Ablington Manor is a Grade I listed country house in Potlicker's Lane, Ablington within the parish of Bibury,

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, England. The estate was owned by the Howse family, until John Coxwell purchased it in 1574. Coxwell built the house in 1590, and alterations and additions were added in around 1780. The house is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The Manor at Ablington was originally the property of Gloucester Abbey. After the dissolution of the monasteries, it was leased to the Howse family before being bought in 1574 by John Coxwell. He was a

self-made man A self-made man is a person whose success is of their own making. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as the greatest exemplar of the self-made man. Inspired by Franklin's autobiography, Fr ...

who had made his money in the wool trade. He raised his family's social status from middle class to being members of the gentry, and by the time he died, aged about one hundred, he owned he owned part of the Manor of Siddington and all of the Manor of Ablington. The manor house was built in about 1590, and his descendants lived there until at least 1829, when Charles Coxwell was the incumbent. After the

English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...

, the wool trade improved and a number of elegant large barns were built. The barn at Ablington Manor was one of these, and has a date stone "1727 JC", denoting the fact that the

lord of the manor Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a historical rural estate. The titles date to the English Feudalism, feudal (specifically English feudal barony, baronial) system. The ...

at the time was John Coxwell.

The house

The house is built of rubble limestone with

roughcast Roughcast and pebbledash are durable coarse plaster surfaces used on outside walls. They consists of lime and sometimes cement mixed with sand, small gravel and often pebbles or shells. The materials are mixed into a slurry and are then throw ...

render and a stone slate roof. It is a two-storey building with attic and cellar. The house of 1590 had a three-room plan but later additions in the seventeenth century and around 1780 enlarged this, and internal remodelling was done in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The gardens

Ablington House is set in extensive grounds. The pleasure gardens are described as "consisting of terraced lawns with parterres and a sundial, shaded by specimen trees. The gardens ran down to the River Coln which flowed under a picturesque bridge on the estate and had a summerhouse on its bank. There were also croquet, archery and tennis lawns. It became a Grade I listed building on 23 January 1952.

References

External links

Photograph of the manor from Dicamillo Companion
{{Authority control Country houses in Gloucestershire Houses completed in 1590 Grade I listed houses in Gloucestershire Tudor architecture