HISTORY

Apart from a little Bronze Age pottery nearby, archaeology at Lydney Park starts with the spectacularly-sited Iron Age hill fort above the Spring Garden. The Romans converted this to a healing temple site, with a large guest-house for pilgrims and a luxurious Bath-house, with wall plaster and mosaics. This important site was first excavated by Charles Bathurst from 1805. He secured finds including the first Curse Tablet found in England, beloved of Tolkien fans; a new god Nodens; beautiful mosaics, re-covered for safe-keeping; and the Lydney Dog we use in our branding.

New invaders, the Normans, took over Domesday’s ‘Lindenee’. To the west of the current house are vestiges of a 12th century castle. Lydney passed through two great families, the Talbots and the Warwicks, until one of Elizabeth’s Admirals, Sir William Winter, built up a Lydney Park landholding. His descendants, particularly Sir John, Secretary to King Charles 1st’s Queen, invested heavily in iron production. Sir John lost almost everything in the Civil War, and 300 years ago Lydney Park passed to a branch of the Bathursts, here still today. Successive Bathursts have been involved in ‘County Business’, or national affairs, as well as the development of local industry. The fourth Charles Bathurst was ennobled for services to food supplies in the First World War. Devoting his considerable energies to the improvement of farming here and abroad, he became a Viscount after service as New Zealand’s Governor-General.

Outbuildings of the Wintour-era house are in use at Taurus Crafts, and old maps show the ‘Pleasure Gardens’ around it. A new house was built from 1875. Its gardens were converted to food production in the Second World War, when the house sheltered first the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, then the North Foreland Lodge girls’ school. Benjamin, the second Viscount, largely created the beloved Spring Garden. Grandson Rupert is now developing this mature planting to diversify and prolong its season of beauty.

The Neolithic and Bronze Age have so far yielded very sparse findings across the Forest of Dean. In the early Iron Age, perhaps 2900 years ago, Lydney Park’s hill fort was created. It is of the ‘promontory’ type, on the ridge above the Spring Garden and with a huge panorama including other hill fort sites. Its Iron Age pottery is of the same Silurian style as in hill forts just into modern Wales.

Grants of Lydney land are known in Saxon times, with Lideneg recorded around 853. William FitzOsbern, William the Conqueror’s right-hand man, created a Lydney manor out of church lands and the property of two thanes. Excavations done, at Little Camp Hill opposite the Roman site, produced remains including a Norman stone keep dating to the 12th century.

‘FitzOsbern erected a small castle, now under the Shell Keep at Berkeley Castle, to guard a Severn crossing to his lands in the Welsh Marches. The outline of a matching castle at Lydney Park may just be discerned underneath a replacement structure, perhaps of the time of Henry 1st. There is essentially nothing to see of this today, beyond some earthworks full of stone fragments. The small site, by the main House, is not open.

Charles Bathurst was aware of past Roman finds on the site, but it was not until 1931 that a dig report was published. That showed little more than a fortified look-out, with a sturdy keep, curtain walls with a gate-house, and some earthwork defences. Much of the buried stone looked like it had come from the temple across the valley, and the oven floor was paved with hypocaust tiles from the Bath-house. Some of the few pottery finds dated to the late Saxon, and there was a broken Viking-style padlock. Evidence that Lydney Park remained important between the Romans and mediaeval times.

Until Tudor times, land around Lydney passed down two great families, the Warwicks and the Talbots of Shrewsbury. So it was termed Lydney Warwick or Lydney Shrewsbury. In the mid 1500’s both sets of lands, plus lands from Queen Elizabeth, were sold to Admiral Sir John Winter, active even in his 60s against the Armada. His son Edward was captured by the Spanish, raised his own ransom, and retreated to Lydney to produce iron, essential for making military goods and otherwise imported. Edward’s son Sir John became one of the country’s largest ironmasters, turning decrepit forest into organised coppice on a large scale. This and his Catholicism made him unpopular locally. Loyal to King Charles, and Secretary to his French Queen, he lost almost everything in the Civil War. That included his manor house, burnt to deny it to the Roundheads. His son Charles built a new house, but Charles’ widow Frances was reduced to selling up ‘a great house, with large beautiful gardens, and a large park’.

The purchaser was Benjamin Bathurst (1688-1767). The sale was made on securities in 1723, with funds raised through an Act of Parliament in 1724.

Benjamin’s father was Sir Benjamin Bathurst (c 1635-1704). Sir Benjamin’s grandfather was a London alderman for the Grocers’ Livery Company, importing exotic items. Six of Sir Benjamin’s brothers were killed fighting for King Charles in the Civil War, and understandably Benjamin sat out the Interregnum abroad. Perhaps drawing on his grandfather’s connections, he was recorded as a merchant at Seville in 1672/3. He bought lands in Paulerspury, Northamptonshire in 1673-4 as “a London merchant then living at Seville”. When he died, some of his property was abroad. Indeed, he left a bequest to someone who had become a nun in Seville!

