Witley Court
Witley Court in Worcestershire is one of the grandest and most poignant ruins in England, the shell of what was once one of the most spectacular country houses in the country, its great Italianate facade and shattered interiors preserved as a maintained ruin by English Heritage and conveying with particular force the fragility of Victorian aristocratic wealth and the devastating consequences of its collapse. The house was originally a Jacobean manor house that was transformed in stages during the nineteenth century for successive owners of increasing wealth and ambition. The final and most dramatic transformation was carried out for the Earl of Dudley in the 1850s and 1860s by the architect Samuel Dawkes and the landscape designer William Nesfield, who together created a palatial Italianate mansion with state rooms of extraordinary luxury and grounds laid out with elaborate formal gardens, parterre plantings and the two enormous fountain basins that survive today as among the finest examples of Victorian landscape design in the country. The Perseus and Andromeda fountain, one of the largest in Britain, was capable of throwing its jet 36 metres into the air and was powered by a sophisticated hydraulic system fed by a purpose-built reservoir. The fountain operated only on special occasions due to the enormous quantities of water required, but on those occasions its spectacle was described by contemporary visitors in the most extravagant terms. The fountain has been restored to working order and operates on selected days throughout the visitor season. The house was gutted by fire in 1937 and subsequently abandoned, the contents sold and the building left to deteriorate over the following decades. The contrast between the still-impressive scale of the surviving facades and the roofless interiors open to the sky creates an atmosphere of melancholy grandeur that deliberately preserved ruins rarely achieve.