I‘d driven past Buscot Park more times than I could count picking up the girls for the weekend when Elisa went to college, always wondering what it was actually like. Shelli and I popped out for a few hours without the pooch so that we could actually check out the house for a change.
Buscot Park is the family home of Lord Faringdon, who continues to care for the property as well as the family art collection, the Faringdon Collection, which is displayed throughout the house. The house was built between 1780 and 1783 for a local landowner, Edward Loveden Townsend.
In 1859 his great-grandson sold the estate to an Australian tycoon, Robert Tertius Campbell. He died in 1887 after spending a fortune turning Buscot into a model agricultural estate.
In 1889 the estate was purchased by Lord Faringdon’s great-grandfather, Alexander Henderson, a financier of exceptional skill and ability, who in 1916 was created the 1st Lord Faringdon. He greatly enlarged the house, commissioned Harold Peto to design the famous Italianate water garden, and laid the foundations of the Faringdon Collection.
The house was really interesting to look round, especially with all of the artwork in each room. The collection is the result of a century of collecting works of art by the Lords Faringdon. It includes paintings by Rembrandt, Botticelli, Reynolds, Rubens and Murillo, and a small but important collection of drawings. British art, especially of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is particularly well represented in the collection, with some outstanding works by the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. There is also an important collection of furniture, including pieces designed by Robert Adam and Regency designer Thomas Hope.
The grounds were really nice to walk around. There were different themes to different areas, again with pieces of art dotted around throughout the grounds. Definitely something out of the ordinary when it comes to National Trust properties. Recommended if you’re ever in the area.
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