Lypiatt Park is a private estate, the lodge being about two miles by road west of Bisley in the direction of Stroud.

EARLY HISTORY
'DICK' WHITTINGTON
THE STEPHENS FAMILY
PAUL WATHEN
LYPIATT AND AFRICA
TWENTIETH CENTURY OWNERS

When the Lypiatt Park Estate came on the market in September 1919 it not only included the mansion and surrounding park, but 15 farms, numerous small-holdings and cottages, and valuable woodland, in all over 3,300 acres.  This was the estate at its zenith, built up largely by the Dorington family after they bought Lypiatt Park at auction on 30 July 1847. John Edward Dorington had been Clerk of The Fees and Chief Clerk of the Public Bills in the House of Commons; he immediately set about repairing and improving the house and also started to enlarge the estate by buying farms in the neighbourhood.  When he died in 1874 his son, also John Edward Dorington, continued to take a keen interest in the estate which his father had built up  substantially stepping-up the expansion programme by buying more farms.  In 1876 he started a two years' programme of alterations to the house itself.  Designed by an eminent architect Thomas Henry Wyatt, the work (then worth £,6849) was carried out by Wall and Hook.  Hook, a stonemason, was the youngest son of the baker  of Eastcombe where he built and lived at The Laurels.  When the alterations and additions were complete, the mansion was essentially as seen today.

Early History

The estate has had a long and colourful history.  The name ‘Lypiatt’ is commonly said to mean a gate over which deer could leap, but which restrained other stock. Given the importance of deer in the local economy of this period, the gate was one over which deer could leap into a deer park, but not out of it; there is, however, no evidence of a deer park at this time.  ‘Lypiatt’ is first recorded in 1220 as the name of two of the tithings of the hundred of Bisley – firstly as Lippegat where Richard was the principal resident and secondly as Lopegatt held by Henry.  The first was Nether Lypiatt and the second Over Lypiatt.  About 1230 there is a record of Henry de Lypiatt holding lands from the Earl of Hereford; he seems to have had his house where Middle Lypiatt is today. The tithing of Over Lypiatt included what is now Lypiatt Park and the upper part of the ridge along which Bisley Old Road runs today; the southern boundary ran along the Lime brook which runs through the middle of the Horns Valley to the Stroudwater near Bowbridge; the northern boundary roughly followed Summer Street, Parliament Street and High Street down to the Slad Brook.  The estate controlled only part of the lands in the tithing which was included in the parish of Stroud from 1304 onwards. 

By 1272 Sir William Maunsell from Frampton had purchased the farm, the principal house of which was situated, like other farms in the area, just below the plateau edge; in this instance, unstable ground prevented it from being built any lower.  The Maunsells were an important family who held land not only at Frampton and Lypiatt, but also at Tortworth near Berkeley and Redland near Bristol.  As a domestic knight, Sir William was an important retainer of the de Berkeleys of Berkeley Castle.  In 1281, the de Berkeleys owed three knights service to the king and when summoned to wage war against Prince Llewellyn ap Gruffydd Maunsell served with Sir Maurice de Berkeley and his son Sir Thomas.  The following year found the three knights again in service against the Scots at Falkirk.  In 1297 in what was possibly his last campaign, he fought in Flanders with the de Berkeleys.  Sir William was prominent in the administration of the county and built his house where the mansion of Lypiatt Park stands today.  We know that at Lypiatt he had a court with houses and gardens and a dovecote which still stands as well as over 200 acres of land; the granary also dates from the late 13th century.  Sir William also leased from Johanna de Bohun of Bisley a fish pond, with six acres of land and three acres of wood; the pond was probably one of those still found in the valley below the mansion and the land was across the stream in the manor of Bisley.  He died in 1324 and was succeeded by his son, also called William.  Over Lypiatt had probably once been part of the manor of Bisley, but the estate was now held directly from the Earl of Hereford as ‘chief lord’.

The chapel was probably built by William Maunsell II around 1350 since in 1367 Thomas Maunsell and John Clifford presented Adam Robyn to the perpetual chantry in the chapel of Lypiatt.  It was rebuilt over the years and probably little of the mediæval building remains except for the chancel arch.

‘Dick’ Whittington

Towards the end of the century, the fortunes of the Maunsells declined and Philip Maunsell was forced to take a loan of £500 from his nephew Richard Whittington, the famous ‘Dick’ Whittington, Mayor of the Staple of Westminster.  Whittington’s mother was Joan daughter of Sir William Maunsell (II) who had married firstly Sir William Whittington of Pauntley. The Lypiatt estate was given as surety for repayment by 1 April 1395, but Maunsell defaulted and after an enquiry held by Hugh de Bisley, bailiff of the liberty of Bisley, the estate was delivered to Whittington on 18 November 1395.  The 'manor' of Over Lypiatt now comprised five oxen, one cow and 30 quarters (8 bushels) of draggett or drage, a typical Cotswold crop being a mixture of oats and barley.

