The Dower House, Stoke Park

The Dower House, Stoke Park is a dower house in Bristol, England. It is one of Bristol's more prominent landmarks, set on Purdown, a hill above the M32 motorway on the main approach into the city, and painted yellow. The house was built in 1553 by Sir Richard Berkeley. Rebuilt by Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt circa 1760, it eventually became used as a dower house by the dukes of Beaufort at nearby Badminton House. This included Charles Somerset, 4th Duke of Beaufort (the son of Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort) and wife Elizabeth Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort whose daughter's obelisk can be found to this date on the hill she died on from falling off a horse. It was used as part of Stoke Park Hospital, previously Stoke Park Colony, from 1909. The house closed as hospital wards in November 1986 when the final remaining patients were moved to other wards, though the laundry remained for a period. The building was sold in 1991 to the Sennitt and Neate families who planned to redevelop the house into a nursing home, and it was rented to the nearby University of the West of England (UWE) for lectures and seminars in the interim, while the facilities at the Frenchay campus were redeveloped. The last UWE lecture was in spring 2003. Residential planning permission was sought, but before any planning permission was acquired, in 1998 the house was sold on to a consortium of

Country house data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).