History

Patshull Hall is a substantial Georgian stately home situated in South Staffordshire England; it is by repute the largest listed building in the county.

The Hall was built by Francis Smith of Warwick from designs by baroque architect James Gibbs for his client Sir John Astley in about 1730.

Astley [a royalist] commissioned the house as a symbol of his families’ return to power after the reinstatement of the monarchy. The Astley’s were well known for gambling and cock fighting and it is said that Patshull was lost and won back again in an evening of sport. Indeed the gateway pillars adjoining the family chapel to the south once featured stone cockerels above gilded coronets.

Piano-nobile / split-level in section the main façade is of three storeys with seven bays, three of which are pedimented, and tower wings which are later Victorian additions attributed to the architect McVicar-Anderson. By contrast the west wing, of monolithic proportions, has four storeys.

The house was originally set in a deer-park of some 340 acres (1.4 km²) which was later reworked by the famous landscape architect Capability Brown incorporating a large serpentine lake.

The estate was acquired in 1765 by Sir George Pigot on his return from India

Sir George Pigot was lord mayor of Bridgnorth and in turn Governor of Madras. Having made his fortune as a Nabob in the colonies he was the owner of the famous Pigot diamond; its is said he purchased the Patshull Hall Estate for a sum for 100 thousand guineas in 1765 and immediately engaged Lancelot [capability ] Brown to landscape the park for him.

Sir Robert Pigot (George’s heir) sold the property in 1848 to William Legge the 5^th earl of Dartmouth, whose son and heir Viscount Lewisham took residence. Substantial extensions and improvements were carried out for him by architects William Burn and McVicar-Anderson in the 1880s.

During the 20th century the house served as a wartime Hospital in the 1940s and then until the 1980s as an orthopedic hospital. In 1990 the estate was broken up and many acres were sold for the creation of a golf course,( A classical temple created by Capability Brown was converted to become the clubhouse).

During the 1990s the house fell into disrepair and was briefly used as a school; sadly the house had suffered extensive decay and had deteriorated so badly that it appeared on the English Heritage list of Buildings at Risk.

Patshull Hall was bought in 1997 by Neil Avery, a renovation specialist and entrepreneur as a restoration project and the house was subsequently removed from the Buildings at Risk register.

The renovated Hall is now owned by Mr. Tim Reynolds a member of the Georgian society who has decorated and furnished the house with painstaking authenticity and opens the house as a venue for weddings, events, conferences etc.

Link www.apleyhall.com