Foxwarren Park
The newly-constructed house was pictured in the Illustrated London News in 1860
Type	House
Location	Wisley, Borough of Guildford, Surrey
Coordinates	51°19′43″N 0°27′08″W / 51.3286°N 0.4521°W / 51.3286; -0.4521
Built	1860
Architect	Frederick Barnes
Architectural style(s)	Gothic Revival
Owner	Privately owned
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official name	Foxwarren Park
Designated	22 September 1981
Reference no.	1189110
Location of Foxwarren Park in Surrey

Foxwarren Park, at Wisley in Surrey, is a Victorian country house and estate. On sandstone Ockham and Wisley Commons, it was designed in 1860 by the railway architect Frederick Barnes for brewing magnate and MP, Charles Buxton. It is a Grade II* listed building.

From 1919 to 1955, it was owned by Alfred Ezra who was President of the Avicultural Society — he assembled a collection of rare birds and animals on the estate — in 1939 it housed the last known pink-headed ducks in the world. It was then owned by Hannah Weinstein and chosen for films and television series including The Adventures of Robin Hood.

History

Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist and politician, was also an amateur architect.^[1] Having rented a range of properties around the growing village of Weybridge in the 1850s, he purchased the site for Foxwarren Park in 1855.^[1] He was heavily involved in the design of the new house, working with Frederick Barnes, known more for his designs for railway stations, particularly in Norfolk. The style is described as "harsh Victorian Gothic".^[2]

The house has been suggested as the inspiration for E. H. Shepard's illustrations of Toad Hall in Kenneth Grahame's book, The Wind in the Willows.^[3][4] The claim has also been made for Hardwick House^[5] and Mapledurham House^[6] in Oxfordshire, and Fawley Court in Buckinghamshire.^[7][8][9]

The house was acquired by Alfred Ezra in 1919, who owned it until his death in 1955. He was an enthusiastic breeder of birds and created a large private collection of rare birds and animals on the estate. From in 1939 the journal Forest and Outdoors praised it as "probably the finest (private zoo) in the world"; in which state it had been since 1920 and remained so until the following year.^[10][11] It hosted the known last pair of pink-headed ducks.^[12]

During World War II, the estate hosted research facilities of engineering firm Vickers for Operation Chastise: development of Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb.^[13]

In the 1950s, the house and estate was owned by Hannah Weinstein's Sapphire Films which built a castle in the deer park and used it as the location for the successful TV series, The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene.^[14] a not dissimilar show, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, also used it as a location. Weinstein commissioned writers who had been blacklisted in the US as communists and this exile community included Christina Stead, who had a cottage in the grounds.^[15]

In 1978, the house was used as the main location for the horror movie, The Comeback.^[16]

Architecture

The house is built of red brick, in a polychromatic design, with terracotta dressings and blue diapering.^[2] The house is Grade II* listed.^[2] The architectural critic Ian Nairn (d.1983) described the Model Farm attached to Foxwarren Park as "a true Struwelpeter mid-Victorian nightmare".^[17] It has a separate Grade II* listing.^[18]

The house's elaborate decorations and antiques may be those being compared to those of the subject house of Henry James' novel, The Spoils of Poynton:^[19]

...out of a Philistine, a tasteless, a hideous house; the kind of house the very walls and furniture of which constitute a kind of anguish for such a woman as I suppose the mother to be. That kind of anguish occurred to me, precisely, as a subject, during the two days I spent at Fox Warren...