S.S. Teulon’s Bestwood Lodge of 1862 is a peculiarly, perhaps wilfully, eccentric house both in its Gothic exterior and in its planning (plate 6). Possibly the weirdest feature of the house is the drawing room/dining room corner with its extraordinary shapes, though the rooms themselves radiate quite logically from the hall. A description of 1881…
Category: Bestwood Lodge
Protected: Arial Photograph of Bestwood Lodge and Gardens
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Huddy
Lord William Huddlestone Beauclerk (known as ‘Huddy’) was the youngest of the three sons of the 10th Duke of St Albans, and grew up at Bestwood. Not long after this picture was taken in Florence, Huddy was committed at the age of 18 as an inmate of the Priory Asylum where he spent over half a century until his death on Xmas Day, 1954.
William Amelius Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk
The 10th Duke of St Albans who commissioned and directed the building of the current Lodge.
Fire at Bestwood
‘The drawing room – Bestwood Lodge… of the pictures which were burnt in the fire of April 1885. Nell Gwynne by Gascar – over fire place’.
A news article of the time reported…
Charles Victor
Charles Victor Albert Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, the 11th Duke of St. Albans (1870-1934), was a godchild – uniquely – of both Queen Victoria and Edward VII and, like his father before him, Hereditary Grand Falconer of England. Burford, as he was called by his family (his courtesy title was Earl of Burford), had a privileged…
The Conservatory
The structure was converted to a ballroom on the marriage of Lady Moyra de Vere Beauclerk to Lord Richard Cavendish, grandson of William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire in 1895.
Protected: The Account of Sybil’s Last Agony
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The Grand Hall at Bestwood Lodge
The fireplace still bears the inscription ‘auspicium melioris aevi’, the motto of the Dukes of St Albans which means, ‘a pledge of better times.’
Bestwood Guests
Guests gather with the 10th Duke and his first wife Sybil on the terrace of Bestwood Lodge.
Teulon delivers his bill
The architect S.S Teulon delivers his bill to Bestwood… as illustrated in the diary book of Lady Diana Beauclerk (1842-1905), sister of the 10th Duke of St. Albans.
