Dogmersfield Park

For 430 years until 1540 the Bishops of Bath and Wells held the manor and there was a small deer park with fish ponds close to the house The Earl of Southampton was granted the manor in 1547 and built a new house but only one brick dovecote survives from this period. Paulet St. John built a fine house in 1728, incorporating part of the Elizabethan house. He also created a vast park in which he set a variety of rococo landscape features including a folly later known as King John's Hunting Lodge, all of which could be viewed from a 'toy fort', the Belvedere Tower, built on the highest point of the estate. Today, only King John's Hunting Lodge and the facade of Dogmersfield House exist of all that George II period landscape. The 'hunting lodge' has preserved most of its original features.

St. John's grandson, Henry, with wealth from his marriage to Jane Mildmay in 1786, swept away the now unfashionable landscape features, and over several years till 1810, replaced them with a late Georgian landscape, which entailed demolishing the nearby village, the church, and houses bordering Tundry Pond, in order to extend the park even further. As the bridges over the lake and the long carriageway leading up to the house remain as prominent landscape features in this vast park, it is possible to appreciate how impressed visitors in the early 19th century must have been.
Essentially, it is a story of how over two generations great wealth facilitated fashion change in the landscape.

Since then there has been a succession of institutional occupants. The most significant change to the landscape was in 1981 when a disastrous fire almost destroyed the house, but a subsequent owner carried out major restoration along traditional lines, so preserving the external form of the north front. Most recently, the Four Seasons Hotel Group has developed the site further with new buildings also in traditional building styles. An 18th century walled garden with its attractive formal layout has been tastefully restored.