IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Woodchester Park, STONEHOUSE, GL10 3TS

This unfinished mansion house is undergoing work to conserve it.

This shows the graceful wishbone shaped masonry arches in this unfinished gothic mansion house. This masterpiece is well worth a visit and considerable money and effort is being expended to save it for future generations without spoiling its essentially unfinished feel.

This is an unfinished Victorian gothic mansion that was just abandoned at a fairly advanced state of construction. It is now being conserved by a Trust. This shows a fireplace above a springer stone that would have supported the sides of two arches of the barrel vaulted ceiling that was never completed. The bare brick walls would have been plastered. This is a most amazing property and it is only right that it is being conserved.

Although some arches in this unfinished mansion still show their original centring, this heavy-duty construction is recent and is helping to prevent collapse. I believe this is in the vicinity of the chapel that is on Historic England's Buildings at Risk register.

The fan corbels which would have supported vaulting in this ground floor room are attached to the walls, but the ribbing of the vaults was never installed. Woodchester Mansion is full of examples of Victorian building techniques such as this. See shared description below for more information:

The Grand Stair which is located in the southern wing beside the central courtyard is a fine piece of architecture. As the guidebook says it "offers a wonderful and very rare example of a vaulted ceiling on a slope - a construction demanding extremely complex calculations" See also Image] and Image] And see shared description below for more information on the house:

The chapel at Woodchester Mansion is currently undergoing the most intensive renovation with scaffolding on both the outside and within. This view of the eastern façade of the house, has the chapel with its large perpendicular-style window in the centre. The irregular ground floor building on the left is the exterior of the Drawing Room - the only completed room in the house. (see Image]) See shared description below:

A view up to the ceiling of the chapel at Woodchester Mansion. It is difficult at present to take good photographs of the interior of the chapel as it is filled with scaffolding while necessary remedial work is carried out. This is the best glimpse I could find of the ceiling with its fine vaulting. William Leigh was a fervent convert to Catholicism and intended his chapel here to be a spectacular showpiece of the house, but as with most of the rest of the mansion, it was never completed. It is said that had it been so, it would have been the tallest private chapel in any house in Britain. See shared description below for more information on the house: