A landscape park with pleasure grounds, kitchen gardens, agricultural estate buildings and park walls with lodges, in part laid out by Lancelot Brown in 1760s for Sir Henry Bridgeman around Weston Hall, with later landscaping, building work and planting, and adjoining Italianate gardens devised in the later C19. The park includes parts of two former deer parks and earlier formal gardens on the estate, and also accommodates Tong Knoll, formerly part of the Tong Castle Estate to the south.
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING The village of Weston-under-Lizard lies on the A5 (Watling Street) close to Staffordshire's border with Shropshire. The village lies largely on the north side of the road, while to the south is Weston Hall, its service courts and buildings, and its park. The park is an extensive one, extending approximately 2.5km south of the Hall and measuring the same from east to west, the west boundary being Mill Lane. On the east side the park wall cuts across the landscape following no obvious natural features. The area here registered comprises around 400ha, and essentially represents the park as established in the later C19 following successive extensions to the south.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES There are several approaches to Weston Hall. The main entrance is from the A5 (Watling Street) to the north of the Hall, past the Weston lodges, pairs of mid-C19 sandstone ashlar buildings with gothic-style window glazing (listed at Grade II). Some 300m to the east of that entrance is a service entrance (used by public visitors) to the farm and stables complex (the mid-C19 gates are listed at Grade II), on the west side of which is the Blymhill Lodge (listed at Grade II), a late-C19 red-brick building.
Five further lodges, all of sandstone ashlar, stand at more distant entrances to the park, with drives that run across the park on scenic approaches to the Hall. At the north-west corner of the park is the C18 Shrewsbury Lodge (reoriented in the C19 due to a changed road and entrance layout) and mid-C19 gateway (both listed at Grade II); at the north-east corner is the mid-C19 Lichfield Lodge (listed at Grade II as Stafford Lodge, with gateway separately listed at Grade II); midway down the east side of the park is Brewood Lodge (listed at Grade II); midway down the west side is the mid-C19 Tong Lodge (not listed). Towards the south-west corner is Knoll Lodge (listed at Grade II). There are further access points in the south-east wall both pedestrian gates and wide entrances, some of which may have been historically used for hunting in the Old Park. There are gated entrances to Mill Lane at intervals.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING Weston Hall (listed at Grade I), which lies in the centre of the northern part of the park, was almost entirely rebuilt in 1671 by William Taylor in red brick and stone, with three three-storey ranges enclosing an open courtyard to the north. Thomas Rickman designed the west wing, which was added in 1830-33. Substantially this is the building which survives to this day. In the years after 1865 the principal entrance was moved from the south to the east side to which a classical portico was added. At the same time a new wing and an orangery by William Burn and John MacVicar Anderson (listed at Grade II) were built to the west, and the infilling of the courtyard with buildings began.
The Parish Church of St Andrew (rebuilt in 1702, listed at Grade I) lies immediately north-west of Weston Hall, behind and linked to the orangery. To the east of the Hall are brick stables of 1688 (listed at Grade II), with behind (north) of them large and impressive home farm buildings including the Granary (listed at Grade II) of 1765.
GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS The main formal gardens lie south of Weston Hall, principally the work of W B Thomas with Mr Hope, the Head Gardener in the mid-late C19. In front of the brick-with-stone-detailing south front is an 80m wide, rectangular, terraced and balustraded Italianate garden (listed at Grade II), with edged flower beds, urns, a fountain, and a circular basin. It is laid out as a set of three terraces running the length of the house and was altered in 1887 when the walls were heightened and balustrading added. Linked to the south and projecting into the park is a great semi-circular balustraded arc, now (2020) laid down to lawn but when constructed surrounding a mature plane tree. To the west, before the Orangery, is another Italianate compartment part of the gardens formed in several phases in the later C19, and reinstated in the late C20. Edward Kemp designed the carriage ring and approach drive in the later C19, which served the new eastern entrance front designed by John MacVicar Anderson for the third Earl.
The pleasure grounds extend north-west and east of the Hall; the main elements were planned and laid out by Lancelot Brown in 1765-8 and, later, laid out by John Webb. Extending north-west from the Hall to the A5 is the Shrewsbury Walk, a broad gravel walk with lawns to either side and specimen trees including yews and mature sweet chestnuts, perhaps survivals from the earlier formal layout. The Walk, around 450m long by 50m wide, is bounded to the south by a stone-walled ha-ha, and to the north by a stone wall. Some 300m from the Hall, on the south side of the Walk, is Pendrill's Cave (listed at Grade II), a cave or grotto claimed to be the occasional residence in the C18 of Penderell, a mendicant. The Shrewsbury Walk was modified and extended to the reoriented Shrewsbury Lodge in 1845.
