Attingham Park's collections
Explore the objects and works of art we care for at Attingham Park on the National Trust Collections website.
The history of Attingham
- Expert curated
Commissioned in 1782 by Noel Hill, later 1st Baron Berwick, Attingham is one of the largest country houses and estates in Shropshire. Architect John Nash re-modelled the interiors, building one of the earliest picture galleries in a country house. Landscape designer Humphry Repton enhanced the parkland to maximise views to the Wrekin and Shropshire Hills. Today, Attingham reflects the British taste for Neo-classical design with collections that are global in scope and origin.
Early history
Attingham’s history can be traced to the Tudor era. Sir Rowland Hill of Hawkstone (1492?–1561) of Hawkstone Park in North Shropshire took advantage of the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–40) to acquire land belonging to several abbeys in the area, including Shrewsbury. Sir Rowland was a successful textile merchant and the first Protestant Mayor of London.
His descendant, also Rowland Hill (1623–1700), acquired the manor of Atcham, next to the River Tern, just to the east of Shrewsbury. The name Atcham is a contraction of ‘Attingham’, which has Saxon origins translating as ‘dwelling of the people of St Eata’.
Family wealth and global trade
Rowland’s son, Richard Hill (1654–1727), inherited Atcham estate and built Tern Hall in 1701–2. Richard was a statesman and diplomat during the reigns of William III and Queen Anne. He had stocks in the South Sea Company, a British joint-stock company founded to engage in trade and supply enslaved people to Spanish colonies in the Americas.
On his death in 1727, Richard bequeathed the Atcham estate to his sister, Margaret Hill (d.1734), and her son, Thomas (Harwood) Hill (1693–1782). Richard left 5000 shares in the East India Company, a global trading corporation, to Thomas. Thomas also claimed £1026 in South Sea Company annuities.
In 1738, the family inherited wealth from Margaret’s husband, Thomas Harwood (1661–1738), who profited from trade in several colonially produced commodities, especially tobacco.
Noel Hill, 1st Baron Berwick and Attingham Hall
In 1768, Noel Hill (1745–89), Member of Parliament for Shropshire, received Tern Hall on his marriage to Anne Vernon (1744–97). He made some improvements to the house, despite his father urging economies. When Noel’s father died in 1782, he immediately commissioned architect George Steuart to create Attingham Hall, the neo-classical mansion we see today. The new Hall integrated the old Tern Hall at its core. Noel chose the name Attingham in reference to the medieval name of the estate village of Atcham.
As a Member of Parliament, Noel Hill supported Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger’s East India Bill of 1748 which attempted to reform the East India Company. In recognition of this support, Hill was ennobled. Inspired by the medieval settlement of Berwick Maviston on the estate, Noel took the title of 1st Baron Berwick.
In the 1770s, Noel commissioned the landscape architect Thomas Leggett to create a large walled garden and the Mile Walk in the Pleasure Grounds. However, he did not enjoy his new creation or title for long. He died in 1789 at the age of 43.
Thomas Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick and Attingham’s collection
Thomas Hill (1770–1832) was 18 years old when he inherited and became 2nd Baron Berwick. In 1792 he set off on a Grand Tour of the continent, spending extravagantly on paintings, furniture and antiquities which he brought back to Attingham.
In 1805–7, Thomas Hill commissioned John Nash to remodel Attingham’s interiors. Nash was a leading architect of the Regency period who later designed Brighton Pavilion for the Prince Regent. Nash created a large Picture Gallery at the centre of Attingham to house the vast collections Thomas acquired in Europe. The gallery was one of the first to be built in a country house and is notable for its early use of cast iron in a domestic building. Amongst the paintings in the Gallery are important Italian landscapes by the German artist Jakob-Philipp Hackert.
Creating the landscape
Not content to only make changes to the house, Thomas commissioned the landscape designer Humphry Repton to suggest landscape improvements for the front park. These are captured in one of Repton’s ‘Red Books’, still in the collection.
Repton’s recommendation was to realign the entrance drive from Atcham village; this created an oblique approach to the house and made the park appear larger. Views across the River Tern towards the Wrekin hill were emphasised to compensate for the flat nature of the site.
In 1797, Thomas purchased previously rented land east of the river to create the Deer Park.
The consequences of extravagance
In 1812, Thomas married a young courtesan, Sophia Dubochet (1794–1875), 35 years his junior. Her apartments were lavishly fitted out with soft-furnishings and mahogany furniture by Gillows of Lancaster, who imported the timber from colonial Jamaica. The marriage brought Thomas social isolation. The couple overspent and Thomas faced financial ruin. In 1827, a 16-day auction, and another in 1829, resulted in the sale of much of Attingham’s collection, including everything in Sophia’s luxurious first floor rooms. Thomas retired to Italy where he died in 1832, leaving his younger brother William, a diplomat in Italy, to pick up the pieces.
William Noel-Hill, 3rd Baron Berwick and Italy
William, 3rd Baron Berwick (1773–1842) was a Member of Parliament and diplomat. William adopted the first name ‘Noel’ to form the family’s new, double-barrelled surname ‘Noel-Hill’.
After spending 25 years as a diplomat in Italy, William returned to Attingham with magnificent works of art to fill the gaps in the house. These remain some of the finest aspects of Attingham’s collection, including silverware by British silversmith Paul Storr, dessert porcelain by the French manufactory Dagoty, gilt table centrepieces by French sculptor Pierre-Philippe Thomire, and a large quantity of important Italian royal furniture formerly belonging to Queen Maria Theresa of Sardinia (1773-1832).
The 19th century
After this rich period of spending and building Attingham’s collection, the house was largely shut up as the family could not afford to run it. Throughout the 19th century, the subsequent Barons Berwick lived modestly on the estate.
Richard Noel-Hill, 5th Baron (1800–61) made improvements to the estate’s farmsteads, breeding prize livestock such as Hereford cattle that still graze the park today. His brother, William, later 6th Baron Berwick, fought in the first Anglo-Burmese War (1824–6) which resulted in the British gaining control over areas which are today part of north-east India.
The 20th century
In the 1920s and 1930s, Attingham enjoyed a period of renewal under Thomas, 8th Baron Berwick (1877–1947) and his Italian-born wife Teresa Hulton (1890–1972). They married in Venice just after the First World War. The couple were sensitive art-lovers dedicated to reviving Attingham’s interiors and collections, though with scant resources.
The couple negotiated the gift of Attingham to the National Trust, which happened in 1947 upon the death of Thomas. It remains one of the most generous bequests the National Trust has ever received.
Teresa continued living at Attingham after Thomas’s death. She opened a small number of ground floor rooms to the public, and between 1948–76, the western wing became a residential Adult Education College. In 1972, Teresa died following a car accident outside the main gates.
Attingham and the National Trust
It was due to Thomas’s foresight and Teresa’s determination that Attingham survived at all. Thomas’s will stated that it should be ‘for the public benefit’ and today Attingham is one of the National Trust’s most visited properties, welcoming over half a million people every year.
Between 2006 and 2016 major conservation work was carried out to some of Attingham’s interior decoration schemes, including the Boudoir, Octagon Room and the Picture Gallery. A protective glass roof was installed over the Gallery in 2015.
From 1987 to 2020, the first and second floor apartments of the east wing were let to Mr Edwin D. Cohen (1933–2020), an American stockbroker and collector of English and French 18th-century art. His apartments are currently open to the public by guided tour.
Further reading
- ‘A Noble Thing: The National Trust and its Benefactors’, Chapter 7, The Painter’s Daughter, Lady Berwick and Attingham Park’, Merlin Waterson, 2011, Scala
- ‘Ambassador, you are spoiling us!’, Wolf Burchard, Country Life, 13 September 2017 (pp.188-192)
- ‘Italian Furniture at Attingham Park’, Christopher Rowell & Wolf Burchard, Furniture History, Vol. LVI (2020), pp. 107–176
- R. Harris, “Lottery Adventuring in Britain, c.1710–1760”, The English Historical Review, Volume 133, Issue 561, April 2018
- Richard Kleer, “Riding a Wave: the Company’s role in the South Seas Bubble”, The Economic History Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (February 2015)
- Thomas Harwood Sr.’s Merchants Day Book, 1710, Shropshire Archives, 112/11/4.
- South Sea Stock, 1727, Shropshire Archives, 112/12/box 46/item 15
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