Stratton Park, in East Stratton

East Stratton

East Stratton is an estate village at the entrance to the landscaped grounds of Stratton Park, some eight miles north of Winchester, Hampshire, England in the parish of Micheldever...

, Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, was an English country house

English country house

The English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a London house. This allowed to them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country...

, built on the site of a grange of Hyde Abbey

Hyde Abbey

Hyde Abbey was a medieval Benedictine monastery just outside the walls of Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was dissolved and demolished in 1538....

 after the dissolution of the monasteries

Dissolution of the Monasteries

The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...

; it was purchased with the manor of Micheldever

Micheldever

Micheldever is a village in Hampshire, England, situated 6 miles north of Winchester.It lies upon the River Dever . The river, and village, formerly part of Stratton Park, lie on a Hampshire grass downland, underlain with chalk and flint...

 in 1546 by Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton

Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton

Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, KG , known as The Lord Wriothesley between 1544 and 1547, was a politician of the Tudor period born in London to William Wrythe and Agnes Drayton....

. The last earl of Southampton

Earl of Southampton

Earl of Southampton was a title that was created three times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1537 in favour of the courtier William Fitzwilliam. He was childless and the title became extinct on his death in 1542. The second creation came in 1547 in favour of the politician...

 made Stratton Park one of his chief seats, and his son-in-law, Sir William Russell, pulled down part of the hamlet and added it to his deer park in the 1660s. The Russell heirs eventually sold the estate in 1801 to Sir Francis Baring, Bt, of the Baring banking family. Baring remodeled the manor house in a neoclassical style, to designs by George Dance the Younger

George Dance the Younger

George Dance the Younger was an English architect and surveyor. The fifth and youngest son of George Dance the Elder, he came from a distinguished family of architects, artists and dramatists...

, 1803–06,' including an imposing stone Doric-columned

Doric order

The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...

 portico and stuccoed brick main block and wings. The large pleasure grounds and landscape park were laid out and planted, starting ca 1803 by Humphry Repton

Humphry Repton

Humphry Repton was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown; he also sowed the seeds of the more intricate and eclectic styles of the 19th century...

, and described by William Cobbett

William Cobbett

William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...

, in Rural Rides: in the counties of Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hants, when Stratton Park held the living of Micheldever

Micheldever

Micheldever is a village in Hampshire, England, situated 6 miles north of Winchester.It lies upon the River Dever . The river, and village, formerly part of Stratton Park, lie on a Hampshire grass downland, underlain with chalk and flint...

 and included Micheldever Wood, which Cobbett said "contains a thousand acres [4 km²], and which is one of the finest oak-woods in England." In the late nineteenth century Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook

Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook

Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook PC, GCSI, FRS , was a British Liberal politician and statesman...

 laid out more formally structured gardens, with hardy plantings by Gertrude Jekyll

Gertrude Jekyll

Gertrude Jekyll was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA and contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines.-Early life:...

.

After a battle with preservationists, most of the Stratton Park manor house was demolished in 1963 by owner John Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton

John Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton

John Francis Harcourt Baring, 7th Baron Ashburton, is a British merchant banker and former chairman of British Petroleum...

. The resulting publicity earned him the nickname "Basher Baring". Today, all that remains is Dance's stone portico, looming up near, but in no stable relation with, a modernist house by Stephen Gardiner

Stephen Gardiner (architect)

Stephen Gardiner OBE was a British architect, teacher and writer.Gardiner was born and raised in Chelsea in London. He was the younger son of Clive Gardiner, painter and principal of Goldsmiths College from 1929 to 1958, and Lily Lancaster, also a painter and one of Walter Sickert's favourite...

and Christopher Knight, 1963-65. Mature specimen trees from the landscape park tower above the present structure.