Newark Park, Ozleworth

Papers relating to Newark Park, mainly correspondence to Robert Parsons and Michael Craydon.

Documents deposited by Michael Claydon

Robert Parsons, an American citizen, first visited Gloucestershire while on active service during the Second World War (see D8667/2/2 below). In 1970, he took a lease of Newark Park, Ozleworth from the National Trust. The house had been used as an old people's home since the 1940s but was then derelict and in very poor condition. The Trust had even seriously considered the possibility of demolishing the house before finding a tenant. Mr Parsons, who had studied architecture at Harvard, devoted his time and energy over the next 20 years to restoring the house and the dramatic hillside landscape garden of Newark (N. Kingsley, The country houses of Gloucestershire, vol.2, 1660-1830, 1992, pp. 183-4). The restored house was filled with an eclectic collection of beautiful furnishings, and Mr Parsons and his partner, Michael Claydon, made the house an exceptional centre of hospitality for their wide circle of friends. Serious illness obliged Robert Parsons to give up his tenancy in 1995, when some of the contents of the house were sold, but after making a remarkable recovery, he was able to return to Newark 18 months later. He died in March 2000.