Stanway House

Summary

A Grade I listed Jacobean manor house in the Cotswolds village of Stanway in Gloucestershire, home of the Earls of Wemyss and March, notable for its spectacular Baroque water garden with the world’s tallest gravity-fed fountain, used as a filming location for Jeeves and Wooster, Vanity Fair (2004), The Libertine (2004), Wolf Hall (BBC, 2015), Father Brown (BBC), and The Good Soldier (1981).

About this location

Stanway House stands in the village of Stanway in Gloucestershire, close to the northern edge of the Cotswolds and roughly two miles from Broadway. The manor of Stanway was owned by Tewkesbury Abbey for approximately 800 years, and the abbey leased it to Richard Tracy in 1533 after Thomas Cromwell intervened on Tracy’s behalf. Construction of the present house began around 1580 under Paul Tracy, Richard’s son, and the triple-gabled Jacobean gatehouse was added in about 1630 by Sir Richard Tracy. The house is built of golden Guiting limestone with Jacobean mullions and gables; its principal rooms are arranged in a long south-facing L-shaped range unusual for the Tudor period.

The estate passed by female descent from the Tracy family to the Earls of Wemyss and March, and it remains their home today. The kitchen court was designed by William Burn in 1859. The contain a celebrated Baroque water garden — the work of successive Earls — featuring a cascade and a gravity-fed fountain that reaches 300 feet, making it the tallest gravity fountain in the world. The system, using no pump, was restored in the early 2000s and reopened in 2004. The estate also includes a medieval tithe n and a working watermill on the site of an earlier mill.

J. M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, was a frequent summer visitor in the 1920s and early 1930s; the house was associated with the wider circle of Cotswolds artists and writers of that period.

The Good Soldier (1981, directed by Kevin Billington, starring Jeremy Brett and Robin Ellis, adapted from Ford Madox Ford’s novel) filmed at Stanway. Jeeves and Wooster (Granada Television, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry) used the house and . Vanity Fair (2004, directed by Mira Nair, starring Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp) filmed here. The Libertine (2004, directed by Laurence Dunmore, starring Johnny Depp as the 2nd Earl of Rochester) used the location. Wolf Hall (BBC Two, 2015, directed by Peter Kosminsky, starring Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell) filmed at Stanway. Father Brown (BBC One, 2013 onwards, starring Mark Williams) has used it for episode locations.