Vampires, servicemen and, possibly, a home for a pope – mansion’s big history
THE hidden valley in which Woodchester Mansion is concealed was misty and murky with threatening clouds overhead on the recent bank holiday Monday.
Perfect conditions to see this gothic curiosity at its most atmospheric.
Caged in scaffolding at the moment while conservation works are underway, the house hewn from local stone looked like the setting for a Hammer Horror film.
It has featured in a number of TV shows and movies and the tour guide pointed out the splendidly menacing doors in the entrance hall that were left by the crew filming a recent remake of Dracula.
Real life horror has taken place here too. During the Second World War American GI’S were billeted in the Mansion, gathered to make preparations for the D-day Normandy landings. While trying out a floating causeway on one of the lakes in the grounds of the house, an armoured personnel carrier tipped into the chilly waters.
The bodies of those drowned were taken back to the mansion before their funerals could take place under cover of secrecy. It’s not known how many of those young men lost their lives in that incident at Woodchester. It’s mooted as many as 20.
During their temporary incumbency, the American servicemen left their mark on Woodchester Mansion, not always for the better of the building. They blocked up the chimneys with concrete in an attempt to keep the cold out, which is understandable as parts of the house feel like being in a freezer even on a warm day. They also concreted over the ground floor and used the gargoyles for target practice.
But it wasn’t only Uncle Sam who vandalised the mansion. The local Home Guard used the clock in the tower for shooting competitions and the holes left by their standard issue Lee Enfield 303 bullets can be examined in the corridor of the chapel where the clock face now resides.
For those young Americans the surroundings must have been baffling. Having crossed the Atlantic, likely for the first time out of the US, they found themselves in a substantial Cotswold mansion with over 40 rooms, sited at the end of the long, unmetalled drive.
Many of the windows were not glazed. There were no interior furnishings. And the whole place had every semblance of being a building site abandoned in Victorian times and never completed.
Which is precisely what Woodchester Mansion is. An unfinished masterpiece.
It was built for William Leigh, who inherited a fortune from his father. Converting to Roman Catholicism, Leigh set about building Woodchester Mansion with the vision of it being a home in which his family could lead a life of strict religious devotion.
One theory is that Leigh designed the house for a pope in exile, not an entirely crazy notion. In the late 19th century unrest and insurgency among the Papal States posed a threat to the Papacy remaining in the Vatican.
It wasn’t impossible that a pope might have to flee Italy, but surely the idea of a pope choosing Protestant England as his first choice of home from home was always unlikely.
But let’s put such supposition to one side. Leigh’s family fortune diminished, partly due to death duties, partly because he had another grand plan to build a convent nearby, which resulted in resources being over stretched.
One day the tradespeople working on Woodchester Manor knocked off work and never returned to the site. The tools they left can be seen to this day. The house was never completed and never will be.