Sandridge Park

Sandridge Park, near Stoke Gabriel, Devon, is a country house in the Italianate style, designed by John Nash, ca. 1805 [A design was exhibited by Nash at the Royal Academy exhibition, 1805. (Colvin)] for Lady Ashburton. [She was Anne, daughter of William Bingham of Philadelphia]

Sandridge, on high ground at the head of the River Dart estuary, was held by the Sandridges under the Bishop of Exeter in Henry II's reign. The Nash house took the place of the former house, which had belonged to the descendants of Sir Thomas Pomeroy until the eighteenth century. [http://www.geocities.com/pomerytwig/devon.html Pomeroy family in Devon] .] "Gilbert, Esq." was the owner in 1763; it was unoccupied in 1951, "the park ragged and decaying". [W.G.Hoskins, "Devon", 1954, quoted at [http://www.devon.gov.uk/etched?url=etched/ixbin/hixclient.exe&_IXP_=1&_IXR=110411] ] Captain John Davis, the great Elizabethan navigator and explorer, was probably born at Sandridge Barton, the manor farm, in 1543.

Another, less architecturally distinguished Sandridge Park, a villa built ca. 1850 near Melksham, Wiltshire, was for a time a headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Second World War and is now open as a hotel.

Notes

References

*Howard Colvin, "A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840" 3rd ed. 1995: "John Nash"
* [http://www.devon.gov.uk/etched?url=etched/ixbin/hixclient.exe&_IXP_=1&_IXR=110411 Devon County Council: Stoke Gabriel]