It is most unlikely that Richard Whittington ever visited let alone lived at Lypiatt and he appears to have farmed it through trustees.  There was more drama on his death in March 1423 for he had no children and his wife predeceased him.  On his deathbed he is alleged to have whispered to his brother Robert that the Lypiatt estate would be his.  His brother Robert's son was Guy de Whittington who married Cicely Browning the heir to the extensive and nearby de Rodborough estates.  Robert and Guy claimed that the estate had been willed to them by Thomas Roos, one of the trustees, and they succeeded in their claim in 1424, Thomas the younger son of Guy and Cecily eventually succeeding to the Lypiatt estates, probably in 1440-1441 when his father died. 

So money had flowed back into the Lypiatt estate and it is Thomas Whittington who presided over the first manorial court of which there is record on 11 October 1457.  He had also made a prudent marriage and in 1462 the estate of Rodmarton was added to those of Lypiatt and Pitchcombe.  The estate eventually passed by marriage to another very wealthy family the Wyes, firstly to Robert who was twice married and had at least 14 children, and then to his son Thomas.  It was probably during their time that the core of the present house and its associated buildings were developed. Thomas was sheriff of the county in 1575 and a very large landowner who probably lived at Bradwell rather than Over Lypiatt.  He died in 1581, the last of the Wyes of Over Lypiatt, and was buried in Stroud. His wife Juliana (or Gillian) inherited the estate of Over Lypiatt.  In 1583, she married again, this time to John Throckmorton. Little is known about Throckmorton, but he clearly married well and immediately set about consolidating his position at Over Lypiatt.  He and his wife bought out the interests of the rest of the Wye family in various places for over £5,000, sold the manor of Rodmarton to Robert Coxe and in 1592 made a settlement of the manor of Corse.  Purely as a business venture, he and his neighbour Thomas Clissold leased property in the centre of Stroud for a nominal annual rental of penny and it was probably Throckmorton who paid for the construction of the market house on this site in The Shambles.

Throckmorton was a Roman Catholic and it is possible that he was related directly or by marriage to the principal conspirators who attempted to blow up Parliament House on 5 November 1605. In October that year, Robert Catesby, the leader, was at Lypiatt Park where he received a letter which some suppose to allude to the conspiracy’s explosive culmination.  Throckmorton was never associated with the plot whatever his connection may have been.  One room in the house is still referred to as the ‘Plot Room’.

The Stephens Family

The Stephens were an old county family whose fortunes grew in the second half of the 16th century. In 1564 Edward Stephens bought the manor of Horsley and by 1576 had finished enlarging the manor house which was at Chavenage.  He bought the manor of Eastington in 1574.  From 1599 his third son Thomas Stephens had been charged with the wardship of his nephew Nathaniel, minor heir to the manor of Horsley, but Thomas clearly thought that he needed a more firm base in Gloucestershire and started a spree of land purchases by buying the manor of Cherrington in 1602 and then the manor of  Chipping Sodbury shortly afterwards.  Thomas Stephens was an attorney of the Middle Temple and attorney–general to Prince Henry, the heir of James I, and his brother Prince Charles. At what was probably the height of his influence over affairs in London, Thomas Stephens extended his interests in Gloucestershire by buying Over Lypiatt from Throckmorton on 25 June 1610 for £4,550.  This included the manors of Over Lypiatt, Frampton Maunsell and Pitchcombe and houses and lands in Bisley, such as Copsegrove and Colliers, Stroud, Sapperton, Minchinhampton and elsewhere.

We do not know whether Thomas Stephens left London to live at Lypiatt, but his youngest child Nathaniel was born there on 29 July 1611. Dying in 1613, Thomas Stephens was buried in the St. Laurence’s church, Stroud, where a handsome funerary memorial has fortunately survived.  The estate descended through the Stephens family for another 115 years during which their fortunes fluctuated.  Additional lands were purchased, but it is unlikely that significant alterations were made to the house itself.  The Stephens were strong advocates of the Parliamentary cause, particularly Nathaniel Stephens of Horsley, and so it is no surprise to find that Lypiatt House was garrisoned during the Civil War by some 60 Parliamentary troops.  On 1 January 1645, Sir Jacob Astley at the head of a Royalist force besieged the house with musketry and canon fire.  Some of the garrison escaped, but about 45 Parliamentary troops were taken prisoner back to Cirencester and the house set on fire.  Only part of the house was affected and John Stephens apparently did little more than repair the damage with funds from Astley’s estate.

