page_title: Ashton Court
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Ashton Court / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Ashton Court Mansion in Ashton Court Estate Ashton Court Estate was acquired by Bristol City Council in 1959, but the place has a long history. There is clear evidence of the ridged strips of Saxon fields, but with the coming of William the Conqueror the area was transferred into Norman ownership. In 1392 Thomas de Lyons was granted a licence to enclose his lands and make a park, the foundation of the modern one. During the 16th century Ashton Court was bought by John Smyth, a merchant from Small Street. He and his descendants gradually enlarged, rebuilt, remodelled and reconstructed various parts of the house. In 1939 it was requisitioned by the War Office, used in turn as a Transit Camp, RAF HQ and American Army Command HQ. The last Smyth owner died in 1946 and for 13 years the house, already in disrepair, lay empty. When the City Council bought the Estate much expensive work had to be carried out. Gradually considerable conservation and restoration has been achieved and is still continuing.
context_page_description: Ashton Court is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. Although the estate lies mainly in North Somerset, it is owned by the City of Bristol. The mansion and stables are a Grade I listed building. Other structures on the estate are also listed.
  Ashton Court has been the site of a manor house since the 11th century, and has been developed by a series of owners since then. From the 16th to 20th centuries it was owned by the Smyth family with each generation changing the house. Designs by Humphry Repton were used for the landscaping in the early 19th century. It was used as a military hospital in the First World War. In 1936 it was used as the venue for the Royal Show and, during the Second World War as an army transit camp. In 1946 the last of the Smyth family died and the house fell into disrepair before its purchase in 1959 by Bristol City Council.
  The estate developed from the original deer park and is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England.
context_section_description: Due to successive remodelings and enlargements the architecture at Ashton Court is complex and seldom what it seems. The core of the house, a 15th-century manor, has been obliterated by later wings, which have in turn been remodelled and altered, most substantially around 1635. Therefore, the plan of the house has evolved as irregular with many juxtapositions and little cohesion; while the majority of the house was built in the 17th century, a time of classical architecture, remodelling and alteration to the fenestration has created an overall Gothic appearance.
  In the early 19th century, the house was given a 300 feet (91 m) long facade in an attempt to provide some uniformity and some classical grandeur. However even here, the architecture does not remain faithful to a single style. At the centre of this facade is a much altered Tudor gatehouse, probably built in the 16th century as a portal to the 14th-century manor house. In order to create the long facade, the existing stables, to the right of the gatehouse, were converted to domestic use and given seven bays of Gothic mullioned windows. To the left of the gatehouse, the flanking south-west wing is of a different style.
  This classically designed wing has been attributed to Inigo Jones, but without supporting evidence; as with a similar attribution at Brympton d'Evercy, also in Somerset, it seems to be based solely on the alternating segmental and pointed pediments over the groundfloor windows, and ignoring the irregularities in their spacings and placings, which Jones is unlikely to have countenanced.
  To give the long facade with its two wings of contrasting architectural styles a uniting, common feature, the third story of oval windows of the left-hand wings, which was then topped with a Jacobean balustrade was repeated above the Gothic right-hand wing; however, inexplicably the attempt at classical unity was broken by the use castellations instead of a balustrade on the right-hand side. Overall, its length, contrasting styles, high gatehouse and lack of symmetry give the facade a collegiate rather than domestic appearance. The focal point of the facade, the gatehouse, has multi-faceted turrets at its corners, In 1885, the gatehouse was given a Gothic makeover, which included raising its height and adding the fan vaulting to the ceiling of the passage leading, not to a great base court, as such grandiose architectural feature would suggest, but to a small glazed inner courtyard (the Winter Garden).
  The north wing was included in the remodelling work of 1805 and given ogee headed windows in the delicate Strawberry Hill Gothic style, popular at turn of the 19th century; it was a forerunner of the more medieval ecclesiastical Gothic style that was to characterise the architecture of the 19th century, and employed at Ashton Court during the 1885 alterations.
caption: Ashton Court displays a profusion of architectural styles. Here various wings and juxtapositions display Strawberry Hill Gothic to the left, Italian Renaissance windows to the right, a Victorian Porte cochere in the centre, simple Tudor mullion and Gothic tracery windows, plus pseudo-medieval battlements and chaste English renaissance gables.
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