Howbery Park

About

Howbery Park is a 36-ha park located adjacent to the River Thames in Crowmarsh Gifford near Wallingford, UK. Its main feature is an English manor house built in about 1850 by Member of Parliament (MP) William Seymour Blackstone. Blackstone fell into debt, largely because of the building costs, which resulted in him spending time in the debtors' prison at Oxford and contributed to the end of his political career. He died in Brighton, never having lived at Howbery Park. Other owners of Howbery Park were Henry Bertie Williams-Wynn (who purchased the house in 1867), Harvey du Cros (in 1902) and George Denison Faber, 1st Baron Wittenham.

The estate passed into the ownership of the government in the 1930s and was used during the Second World War to house US, Polish and Canadian servicemen and then refugees from Central Europe. After the war, it was selected as the location for the new Hydraulics Research Station (HRS), established under the directorship of Sir Claude Inglis. HRS was privatised in 1982 from the Department of the Environment (DoE) and the HR Wallingford Group was created. The new company was limited by guarantee, had no shareholders and was given the remit to invest in hydraulic...