Current Building
The present building, inspired by Italian baroque palaces, was erected after a fire in 1850 by architect Horace Jones who much later also designed London's Tower Bridge. Its then owner William Crawshay II, an ironmaster nicknamed the 'Iron King', had the house rebuilt over an iron frame, an early example for this technique. Jones inserted his seven bay block between two colonnades of 1840 by John Thistlewood Crew (called J. T. Crews by Pevsner and English Heritage) which apparently survived the fire.
During the First World War, part of the building was used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. In 1923 The Oratory School bought the house and about 120 hectares (300 acres) of the estate's remaining 730 hectares (1,800 acres). The principal of the school was Edward Pereira. The legacy of the estate's days as a school remain with a chapel building and graves for three boys, one of whom died in World War II in 1940, the other two having died from accident and sickness in the 1920s.
The residential area of Caversham Park Village was developed in the 1960s on some of the parkland.
Read more about this topic: Caversham Park
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or building:
“The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“By building relations...we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier.”
—Susan Lieberman (20th century)