Buscot Park

Buscot Park is a country house at Buscot near the town of Faringdon in Oxfordshire. It was built in an austere neoclassical style between 1780 and 1783 for Edward Loveden Townsend. It remained in the Loveden Townsend family until sold in 1859 to Robert Tertius Campbell, an Australian. Campbell's daughter Florence would later be famous as Mrs Charles Bravo, the central character in a Victorian murder case that remains unsolved to this day. On Campbell's death, in 1887, the house and its estate were sold to Alexander Henderson, a financier, later to be ennobled as Baron Faringdon.

Following the death of the 1st Baron in 1934, the house was considerably altered and restored to its 18th-century form by the architect Geddes Hyslop for his grandson and successor, the 2nd Lord Faringdon. During this era, the art collection founded by the 1st Baron was considerably enlarged, although many of the 1st Baron's 19th-century works of art were sold immediately following his death.

The house and estate was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1956. The contents (which include works of art by Rembrandt and Burne-Jones) are owned by the Faringdon Collection Trust. The house is occupied and managed by the present Lord Faringdon. The mansion and its extensive formal and informal gardens and grounds are open to the public each summer.

The construction of Buscot Park was begun in 1780, for Edward Loveden Loveden, whose family had owned land adjacent to the site since 1557. The land upon which he chose to build the house itself was owned by the neighbouring Throckmorton estate. Loveden Loveden did not acquire ownership of the land upon which his house was built until 1788. The architect is unknown, and it is likely that Loveden himself had a hand in the design. Loveden is known to have employed James Darley at this time; a little-known architect, described by a contemporary as "able and experienced." The names of other far more eminent architects have been mentioned in connection with Buscot, including that of Robert Adam, but there is no documented evidence that any of these architects worked on the house; it therefore seems likely their involvement is apocryphal. It is known that James Paine supplied fireplaces and advised on the building costs, but the general design of the mansion is unsophisticated and not in character with Paine's work, making it unlikely that his involvement was major.

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