West Dean House
West Dean House is a large flint-faced manor house situated in West Dean, West Sussex, near the historic City of Chichester. This country estate has approximately 6,350 acres (25.7 km2) of land and dates back to 1086, with various royal connections throughout the years. In 1971 the Estate became the home of West Dean College, a centre of study of conservation, arts, crafts, writing, gardening and music.
The earliest known reference to the West Dean Estate is found in the Domesday Book in 1086, where it was included in the manor of Singleton as, a forest and hunting park. The Earls of Arundel and the Dukes of Norfolk held these lands for almost 500 years until 1572, when the 4th Duke of Norfolk was accused of treason. He was stripped of his possessions by Elizabeth the 1st and then beheaded . She later restored the properties and title to the Duke's eldest son Phillip. It was Phillip who built the first manor house at West Dean, West Sussex in 1603, then known as Earl’s Court, later to be renamed Canon House due to its connections to Chichester Cathedral.
In 1621 Phillip sold the manor and it passed into various ownerships, including the Sussex families of John Aylwin of Lewes and Richard Lewkenor of Stoughton. It was John Lewkenor in 1622 who built the Jacobean Manor house, on the site that was previously occupied by the medieval building. The building was built in an E-shape, common in the late 16th century.
In 1738 the West Dean Estate passed into the hands of the Peachey family. Sir James Peachey, the 1st Lord Selsey, commissioned the leading architect of time, James Wyatt to rebuild the manor house, creating the core flint mansion seen at West Dean today. Wyatt is also responsible for the orangery on the West Dean estate. James went on to gain a vast acreage of land, leaving it to his son, Sir John the second Lord Selsey on his death. John was responsible for laying out the parkland and arboretum in West Dean. All of John’s children were without heirs, and in 1871 the last Peachey died.
In 1891 West Dean became the home of newly married William (Willie) Dodge James and Evelyn Forbes the daughter of Sir Charles Forbes, a Scottish aristocrat. William James had inherited great wealth from his father, American born Liverpool based merchant Daniel James. He bought West Dean from Frederick Bowers, a merchant who had owned the property since the death of its previous owner, Caroline Mary (Peachey) Vernon Harcourt (1785-1871). She had inherited the estate when her brother, Henry John Peachey, 3rd Baron Selsey died in 1838. Caroline was the wife of Rev. Leveson Venables Vernon Harcourt, son of Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, Archbishop of York. In her will she had bequeathed West Dean to a distant relative, Ulick de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, who immediately sold it to Frederick Bowers. Clanricarde also disposed of several other properties left to him by Caroline plus the extensive library housed at West Dean, the sale of which took nine days at Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge and included a copy of John Gower's rare Confessio Amantis that sold for £670.
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