“Ascott became well known as a perfect weekend house for tired statesmen and men of business, and my cousins were the very centre of much pleasant and varied society during the whole of their married lives. But I rejoiced particularly in the fact that there the old Rothschild traditions were well maintained, and that the relationship between landlord and tenants was so perfect.”
REMINISCENCES by Constance Lady Battersea (1922)
Waddesdon Manor and its contents may lay claim to being the most magnificent of the Rothschildshire houses, but Ascott House with its terraced lawns, panoramic views to the Chilterns, specimen and ornamental trees, mirror image herbaceous borders, impressive topiary (including a box and yew sundial) and, in season, a sea of daffodils, takes the prize for botanical splendour.
Ascott is a hamlet near Wing in Buckinghamshire. In 1575 Robert Dormer (1551-1616) succeeded to the considerable lands of his father in Buckinghamshire and elsewhere. Ascott Hall, as it was then known, was built in ‘Wing Park’ adjoining the village and became the Dormers’ mansion.
Dormer was succeeded by his grandson Robert, later 1st Earl of Caernarvon, who added a “noble apartment” [Historic England] to the house to the design of Inigo Jones. The title Earl of Caernarvon became extinct with the death of the 2nd Earl in 1709, and the manor of Wing passed to the Stanhope family. Sir William Stanhope, who was given the manor by his father, allowed the Hall to fall into ruin and it was demolished, probably during the late 18th century. Around 1800 its foundations were cleared away and the bricks used for road repairs around Wing.
Following the hall’s demolition no building occupied the park until 1860, when a farmhouse built of red brick and in the old English style was erected together with farm buildings.