Elcot Park Hotel
| Mercure Newbury Newbury Elcot Park |
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|---|---|
 Mercure Newbury
Newbury Elcot Park 
Mercure Newbury
Newbury Elcot Park  Mercure NewburyNewbury Elcot Park shown within Berkshire |
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| OS grid reference | SU397696 |
| Coordinates | 51°25′15″N 1°25′48″W / 51.4207°N 1.4301°WCoordinates: 51°25′15″N 1°25′48″W / 51.4207°N 1.4301°W |
The Mercure Newbury Elcot Park Hotel is a four star country hotel belonging to Jupiter Hotels and franchised as part of the Mercure hotel chain, situated within 16 acres (65,000 m2) of land in the locality of Elcot near Kintbury in the English county of Berkshire.
Elcot Park estate was purchased by Anthony Bushby Bacon (1772? - 1827), the son of a wealthy Welsh industrialist, from Charles Dundas, 1st Baron Amesbury, a prominent landowner from the neighbouring village of Kintbury. He then proceeded to create a small estate, and built the house probably between 1815 and 1825. There are gaps in the historical record but this is the most likely date range for the building of the house, and differs from published accounts. There also have been suggestions that Capability Brown was involved in laying out the grounds, but this is unlikely to be correct, despite the fact that the gardens of Elcot Park were laid out in an English Landscape style. The area around the mansion were laid to lawns with clumps of trees, woodland walks and distant views over the Kennet valley. There also was a fine walled kitchen garden with a range of glasshouses, including four greenhouses for vines and peaches, and also a pine pit heated with hot water. Elcot Park was well known, in the nineteenth century, for Bacon's implementation of hot water heating in the glasshouses.
When Anthony Bacon died in 1827, he was heavily in debt with two mortgages against the house. His son, Charles Bacon, bought the house in 1831 after clearing the debts, but seemed to continue to have financial difficulties as he had to sell the property in 1844. The sale documents from that time still exist that shows that Elcot Park was sold with 122 acres (in contrast with today's 16). Lady Shelly, mother of the great poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, purchased the estate and moved here with her remaining daughters, having suffered the double tragedy of her husband’s death at Field Place, Sussex and the death by drowning of Percy. The estate was then let for a number of years to various military families until the Shelly family sold their interest in Elcot Park to Sir Richard Vincent Sutton, 6th Baronet in 1899. Sir Richard’s main seat was Benham Park, and the land attached to Elcot at that time adjoined Benham Valence. Elcot Park was again let for a further 25 years to a prominent JP by the name of Richard Plaskett Thomas. He held substantial tea plantations in India. The land belonging to Elcot Park then became part of the tenancy for Elcot Farmhouse. The main mansion, parkland and outbuildings forming a separate tenancy.
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