Crichel House, Moor Crichel in Dorset, England.

Crichel House is a Grade I listed, Classical Revival country house near the village of Moor Crichel in Dorset, England.
The present house was built in 1742 by Sir William Napier.
It is surrounded by of parkland, which includes a crescent-shaped lake.
The parkland is Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Italian Garden. Designed by Harold Ainsworth Peto(1854 - 1933).
In 1905-06, the second Lord Alington commissioned Harold Peto to lay out a formal garden below the south facade of the House.
This comprised a geometrical parterre surrounded by panels of lawn and specimen topiary.
Enclosed by balustrades to the east, south, and west, the garden, known as the Italian Garden, was planted in such a way as to retain the view from the House to the lake.
A domed rotunda at the south-east end of the garden overlooked the lake in the valley below.
This garden was illustrated and described in articles published by Country Life in 1908 and 1925, but it fell into decline during the Second World War and was grassed over and removed after the Second World War.
The house was initially requisitioned by the Air Ministry in 1938 before becoming a home for Dumpton School and then Cranborne Chase School until 1961.
At this stage, the estate and house were taken back in hand by the Hon Mrs Marten, who comprehensively modernised the inside of the house and set out the northern part of the walled garden that you see today.
The estate was sold to Richard and Maureen Chilton in 2013 and they have continued with restoration work on the house, church and 3 acre walled garden with 7 individual secret gardens.
The National Garden Scheme gives unique access to this exceptional private garden.

Moor Crichel East Dorset, England.

English bucolic...pastoral.









...rest and be thankful.



















- The Avenue at Moor Crichel – cycling the lanes of Dorset – The Dorset Rambler

Witchampton.

The village of Witchampton and civil parish lies 5 miles north of Wimborne Minster and is situated within the Cranborne Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The village was designated etc first National Conservation Area in Dorset. Witchampton lies on the east bank of the River Allen in the Vale of Allen.
According to Sir Frederick Treves in Highways and Byways in Dorset, published in 1906:
‘Witchampton is one of the most beautiful villages in the entire county. Placed in a wooded dip by the Allen River, it is like a garden in a dell. Many of its thatch-roofed cottages are almost hidden by roses, while there is hardly a wall of faded brick that is not covered by jasmine or honeysuckle. The village is everywhere ablaze with flowers."

The Church of St Mary, St Cuthburga and All Saints.
St Cuthburga was a Saxon Princess, dressed as an abbess holding a crosier in one hand and a model of Wimborne Minster, of which she is founder, in the other. Her statue stands over the beautiful Arts and Crafts style lychgate. St Cuthburga was the first abbess of Wimborne.
Lychgate - a roofed gateway to a churchyard, formerly used at burials for sheltering a coffin until the clergyman's arrival.
The main Church dates back to 1832 rebuilt after a fire, only the Tower is Saxon.


In the churchyard there is a circular mounting block, in the centre of which can be seen where the pillar topped by an Angel once stood.
This pillar is now on top of the war memorial by the side of the church.


The memorial which is located in front of the the church is dedicated to the fallen soldiers from the Parish who served during WWI and WWII.











"There are the ancient manor house with its crown of gables, the little stream with its mill and its venerable stone bridge, and the water meadow with its ivy clad ruin of the Abbey Barn."






Gateway and lodge to Crichel House.
The gateway was built in 1874 and is Grade II listed.
The property was Alington-family ownership for 300 years, until Mary Marten, goddaughter of the late Queen Mother and childhood friend of Princess Margaret, who died at age 80 in 2010.
Crichel belonged to the Napier and Sturt families for 400 years, but, after the death in 2010 of the late Mary Anna Marten, only daughter of the 3rd and last Lord Alington, the property was sold as she left six children and beneficiaries.
The well-managed estate, which comprised 10,000 acres and 150 houses and cottages, was broken up and dispersed in 2012.
Fortunately, the main house, with some of its contents, and 1,500 acres including the park and 50 cottages, have been acquired by an anglophile American family, the Chiltons (Mr Chilton was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum and Mrs Chilton president of the New York Botanical Garden), who have made it their English home and refurbished the interior, restoring several James Wyatt rooms, which can now be seen as the masterpieces they are.

