High Wycombe, The Rupert Gates On Marlow Hill 1906

Photo ref: 53679

More about this scene

Going back to the beginning of the 19th century, Loakes Manor together with its park was sold in August 1798 to the Right Honourable Robert Smith, Lord Carrington, a prosperous banker and friend of the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger. Thus began the Carrington association with the town and the transformation of the manor house. Carrington renamed Loakes Manor the much more romantic Wycombe Abbey, and set about Gothicising and extending the house. He employed the architect James Wyatt (1746–1813), whose main work was undertaken between 1803 and 1804, with other estate buildings added soon after. The old Georgian house, enlarged by Henry Keene for the 2nd Earl of Shelburne in the 1750s, was entirely cased in Denner Hill stone, a very hard silicaceous stone dug a mile or so north of the town, and also used by Wyatt in his work at Windsor Castle. The house sprouted battlements, turrets and Gothick windows, all of which survive today. In the grounds Wyatt built a Gothick screen to the older ice house and a series of lodges built in Denner Hill stone. These included the lodges which were built on the High Street at the end of the carriage drive (their sites are now the Library Gardens), by 1901 re-erected half way up Marlow Hill, and the lodge at the foot of Marlow Hill. The gates from the St Mary's Street entrance were re-erected on Daws Hill Lane at about the same time.