Brown’s ha-ha extends to the east and defines the Temple Wood Pleasure Grounds, passing to the south-east of the stables block by the 10m long, late C18 or early C19, Pauslip's Tunnel (listed at Grade II), which leads under a drive and gives access to the eastern pleasure grounds. Temple Wood is around 750m long by up to 450m at the east end. Walks from the Hall lead through the pleasure grounds, well planted with specimen trees ranging from sweet chestnut (probably the pre-Brown East Avenue), via Beech (possibly Brown period) to more modern exotics, and around a chain of pools. Much the largest of these is the triangular Temple Pool, created around 1770-91. At the apex of the triangle, to the east, is Roman Bridge (listed at Grade I), completed in 1793 to a design by James Paine. Close to the north and south ends of the bridge are urns (both listed at Grade II and apparently moved here by the fifth Earl from Brown’s Tong Castle Park). Also designed by Paine is the main feature of the pleasure grounds, the Temple of Diana (listed at Grade I), which stands to the south of Temple Pool overlooking the park and Tong Knoll to the south, and Lizard Hill and The Wrekin beyond the park to the west. Constructed in about 1770 the Temple is of ashlar with a lead dome above, and comprises a three-bay orangery to the front (south), a tea room, a music room, and basic accommodation. The other main structures in the east pleasure grounds are the Ionic Aedicule, a stone seat of 1938 at the west end of Temple Pool (by Lord Gerald Wellesley); Swiss (or Pink) Cottage (listed grade II) at the east end of the pleasure grounds, constructed about 1770 and with later alterations; a mid-C19 sandstone boathouse (listed at Grade II) midway along the south side of Temple Pool; and a 1930s memorial pool with ornamental cascade the north end of the Pool.
A miniature railway runs along the north side of the east pleasure grounds, and there is an adventure playground to the ground's north-west.
PARK The park at Weston is roughly triangular. The A5 (Watling Street), which here runs almost due west/east, forms the 2.5km long northern boundary to the park the whole circuit of which is walled. The west side of the park, of about the same length, runs north/south alongside Mill Lane, the minor road to Tong Norton. Broad plantation belts screen these roads from the park within.
The Hall lies in the centre of the northern part of the park, looking south across permanent pasture with specimen trees and clumps falling for around 1km to a drain which carries water south-east to north-west across the centre of the park to the 500m long Park Pool (created 1828-9) which lies on the west side of the park north of Tong Lodge. A late-C19 boathouse and cottage (both listed at Grade II) in Swiss Cottage style stand on its west side. Extending around the south side of the Pool is Cow Hey Wood, which includes some of the earliest planting in the park. Adjoining the east side of the park at about the same distance from the Hall is Newport Plantation. North-east of that plantation is The Pheasantry, a mid-C19 timber-framed estate cottage, to the south-east of which is the Head Keeper's Cottage. That is approached from the south by an oak avenue planted in around 1870, a ‘claire voie’ to Old Park Pool. Some 350m south-west of The Pheasantry is a 10m high, early-C19 obelisk (listed at Grade II). A moated site (Scheduled Monument) 150m south-east of The Pheasantry may mark a lodge site.
North of The Pheasantry the compartment known as the East Park, to the north and east of Temple Wood, is under grazing in 2020.
To the south of the drain to Park Pool, the ground rises up onto Tong Knoll, on top of which is the four-storey Knoll Tower (listed at Grade II) with views across the park to the Hall and Temple of Diana, and to the south and west over to the Shropshire Hills.
A number of the tree clumps across the park have stone markers inscribed (not listed) with the year of planting in the mid-late C19. There are two rubble stone buildings (not listed), possibly former deer shelters, one to the south of Temple Wood and one to the north of the wood, by the wall to the A5.
KITCHEN GARDEN & NORTH ESTATE BUILDINGS The walled kitchen garden (listed at Grade II) is around 150m east/west by 120m north/south. It lies north of the Hall, Church and Town Pool, and with the A5 as its northern boundary. It is probably of the later-C18 date, and may have been constructed on Brown's advice; building work is recorded in 1770 and it is shown on the plan of 1765. Running from east to west across the centre of the gardens is a heated wall with pavilions, boiler houses and sheds, including a former Pinery (not in its original use in 2020).
To the west and north-west of the Town Pool are a number of estate buildings arranged around a partly brick-walled and hedged drive to the formal entrance of the Weston Lodges and Gates (listed at Grade II). A C19 glasshouse with low sandstone walls (not listed) faces the pool, behind which is a sandstone garden wall with ball finial to an end pier, and behind that is Garden Cottage (listed at Grade II) with four tall pairs of brick ridge stacks. To the rear of Garden Cottage are late-C20 single-storey structures known as Bothy and Potting Shed. To the west of the entrances gates is The Poultry House (listed at Grade II as The Pheasantry), black-and-white in appearance and set in a large plot including a rose garden and gate to Shrewsbury Walk to the rear. To the south-east is The Curatage (listed at Grade II) and the garden wall to Shrewsbury Walk and the churchyard.