Stanage Park

Stanage Park is a Grade II* listed Welsh country house standing four and a half kilometres east of Knighton in Powys, close to the hamlet of Heartsease. Humphry Repton and his son John Adey Repton designed the park and house in the early 19th century, creating a castellated building and enclosed garden that survive almost intact. The estate is the last and most complete of Repton’s three Welsh landscape commissions. The grounds were laid out as picturesque parkland with terraced lawns, wooded hillsides and a pond. A low castellated wall with ha-has and classical urns runs along the eastern terraces. The house was built between 1803 and 1807 for Charles Rogers in a castle style modelled on Richard Payne Knight’s Downton Castle. John Repton added a rear extension in 1822, while John Hiram Haycock introduced bay windows. Edward Haycock Senior remodelled public rooms in a Tudorbethan style in 1833 and later added a Gothic dining-room, Romanesque porch and castellated stable courtyard from 1845. A billiard-room, south wing and baronial tower were added around 1867. Repton’s plans survive in a ‘Red Book’ kept at the house. Visitors approach through terraced lawns on the east front, with landscaped woodlands and a pond to the west. North and south of the house, wooded hillsides rise gently. The eastern terraces are enclosed by a castellated wall punctuated by rectangular exedras topped with classical urns. A summer-house from 1900 stands at the southeastern corner of the walls. The grounds, designated Grade I, feature the surviving elements of Repton’s picturesque design.