Alderley House

Alderley House is a mid-19th-century 23,843 square feet (2,215.1 m2) Grade II listed country house designed by Lewis Vulliamy and built for Robert Blagden Hale in the Cotswold village of Alderley, near Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, England. It was built on the site of The Lower House, a 17th-century manor house built by Sir Matthew Hale, a lawyer. The house is situated immediately to the southwest of St Kenelm's Church. In 2009 it was sold to an American oil executive who restored the house as a private home after 70 years as a preparatory school, Rose Hill School. The first 350 years' history of the site is linked to the Hale family. The Lower House (the original property on the present day Alderley House site) was built by Sir Matthew Hale after his purchase of the manor of Alderley in 1656. In the latter part of the 18th century, The Upper House (the original manor house) was rebuilt by another Matthew Hale on the lower slopes of nearby Winner Hill, and this property subsequently became the family's principal seat. In 1859, the position was reversed again when Robert Blagden Hale had The Upper House completely demolished and The Lower House partially torn down, rebuilding the latter in a more fashionable style to the designs of Lewis Vulliamy. Materials from both of the earlier houses were used in the construction of the new property. Both The Lower House and its successor, Alderley House, were mainly used by the Hale family as a private residence until the early 20th century. In around 1925 the property was occupied by a crammer school and in 1939 it became the home of Rose Hill School when the school relocated from Banstead, Surrey following the outbreak of the Second World War. In the same year the late-10th-century will of Æthelgifu was discovered in one of the outbuildings. In 2009 a merger with Querns Westonbirt School saw the new entity co-locating with Westonbirt School in Tetbury and the site at Alderley sold. Alderley House is again a private…