It’s a miracle it has survived at all. It has a motorway running through it; much of its parkland was ploughed up to plant crops to feed the nation and a succession of different organisations – from the RAF to Hare Krishna – have all had a base on it. Yet Croome Park in Worcestershire lives on.
© NTPL / David Noton
How Croome came about
Croome was created by the vision of the 6th Earl of Coventry and ‘Capability’ Brown himself, helped by leading designers of the day, Robert Adam and later, James Wyatt. And it is ordinary people, like farm labourer Malcolm Walford, who began working on the estate in 1954 who only retired this year, whose dedication and hard work over the years have made this glorious piece of Elgar’s England what it is today.
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The next chapter – our opportunity
© NTPL / Andrew Butler
We have a unique opportunity to put the final piece of the jigsaw into place and re-unite the parkland with its ancestral home, Croome Court. If we can raise the funds to do so, we will be realising ‘Capability’ Brown’s pioneering vision of house and landscape as a harmonious whole. We estimate it will take £560,000 just to make the property safe so we can open it to the public. Immediate needs include waterproofing the house, re-wiring it and securing the floors.
Since purchasing 670 acres of the parkland in 1996, we have restored much of Croome Park to Brown’s vision for it. But Croome Court remains a mystery to us with tantalising glimpses under peeling wallpaper, investigations into dusty attic rooms, forays behind panelled up walls promising amazing discoveries to come.
This is the first chance in six decades chance to re-unite Croome Park with its house and we need your help to make this happen.
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