Coworth House
| Coworth Park Hotel | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Alternative names | Coworth House |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Georgian architecture |
| Location | Sunningdale, near Ascot, Windsor and Maidenhead, UK |
| Named for | Hamlet of Coworth |
| Construction started | September 25, 2010 |
| Management | Dorchester Collection |
| Other information | |
| Number of rooms | 70 |
| Number of restaurants | 3 |
| Website | |
| Official site | |
Coworth House, currently known as Coworth Park Hotel, is a late 18th-century country house situated at Sunningdale, near Ascot, in the English county of Berkshire. It is one of the ten hotels operated by the Dorchester Collection, a group of luxury hotels in Europe and the United States owned by the Brunei Investment Agency.
In 2008, its interiors were rebuilt to facilitate the house's new use as a hotel. Coworth Park opened as a luxury resort in September 2010. It also includes an eco-spa and is the only hotel in the United Kingdom that has its own polo grounds.
Coworth House dates in its oldest form from 1776. It takes its name from the surrounding hamlet of Coworth, which until a reorganisation in 1894, lay in the parish and manor of Old Windsor.
The land that Coworth Park now stands on was granted in 1066 by the saintly Edward the Confessor to Westminster Abbey. William the Conqueror regained possession of it from the Abbey in exchange for lands in Essex. Theoretically, the manor of Old Windsor still remains with the Crown. In 1606 it was leased by James I to Richard Powney, whose great grandson, Penyston Powney, was administering it in 1737. After his death in 1757, his son and heir, Penyston Porlock Powney, became the Crown lessee, and was still appearing as such in records when Coworth House was constructed in 1776. The land was conveyed in 1770 by William Hatch and Elizabeth his wife, who were presumably Powney's agents or sub-tenants, to one William Shepheard. No records survive to confirm as much, but in all likelihood it was William Shepheard who six years later constructed the dwelling seen today.
Shepheard was a prosperous East India merchant with offices in London. He was the first of two men associated with British India to own the property.When Shepheard died about 1810, Coworth House passed to his son, also called William, whose executors sold it before 1836 to George Arbuthnot (1772–1843), a Scottish colonel who served in Madras. The 1841 census finds Arbuthnot sharing the house, perhaps as two distinct entities perhaps not, with the family of his nephew and son-in-law, John Alves Arbuthnot (1802–1875), a director of the London Assurance Company and of the London and Colonial Bank. John Alves Arbuthnot was a son of Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet. He married his cousin, Mary (1812–1859), with whom he had eleven children. He was the founding partner of the firm of Messrs, Arbuthnot Latham & Co. and was High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1873. He inherited Coworth House from his uncle and died there 20 August 1875 aged seventy-three, leaving a personal estate 's worn under £400,000. He gave Coworth House – then called Coworth Park – to his daughters, 'for as long as more than two shall remain unmarried', then to his eldest son, William Arbuthnot (1833–1896) who at the time of his father’s death was living on the estate with his family at Park Lodge.
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