A Stately Home For Ghosts

A Stately Home For Ghosts

Cowdrey House: With a history dating back to the early 1500s, Cowdray was in its heyday during the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, both of whom visited and stayed at the house, with Henry VIII being a frequent visitor. Nearly three hundred years later and whilst undergoing repairs and refurbishments for the impending marriage of the 8th Viscount Montague, a devastating fire took hold on the evening of the 24th September 1793. The house was destroyed to a great extent – but with significant exceptions such as the intact Kitchen Tower.

For the next century this exquisite example of Tudor architecture simply rotted away and its gradually decaying structure was visited by numerous artists, scholars and writers alike including William Turner and John Constable who both painted the landscape.

Since then it has remained largely untouched although the 1st Viscount Cowdray did commission a restoration project between 1909-1914 when St John Hope was asked to report on Cowdray, Easebourne Priory and St Anne’s Hill. This work is generally credited with having saved the Cowdray ruins from total collapse. Nevertheless this period of desertion ensured that the features that remained of this important Tudor building were untouched and consequently give us today a unique glimpse of many important features of Tudor architecture which would otherwise have been lost.