Caversham Park

Caversham Park stands on a wooded hill above the Thames in Caversham, a suburb of Reading. The present house is a Victorian mansion built after a fire in 1850, designed by Horace Jones in Italian baroque style. Before that, an Elizabethan manor occupied the site, and earlier still a Norman castle stood nearby. The estate once stretched across 9.7 square kilometres, recorded in the Domesday Book as worth £20. Walter Giffard, a relative of William the Conqueror, held the land after 1066. The house has strong ties to British history. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke and Protector of the Realm, died here in 1219. Sir Francis Knollys bought the estate in the 16th century and rebuilt the manor. Queen Elizabeth I and Anne of Denmark visited, and Thomas Campion described one lavish entertainment in 1613. Later, the Royalist Earl of Craven entertained there before the Civil War, when Charles I was briefly imprisoned on the estate. Visitors find a grand seven-bay block with flanking colonnades, built on an iron frame. The approach winds through a valley for a mile before rising to a sudden view of Reading and Windsor Forest. The grounds include a local nature reserve, Clayfield Copse, and graves from the time when the Oratory School occupied the house. From the A3290, the mansion remains a striking landmark against the wooded skyline.