In 1679, John was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas (II) who seems to have made slight improvements to the rather grand house of the early 16th century.  He appears to be responsible for laying out formal gardens, perhaps in keeping with his appointment as high sheriff in 1693.  On succeeding on the death of his father in 1708 Thomas Stephens (III) purchased the manorial rights of Bisley from Sir Robert Atkyns the Younger, the famous historian of Gloucestershire.  He was one of the two Knights of the Shire until his death in 1719. We are fortunate in having an engraving of the house and gardens at the height of its prosperity made by Johannes Kip some time before 1712.  The principal range consisted of a hall with service rooms beyond a screens passage to the east and living quarters to the west.  To the north and south were irregular and incomplete courtyards, that to the north fronted by a gatehouse and chapel and to the south domestic and farm buildings were joined to the service area of the hall..  To the south were formal gardens with a long, terraced walk along the edge of the valley overlooking Toadsmoor.

Paul Wathen

From this pinnacle of respectability, however, the family fortunes declined under his son and heir John Stephens.  In severe financial difficulties, the furniture was sold in 1744 and the estate handed over to trustees, either relations or prominent local businessmen.  The house was tenanted.  John Stephens died childless and the estate descended to his nephew Thomas Baghott De la Bere (Delabere) of Southam. His mother was Hester daughter of Thomas Stephens of Over Lypiatt, born in 1706 and died in 1783, who had married William Baghott Delabere on 18 June 1725.  Delabere was more than involved with his own estates to want to take over Over Lypiatt on 25/26 April 1800 he put the estate up for auction in Stroud.  Lot I comprised the house and some 450 acres; the rest of the estate comprised Copsegrove, Stancombe, Fennell's, Nodling's and Kilmister's Farms as well as numerous small lots.  De la Bere sold the main part of the estate to Paul Wathen, a merchant, dealer and chapman from Woodchester, by an indenture dated 4 January 1801.

The house and grounds were substantially the same as depicted by Kip 100 years earlier, if less well maintained.  But Wathen was social climber and linked with the set of the Prince Regent. He was knighted as Sir Paul Wathen, in order to stand in for Lord Strangford being promoted KGCB, but absent as ambassador in Lisbon, in 1810 when presumably the portrait of him in robes, now in Stroud Museum, was painted.  Continuing the process Wathen changed his name in May 1812  and, taking his wife's mother's maiden name, became Sir Paul Baghott.  In keeping with his pretensions, Wathen immediately denied public access to what he was now pleased to call Lypiatt Park and enclosed it.  About 1807 he retained a fashionable architect Jeffry Wyatt (from 1824, Wyattville) who had worked for the Prince Regent and was then remodeling Badminton.  Although his more elaborate designs had to be severely curtailed, the style was castellated Gothic (battled baronial).  There was no grand approach to the old house and one of the first things that Wathen did was to remove the mediæval gate house and stables.  The long line of barns along the road, together with some of the service buildings on the south side, were also demolished.  Major additions and alterations were made and a long, battlemented terrace with a variety of types of bastions replaced the terraced walk. Fortunately the chapel, granary and dovecote were spared the make-over and a block of buildings retained substantially intact and converted into stables, albeit suitably battlemented. To provide a suitable entrance Wathen constructed a road along the edge of the valley north-eastwards to reach the track that ran from Bisley to Stroud and planted a remarkable sycamore avenue as far as Stancombe.  He also had a road constructed towards Stroud and had Wyatt design a Gothic Entrance Lodge which was built about 1820.

Wathen also set about buying local property, notably Sowmeads (Lower Southmeads Farm) and Higgon's Court with Mortimer's Farm (now Jaynes’ Court) from William Yarnton Mills in 1804.  But his attempts to keep up with the life style of the Prince of Wales and financial and commercial mismanagement produced increasingly serious debts. He was finally forced to put the estate up for auction at the George Inn in Stroud on 19 July 1819.  It had increased considerably to 1,926 acres since he bought it.  In addition to the ‘capital Mansion House called Lypiatt House’, several farms were included - Ferris Court, Copsgrove, Fennell's, Stancombe, Catswood, Calfway, Sowmeads, both Chantry farms and Nashend.  Also included was the manor of Bisley and the entirely spurious manor of Lypiatt.  Baghott had great difficulty in disposing of any of the 23 lots; there was little bidding largely because of the poor economic climate of the period and he was forced to make over the estate to a mortgagee.  Lypiatt Park – about 650 acres that included Ferris Court, Chantry and Copsegrove Farms – was next put up for auction in London on 18 May 1820 in two lots, the second lot being Catswood Farm. Little seems to have resulted and a reduced estate of 1,489 acres was then put up for sale by private contract.

