Summary

Principal entrance to Newton Park, the gateway to which was remodelled in around 1902 for Algernon Gore-Langton.

Description

Gatepiers and flanking walls to Newton Park, 1902.

MATERIALS: limestone ashlar piers and coursed rubble walls.

PLAN: located on the south side of Wells Road at the Corston Drive entrance on the northern boundary of Newton Park.

DESCRIPTION: pair of square gatepiers with panelled fronts and moulded caps, surmounted by tall iron lamps. Flanking rubble quadrant walls, with coping stones, swept up to meet the piers. Quoins at the angle with the roadside walls.

History

Newton Park developed from a medieval manor recorded in the Domesday Book. It was originally held by the St Loe family from the C12 – C14 as a castle and then developed into a fortified manor house before passing through several noble families and being bought by Joseph Langton (1637-1719) in 1666. The Langton family were prominent and wealthy Bristol Merchant Venturers, and Newton Court, as it was initially known, provided them with a country seat. Langton immediately enclosed and began to improve the estate and create a formal landscape, which then became known as Newton Park. In the 1760s his grandson, also Joseph (d1779), commissioned Stiff Leadbetter to build a Palladian mansion and employed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to transform the grounds (a Grade II* registered landscape). The estate matured through the C19 under the Gore-Langton family before being sold to the Duchy of Cornwall in 1941. From 1945 the house and core of the landscape became home to a teacher training college and in 2005 became Bath Spa University.

Corston Drive was the principal route into Newton Park, initially laid out in around 1760, during the major period of development of the main house and landscape. Humphry Repton produced a Red Book for William Gore-Langton in 1797, by which time the north end of the drive had been moved eastwards, and modest double lodges added. Repton proposed the replacement of the lodges with a single rotunda lodge and clairvoie railings. This was never implemented, though an associated element of the scheme – a short spur route linking to the Bristol Road to the north, with gates and railings – was built. The pair of lodges with adjoining canted walls were in place until the early C20; in 1902 the estate passed to Algernon Gore-Langton, who spent large sums of money on estate improvements, including a new ornamental gateway and lodge. Decorative iron gates were removed in the 1990s and relocated to the walled gardens, 1.5km to the south-west.

A second drive from the village of Newton St Loe was in place by 1817, improved with a lodge and gates by 1880; both are listed at Grade II.

Reasons for Listing

The gatepiers and quadrant walls are listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* despite the relocation of the gates, the piers and flanking walls continue to form an impressive principal entrance to Newton Park, laid out in the first years of the C20 during a period of investment in the estate;
* the pair of piers are a good-quality construction in dressed Bath stone.

Group value:

* with the other listed structures across Newton Park, and as the principal entrance to the Grade II*-registered designed landscape.

External Links

• Wikidata Q26422462

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets