Wrest Park

Our local history group recently went on a summer outing to Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. 

Wrest Park is an English Heritage property, having been acquired by the Government after the Second World War. For many years the house and wider estate were used by the Ministry of Agriculture as a research establishment. In the 1980s the Government transferred the estate on lease to a commercial research company, but more recently English Heritage has done much to restore the gardens and take the house back into direct management. Commercial businesses remain based at Wrest Park, using an industrial estate that sits just beyond the house, out of sight of visitors.

We had two guided tours on our trip. The first was to rooms in the house that are not normally open to the public, because of their particular conservation needs, owing to their beautiful wallpaper. The first two rooms contained examples of handpainted Chinese papers, full of life and drama depicting scenes from everyday life in 18^th century China. 

The colours on these papers have been retained, because in part they were boarded up while the house was being used as offices (although in one of the Chinese wallpaper rooms we were told that the wallpaper had remained on full show, and that the colours had been damaged by the steam from repeated use of electric kettles). In another room, we saw wallpaper that had been printed from hundreds of wooden blocks, their combinations making unique dioramas of different landscapes from across four continents.

The second tour was of the gardens, and encompassed the Orangery (where a brass band was playing), a plunge pool folly, the Archer Pavilion, and a column erected in honour of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who was engaged to improve the gardens in particular the water courses.

Wrest Park is the creation of the de Grey family, who lived there for more than 800 years. The house that is there today replaced a house of medieval origins with a classical façade. This house stood amidst formal gardens laid out in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in imitation of those seen on the continent. Jemima, Marchoness Grey, later commissioned Capability Brown to make subtle alterations, but insisted on keeping the formal look of the gardens still visible today. 

By the 1830s, Thomas, Earl de Grey decided that a new house was needed, and built a French-looking building to his own designs. (De Grey became the first ever President of RIBA). This is the house visible today; it stood at some distance from the original house, which was demolished, but the symmetry of the gardens was preserved. 

The de Grey family continued to live at Wrest, but by the early twentieth century that connection ended. Wrest became  the first country house to be used as a hospital for soldiers in the First World War. Sold again to a private owner between the wars, it was acquired by the Sun Insurance Company in 1939 and then bought by the Government in 1946. It was put to use as a research facility for the Ministry of Agriculture, later leased to the Silsoe Research Institute. 

Wrest is a good example of what happened to many country houses as a consequence of war. Given alternative uses during both conflicts, it never recaptured the glories of its heyday. While grand, the house today retains a slightly institutional feel, and there is realtively little by way of furniture or collections. There were some very well produced exhibitions, however, one about Wrest Park during the First World War and one detailing the history of the house and its gardens.