Burderop Park: A Historic Country Manor House in Wiltshire
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page10 sections
History
Burderop Park is a country manor house in the United Kingdom, serving as the manor house of the hamlet of Hodson. Construction began in the early seventeenth century, and the Calley family lived at Burderop for more than two centuries.
The Calley family and the estate
William Calley commissioned the house and was High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1649. A High Sheriff was a ceremonial county officer whose historical duties were linked to royal administration, law enforcement, and the courts. Thomas Calley held the title in 1807.
Thomas Calley married Elizabeth Keck, the daughter of Anthony James Keck of Stoughton Grange. Their son, John James Calley, later sold the estate to John Parkinson, who held it as trustee for the Duke of Wellington. The estate was known for a period as Okebourne Chace. The Duke of Wellington was a British hereditary title associated with the military commander and statesman Arthur Wellesley.
Military and medical use
During the First World War, the parkland became a training camp for the British Army, and Chiseldon Camp was established on the estate. In the Second World War, the camp became the first in Britain to receive American troops. American forces remained concentrated at Chiseldon for the following two years.
Burderop Park also became the home of the US 154th General Hospital during the Second World War. After the conflict, the US military continued to use the site as the 7505th USAF field hospital, a military medical facility intended to treat personnel near an area of operations. It treated American service personnel and their families stationed in Britain until 1965.
Later changes
When the US military left in 1965, it offered its medical equipment to the National Health Service. Burderop Park subsequently became an NHS hospital for long-term mental-health patients, but the hospital closed in 1994.
Burderop House was recorded as a Grade II* listed building in 1955. This designation provides a high level of statutory protection in England for buildings of particularly important architectural or historical interest. After the hospital closed, the house became part of a complex used for commercial agricultural landholding and office space, including offices for CH2M and, previously, the Halcrow Group.
In 2023, a property developer bought the house for conversion into a family home. Planning permission was granted for new housing within the grounds, and those houses had been built by 2024. The former hospital site is intended for an Amazon data centre, for which planning permission was granted in 2021.
Remains
Burderop House
Burderop House is built of brick. It began as a courtyard house in the early seventeenth century and was converted during the eighteenth century into a three-storey square building with bay windows. Inside, seventeenth-century oak panelling and plaster ceilings survive alongside eighteenth-century marble fireplaces. A painted coat of arms belonging to William Calley, dated 1663, is positioned above the original fireplace in a first-floor bedroom. Two further rooms retain seventeenth-century wall paintwork, including a Jacobean-style panelling design. Jacobean refers to the English cultural and architectural period associated with the reign of James I, from 1603 to 1625.
Estate landscape
Earlier staircase
Part of a newel stair survives at the centre of the north wing. A newel stair is arranged around a central supporting post or vertical element. The surviving section is thought to have formed part of an earlier stair turret, a small tower-like structure containing a staircase.
Wartime parkland
The parkland contained wartime huts, which were still shown at Burderop Park on the 1959 Ordnance Survey map. These structures formed part of the physical remains associated with the estate’s military use.
Burderop Wood
Burderop Wood lies in the northern part of the estate. Its woodland includes wet ash-maple and acid pedunculate oak-hazel-ash communities. In 1971, the wood was designated a Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, a protected status for land valued for its wildlife, geology, or ecological features.
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