  Snowshill
Manor is a fascinating tudor mansion. The house was purchased in
1919 by Charles Padget Wade, an eccentric architect and antiquary.
The manor was restored as a setting for Wade's huge collection
of craftsmanship, as well as models which he had created. It is
thought that Wade never lived in the manor house choosing a spartan
lifestyle in the old priest's house in the courtyard (small building
on left in picture).
Wade was born in 1883, the son of a sugar plantation owner. He
was to inherit the plantations on St Kitts in 1911, which enabled
him later to buy Snowshill Manor. Wade was and remains an enigmatic
character. Several notable figures of the twentieth century met
him and stayed at the Manor - Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, John
Buchan and J B Priestly among them - and give differing impressions
of their meetings. There is little doubt that Wade cultivated this
elusive persona; he dressed very theatrically, almost ghoulishly,
and the collection is itself like a performance, a theatre of objects.
Snowshill Manor was owned by Winchcombe Abbey as early as 821,
until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. It was at one
point part of Catherine Parr's marriage dowry, although she probably
never visited. The house passed through many different hands and
the way it has been added on to at different points in its history
reflects this. The northern end of the house is the oldest surviving
part, dating from around 1500, still medieval in its design. It
was extended and reshaped in around 1600 but it was the additions
by the Sambach family in the early part of the eighteenth century
that from one viewpoint radically altered the aspect of the manor
from an Elizabethan to a Georgian house.
The garden at Snowshill Manor was designed by M.H. Baillie Scott
- a leading figure in the Arts
and Crafts movement. |
