxkite. Blériot's famous flight across the English Channel had occurred only the year before.