Much of the rest of the estate has been bought by Lord Phillimore, son of the neo-Georgian architect Claud Phillimore, so cultural disaster has been averted and this beautiful part of Dorset continues to be cherished and managed on traditional lines by sympathetic new owners.
Read more with photo: The magnificent puzzle of Crichel, one of Dorset’s grandest Georgian houses - Country Life



Witchampton Old Post Office.

Until the middle of the 20th century the village was pre-dominantly belonged to the Crichel Estate which was most recently held by the Marten family, prior to that the estate was held by the Matraver family, the Earls of Arundel, the Cole family, and the Napier family before it came into the Sturt family. In 1765 the Humphrey Sturt re-modelled the house and extended the park by including the voyage of Moor Crichel and re-locating the villagers to Newtown half a mile out of Witchampton.

Read more with photo:
- The Dorset Walk: Woodlands, Horton Tower and Chalbury | Dorset Life - The Dorset Magazine

- Chinese ornaments sell for £12.5m - more than double the value of the stately home they were found in | Daily Mail Online

- The magnificent puzzle of Crichel, one of Dorset’s grandest Georgian houses - Country Life

Crichel House.

Richard L. Chilton: The boy who rose from a New jersey 'monstrosity' to one of Britain's top stately homes | Daily Mail Online
Richard L Chilton, hedge fund billionaire, is the new owner of one of the finest homes in Britain.

American billionaire buys Crichel House (From Bournemouth Echo)
It was owned by the same aristocratic family for 300 years before being sold, and the last owner was Mary Marten OBE, goddaughter of the Queen Mother and a child playmate of Princess Margaret.
It was then passed down to her six children, Victoria, Charlotte, Georgina, Amabel, Napier and Sophia.
Crichel House has more than 25 rooms, a ballroom and a wine cellar.
The property overlooks a crescent-shaped ornamental lake.
Crichel House itself dates back to the 18th century and is Grade I listed.
Parts of the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, were filmed there.

Napier Marten gave up the Crichel Estate in Dorset and the £115million family fortune because of a voice 'inside of me saying daily and sometimes many times daily to shave my head and go to Australia.'
The 54-year-old spoke of how in 1996 he dropped his former life and travelled to Australia - stopping in Maui to shave his head - because his life of privilege had brought him to a point 'where everything in my life materially was a completely empty shell', reports The Sunday Times.

Chinese ornaments sell for £12.5m - more than double the value of the stately home they were found in | Daily Mail Online
Last year a stunning collection of Chinese jade ornaments Mrs Marten and her father had collected were auctioned off for a combined total of £12.5 million.
It has now been reported that the estate in its entirety is being sold.
Local gossip has it that Prince Charles may be looking to snap it up as a marital home for his newly-married son and daughter-in-law.

Feudal Lordship of Winterborne Saint Martin - Sturt
Crichel House, a modern mansion in the Classical style, consists of the main building and a smaller wing.
It stands in a park 400 acres (162 hectares) in extent, which contains a lake covering 50 acres(20 hectares).

Crichel formally belonged to the Napiers, whose ancestor, a cadet of the Napiers of Murchison, settled in Dorset in Henry VII's time.
Their old House, built by Sir Nathaniel Napier, where Gerard Napier, the first baronet, entertained Charles II and Catherine of Braganza, was burned to the ground in 1742.
The estates passed in the middle of the 18th Century to Humphrey Sturt, of Horton, in Dorset, on his marriage with Diana, aunt and heir of Sir Gerard Napier, the 6th and last baronet.
Mr Sturt greatly enlarged the new house, which his wife's brother, Sir William Napier, had built on the site of the old home, and his descendant, the 2nd Lord Alington, later lived there.
George IV, while Prince Regent, occupied Crichel House for a time, and his daughter, the Princess Charlotte, stayed here under the care of Lady Rosslyn and Lady Ilchester.

Possibly for sale – a landmark for landowners: Crichel House, Dorset | The Country Seat
Great Houses of Dorsetshire
A great 18th-century house built on the ruins of the Tudor house burned down in 1742.
Moving the whole village to allow the house a pleasant aspect (as with Milton Abbey), the relocated village, still called New Town (see map), it took some 40 years to complete.

“The best way out is always through.“

The roads diverged in a yellow field.
Today I took the one: Home - Wimborne Minster - Broomhill Garden Centre, Holt - Witchampton - Shapwick -Tarrant Rushton - White Mill, Sturminster Marshall - Home.


"So wax her gently and pardon the slow
Who eat dust from her, my Porsche Turbo."