[95862] Sheringham Park : Temple

Sheringham Park, Norfolk.

The National Trust.

The Temple, 1975.

 

Here, 700m south-east of the Hall, stands a temple, erected in 1975 following a design by Humphry Repton which was intended for another high point in the park but was never built.

 

This stone was laid by John, Thirteenth Duke of Bedford, for Thomas Upcher Esquire, on October 19th 1975.

 

Although no park existed at Sheringham before Repton was called in to advise, the owner of the Sheringham estate during the late C18, Cook Flower, began the creation of the landscape which exists today by planting extensive woods on the hilltops and leaving the undulating land beneath to undivided arable. The estate was purchased in 1811 by Abbot Upcher who immediately commissioned Humphry Repton (1752-1818), and his architect son John Adey Repton (1775-1860), to design a new house, to be known as Sheringham Bower, as a replacement for the old house which stood on a different site some 600m to the east. It took Upcher and the Reptons until 1813 to agree on the new site and to begin the work, which included a terrace garden on the north side of the house. The building of the house and the laying out of the park and garden ran concurrently and were all largely, but not entirely complete by 1817. Abbot Upcher died in 1819 and his wife left the house unfinished and empty. It was her son Henry Ramey Upcher who completed the work and took up residence in 1839 and the landscape continued to develop according to Repton's principles. A collection of rhododendrons was started in the woodlands in the 1850s. Henry Morris Upcher succeeded to the estate in 1892 and added further to the rhododendron collections with seed supplied by the plant collector Ernest Wilson. Henry Edward Sparke (later Sir Henry) Upcher inherited after the First World War and continued to farm the estate until after the Second World War. His son Thomas succeeded in 1954, further improving the plant collections and erecting a temple in the park. The property was given to the National Trust by the Upcher family in 1987.

Done