Fitzwilliam Estate, England
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Overview
Address
Fitzwilliam Court
Corsham
Wiltshire
SN13 0BZ
Located between Corsham and Chippenham in Wiltshire, but falls under Corsham.
History
The Fitzwilliam estate has been three different buildings. The current location was built on the foundation and molded from the remains of the castle estate built in the fourteenth century, but the original house was a few hundred meters from where it is now, and was built in the twelve century or earlier. Somehow for some reason it was abandoned to build a new estate. Whether it was damaged or simply demolished, no one knows.
In the 19th century, the second castle estate was vastly renovated and reconstructed to a mansion. The family overhauled much of the manor in the late 19th century, bringing it up to date with the Victorian fashions, architecture, and technology of the time.
The last permanent residents of the manor, which is located in Wiltshire, were Randolf Fitzwilliam and his wife, Isabella Fitzwilliam. Since their deaths in 1983, the manor has been used for tours, private affairs, and family holidays. It is not a permanent residence home any longer, but there are highly paid caretakers who see to the upkeep of the house and its many gardens. The current caretaker is unrelated to any of the former caretakers.
Currently, Isabella Fitzwilliam lives there once more.
Layout
The house sits in the middle of fields and forest in the countryside. Its property is several dozen acres. To get to the house, one long trip down a very long, very winding dirt road, which crosses the small river. Most of the drive is through fields, but as one nears the house, there are more woods and hills and growth. The house only rises over the trees during the last several dozen metres of the drive. The road effectively ends at large gates that open up in a huge, gravel greeting area before the main entrance (picture below), but there is one fork that wraps around the entire house and was ordinarily taken by caretakers with wheelbarrows.
The main part of the house is huge, and there is a servants' area connected to the side that is the same length of the main house, but far more narrow and less elaborate. This, however, makes the entire scale of the house rather impressive.
On the property is a small river and lake, as well as streams, forest, and acres upon acres of gardens. The lawn has a giant fountain in the center of it.
The foyer, which climbs up for two floors, is dark wood and covered in stained glass and elaborate carvings, large family portraits, and shade lamps. Most of the doors are disguised in the paneling, with only the dining room, study/library, and cloakroom appearing as dark as the foyer. The parlor and other rooms are completely contrasting. Most are floral or white. The wallpaper has remained the same for about seventy years, and is incredibly patterned. The servant's area is painted blues and greens, colors kept since the 1930s. The furniture remains the same, and very little was ever removed from the house.
One of the highlights of the expanses of garden around the house is a giant fountain in the back yard.
There are no near neighbors, but there is a small lodge where the former housekeeper lived.
The Entombed Remains
Human remains were found in an old cellar wall of the second castle estate when the family all but demolished the estate in the nineteenth century to make way for the current home. The skull of the individual was covered by a woven bag, presumably placed there when the person was entombed. The remains were never examined, as they were determined by their location to be a few hundred years old, and no one wanted to turn it into a scandal. They are currently stored at a university and have been forgotten.
Random Information
The housekeeper during Randolf and Isabella's stay was called Margaret. She had six boys, of which two were twins. All worked on the property. Maxwell (Max) and Samuel (Sam) were the twins and second youngest.
Lucy was the head cook.
They had several dozen more people, who will be named later.
The mansion's grounds are said to be haunted. As a structure has been on the property for over six hundred years, that's probably likely. There aren't very precise records about the goings on at the house, especially where scandals were concerned. Very little record remains of the family that lived in the first castle.
There are ruins of the first Fitzwilliam home located in the forest. It was a castle estate built in the twelfth or eleventh century.
Photos
(Lots of images of the house can be found here.)