Back in London, Sir Benjamin became a stalwart in all of the East India Company, the Levant Company and the Royal African Company (RAC). These companies held the monopoly of all English trade whether east or west of Africa and in the Middle East, all highly relevant to a merchant. Most regrettably, the Royal African Company, making little money by two-way trade at a time of war with the French, got involved with the export of English textiles to fund purchases of convicts and prisoners of war from the African slave markets, and their transportation west. The RAC, like its predecessor, went bankrupt. Its dividend stream and boardroom pay could have added little to Sir Benjamin’s substantial wealth. But from 1677 to 1695 he was at or near the top of this slaving organisation, sometimes only below Duke (later King) James. It is a matter of great sadness that our distant forebear had this involvement, which is why we place the matter on our public record.

At the time, this involvement would have been no stain on Sir Benjamin’s character. He was knighted for public service like other Directors of the RAC. He married Frances Apsley, a close confidant of both James’s daughters, Mary (as in ‘William and Mary’ of the Glorious Revolution) and Anne (later Queen Anne). He became financial manager for James Duke of York, for Princess and Queen Anne, for Anne’s husband George and for their intended heir, William.

Sir Benjamin died in 1704 leaving daughter Anne and three sons, Allen (who took the main Cirencester and Northamptonshire lands), Peter and Benjamin (who were left lands in Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and elsewhere).

Charles Bathurst represented Bodmin (1812 -1818) and Harwich (1818-1823), seats cheaper at election time than Bristol. Bathurst was a regular speaker in the Commons on a wide range of Governmental and Commons Committee matters. He does not seem to have been a gripping orator. He was more a conservative in legal and procedural matters, a thinker rather than a charismatic leader. At the start of the Napoleonic Wars, he was Navy Treasurer, then was Secretary at War. Later he was Master of the Mint, and had a Cabinet-level post as Chancellor of the Duchy. For many years he ran Gloucestershire ‘County Business’ as Chair of the Quarter Sessions. In Lydney, he was active in the proposals for the Lydney Docks canal and tramroad. Early in his tenure at Lydney Park, he planted a range of foreign trees. His handwritten tree lists survive. His pioneering archaeology has been covered in the ‘Roman’ section above. He died in 1831.

He was succeeded by a second Charles Bathurst (1790-1863). Often incapacitated by illness, he nevertheless was instrumental in making Gloucestershire the first county to appoint a Chief Constable. He was one of the Dean Forest Commissioners who between 1831 and 1835 settled today’s boundaries of the ‘Statutory Forest’; allowed long-standing squatters to buy their freehold; and provided two Parishes to the extra-parochial Forest. 

Locally, he donated Bathurst Pool to Lydney in 1920 on the coming of age of son Benjamin. Interested in the co-operative movement, in 1923 his farming experiments included local factories and profit-sharing for employees. The Lydney hospital moved to its current position, built on Bathurst land in 1908. It was enlarged between 1935 and 1937 by the addition of a maternity wing and out-patient department, given by Viscount Bledisloe as a memorial to his first wife. A new physiotherapy centre was completed in 1963 as a memorial to Viscount Bledisloe. He was a magistrate, a Verderer for 55 years and a President of many Lydney societies. He was Governor-General of New Zealand between 1930 and 1935 and was highly popular and respected, including by Maori leaders. He purchased for the New Zealand nation the site of the Waitangi Treaty, as part of his aim of giving greater respect to the Maori Kings and Maori history. Antipodean Rugby fans will know of the Bledisloe Cup. In wartime, he offered his house first to Princess (later Queen) Marina of the Netherlands and her children, then to the North Foreland Lodge girls’ school. Elaine died in 1956, Charles in 1958.

Christopher, 3rd Viscount Bledisloe (1934- 2009) was another Queen’s Counsel, with a large and distinguished commercial caseload as well as being Head of Fountain Court Chambers. He was one of the Hereditary Peers elected to sit, with a similar style of intervention to his father’s, and a focus on European business. He married Elizabeth Thompson in 1962, with children Rupert, Otto and Matilda. He added new planting to the Rhododendron Garden and was also President of the Cresta Run.

On his death, Rupert, 4th Viscount Bledisloe (1964 -) set a different path through the family’s  300th anniversary at Lydney Park. An artist from childhood, Oppidan Scholar at Eton, with further education in English and Drama and a mature MA in fine Art, he works and exhibits in London. His practice encompasses relatively traditional portraiture, of people as varied as Francis Bacon and Keith Richards, to multi-media, experimental portraiture, abstracted colourfields and three-dimensional work exploring trauma and redemption...

 He married Shera Sarosh in 2001. Their children are Iona, Benjamin and Agnes. With Matt's Gallery, London, he  has co-generated Art Residencies across various elements of the estate. With eminent garden designer Charles Chesshire, he is restoring neglected landscapes and buildings, seeking to re-invigorate his grandfather’s now-mature garden plantings, and further extend the garden’s range and season of interest, while wrestling with the problems of maintaining a viable estate, offering jobs and public interest, in a post-Covid world.

 DEEP HISTORY,   longer article  read more