Orchardleigh

Orchardleigh House
Location within Somerset
General information
Town or city	Frome
Country	England
Coordinates	51°15′40″N 2°19′19″W / 51.2611°N 2.3219°W / 51.2611; -2.3219
Completed	1856
Client	William Duckworth
Design and construction
Architect	Thomas Henry Wyatt

Orchardleigh (also spelled Orchardlea) is a country estate in Somerset, approximately two miles north of Frome, and on the southern edge of the village of Lullington. The privately held estate comprises a Victorian country house, the Orchardleigh Lake with its island church, and an 18-hole golf course.

Orchardleigh is available for weddings and other events. Various accommodation is provided, both in the house itself and at adjacent lodges and cottages in the extensive grounds.

Within the old estate are the Orchardleigh Stones, a probable neolithic burial chamber which was excavated in 1803 and 1804, when human bones and cremation urns were discovered.

The Church of St Mary, Orchardlea, dates from the 13th century and is Grade I listed. The churchyard contains the grave of the poet Sir Henry Newbolt.

The parish was part of the hundred of Frome.

The old Orchardleigh House was just south of the church. Its heyday was the time of Sir Thomas Champneys, 1st Baronet, High Sheriff of Somerset in 1775, but all that remains of that period is the boathouse, rotunda, the Lullington gateway, and the Tudor lodges dating from the 1820s. The old house was demolished and the present one built in 1856 by Thomas Henry Wyatt for William Duckworth. The new house is described by Pevsner as "picturesque, irregular, and in a mixed Elizabethan style", and is a Grade II* listed building.

William Duckworth (1795-1876) bought the Orchardleigh Estate in 1855 and built the house in 1856. He was born in 1795 in Manchester. His father was George Duckworth who was lord of the manor in Over Darwen in the parish of Blackburn. When his father died in 1815 William and his brother Samuel inherited his estates. Samuel died in 1847 and as he was unmarried he also left his fortune to William. When William bought the Orchardleigh Estate in 1855 he was an extreme wealthy man and was therefore able to afford to afford the elegant house that still stands today.