History
Coombe Abbey was founded as a monastery in the 12th century. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century it became royal property.
Elizabeth of Bohemia, the daughter of king James I, was educated there in the early 17th century. Had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded she was to have been abducted from Coombe Abbey and proclaimed as Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1682, the West Wing was added by architect Captain William Winde, who also designed Buckingham House, which later became Buckingham Palace. In 1771, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown redesigned the gardens, incorporating the Coombe Pool lake.
For successive generations Coombe Abbey was owned by the Earls of Craven, in whose possession the estate remained until 1923.
In November 1964 Coventry City Council bought Coombe Abbey with 150 acres (0.61 km2) of land. The park was opened to the public in 1966.
- Coombe Abbey Country Park
-
The main entrance to Coombe Abbey and the park
-
The West Wing, lake and gardens.
Read more about this topic: Coombe Abbey
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)