It was purchased eventually by William Lewis whose family owned three mills at Brimscombe as cloth makers and dyers.  He may well have been tenants whilst Wathen lived elsewhere.  Yet again, after a period of prosperity, Lewis ran into financial trouble (a Lypiatt failing?!) after he became sole owner of the business by 1838 and sold much of the estate including Lypiatt Park in January 1842, being declared bankrupt and dying a year later.

Lypiatt and Africa

For a brief time until 1847, Lypiatt Park was owned by Samuel Baker a wealthy merchant from Enfield.  He retained a local architect, William Daukes, to make a series of alterations.  Baker was the father of Samuel White Baker who came to Lypiatt with the family in 1842 and in August that year married the daughter of the vicar of Maisiemore and early in the following year left to look after his father's sugar estates in Mauritius.  Baker, Junior, became celebrated as an African explorer and also for buying his Hungarian wife Florence in a Turkish slave market in Bulgaria.

Strangely, Baker's interest in Africa was stimulated by the explorations of another Lypiatt connection – John Hanning Speke whose sister Georgina was the wife of the next purchaser’s eldest son John Edward Dorington. As we have seen, Dorington, Senior, introduced improvments in the house and extended the estate, but it was Dorington, Junior, who initiated another round of major alterations starting in 1876, two years after his father’s death, after retaining the eminent architect Thomas Henry Wyatt In addition to installing gas and water supplies, as well as substantially refurbishing the stables, the south west offices were altered and added to the polygonal turret built by Baker as a back staircase.  In 1877 the garden porch on the southern end of the east wing was altered and bears a roundel with the Dorington's initials. Dorington, Junior, was also responsible for developing the gardens and grounds which included a Pinetum of six acres.  Created a baronet in 1886 and Privy Councillor in 1902, he was prominent in county affairs being M.P. for the Stroud Division (1886-1905), and chairman of the County Council (1888-1908).  He died on 4 April 1908 and his wife, Dame Georgina, on 18 July 1913.  They had no children and Dorington’s godson and a distant relative, Thomas Philip Godman, succeeded to the estate, adopting the name Godman-Dorington.  Continuing his military career as a major with the 1st (Royal) Dragoons, he went off to France as WW I was declared.  On 12 November 1914 he was killed in action.  The estate then passed to his cousin who was not at all enamoured of Lypiatt and sold it for £72,000 to a syndicate.

Twentieth Century Owners

So the Lypiatt Park estate was broken up and a wealthy ship-owner from London, W.J. Gwyn, acquired the house and grounds.  He immediately leased the estate to Mrs. and Miss Talbot (later Mrs. Miller) during the 1920s.  In the late 1920's Gwyn came to live at Lypiatt with his sister and brother-in-law Mr Justice H.B.D. and Mrs Woodcock.  Gwyn and his sister died in the 1930s and Judge Woodcock lived on through WW II with American troops camped all around the estate until he moved to Jaynes’ Court, the long corridors of Lypiatt having proved too much for his rheumatism.  Miss Woodcock and an aunt lived at Lypiatt until it was sold and the house and contents auctioned in 1951.  It was then bought by a local syndicate, who tried to sell it off piece by piece.  By 1958 the house was in a very dilapidated condition and almost acquired by a demolition company.  In that year, however, it was sold to Lynn Chadwick, a noted sculptor who subsequently renovated both house and garden over the years, a splendid setting for his major works.  He died on 25 April 2003 aged 88 and it is to his foresight that we owe the preservation of the house with the longest history in the area.

Further reading:–

Paul Hawkins Fisher, Notes and Recollections of Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1871
N.M. Herbert, A History of the County of Gloucester, volume 11, 1976
Nicholas Kingsley, The Country Houses of Gloucestershire, 3 volumes, 1989-2001
Rev. Samuel Lysons, The Model Merchant of the Middle Ages Exemplified in  the Story of Whittington and his Cat, 1860
Mary A. Rudd, Historical Records of Bisley with Lypiatt, Gloucestershire, 1937
Juliet Shipman, Bisley, A Cotswold Village Remembered, 1991; Lypiatt Park, A History, 1998
David Verey and Alan Brooks, Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds, 1999