page_title: Westwood House
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Westwood House / History
caption_attribution_description: Chateau Impney
context_page_description: Westwood House is a stately home, near Droitwich, Worcestershire, England. It has been subdivided into twelve self-contained apartments. The house has origins as an Elizabethan banqueting hall with Caroline additions and is a Grade I listed building. It was for several centuries the seat of the Pakington family. Situated west of Droitwich, it lies in the centre of its former estate, Westwood Park, which is Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
  With its four diagonal wings, added to the original, early-17th century house at some time later in the same century, the house's design was a precursor of the Butterfly plan which became popular in the 19th century.
context_section_description: Eustachia de Say and her son Osbert FitzHugh gave the church located at Westwood to Fontevraud Abbey, in the Loire valley, where Henry II of England, his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and their son Richard I (the Lionheart) are buried. Soon afterwards, a small priory was erected at Westwood, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, for six Benedictine nuns. Over the centuries the convent grew until it ultimately numbered eighteen sisters. The last prioress, Joyce Acton, received at the dissolution an annual pension of ten pounds.
  After the dissolution Henry VIII granted Westwood,  with its demesne lands, to Sir John Pakington. The Pakington family seat in the adjacent village of Hampton Lovett, but that house was burnt down during the English Civil War so they moved to Westwood, which had been built in the reign of Elizabeth as a banqueting house. They enlarged and repaired it and laid out the park.
  During the latter part of the war and the Interregnum the house was the residence of Sir John Pakington (1621–1680), an ardent Royalist who was tried for his life by the Parliament; his estates were sequestered, and he was greatly plundered, but he ultimately compounded with the Parliamentary Committee for £5,000. His house was the refuge of learned men who support the King's cause: Dr. Henry Hammond found shelter with him, as did the Bishops Morley, Fell, Gunning.
  There is a link between "Whole Duty of Man" (an influential and popular Anglican tract) and Westwood House, because while the author is unknown, the introduction was written by Henry Hammond, and this has led some to speculate that Sir John's wife, Dorothy, Lady Pakington, may have been the author.
  During and after the Glorious Revolution the tried hospitality of Westwood House was extended to those who scrupled to take the oath of allegiance to William of Orange, and Dean George Hickes wrote several of his important works at Westwood.
  In the 19th century the house was the residence of Lord John Pakington, a British Conservative politician, who before he lost his Droitwich seat in the Commons in 1874 and was raised to the peerage held a number of government posts. The man who defeated him in that election was the Liberal politician and industrialist John Corbett. He built a house in the style of a Louis XIII château. Known as Chateau Impney, it stands only about a mile away from Westwood and although it was said to be built in that style to please his Franco-Irish wife, "More relevant may have been his desire to cock a snook at his political rival, Sir John Pakington of Westwood House" (Sir Nikolaus Pevsner).
caption: Chateau Impney, Droitwich.
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