Comment by MikeT(14th July 2013)

An excellent set of pictures, first class Robert

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Comment by Robert Hanley (Photo owner)(14th July 2013)

Once one of England's great country houses, Witley Court was largely gutted by fire in 1937. The owner, Sir Herbert Smith, decided not to rebuild but to put the estate up for sale. Witley was never lived in again and was subsequently stripped and abandoned. Yet, as a ruin it remains deeply evocotive. Today it offers a rare opportunity to see the bones of a mansion that has grown over the centuties, from a substantial Jacobean house based on a medieval manor house, through expansion under the first Baron Foley and his son in the 1720's and 1730's to the addition of two massive porticos by Regency architect John Nash. It finally reached its peak of grandeur in the 1850s with the extensive remodelling commissioned by the first earl of Dudley from the architect Samuel Daukes. Robert.

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