HERITAGE ASSESSMENT
The site comprises Caversham Park, a Grade II listed Registered Park and Garden, designated in September 1987. The park includes the principal house, Caversham Park House, along with the Temple to the west of the park, the Inner Park Walls and Entrance Gates, all of which are Grade II listed.
The heritage appraisal, undertaken by Montagu Evans for Beechcroft, has helped create an informed understanding of the history of the site and its historical, architectural, communal and evidential value as a heritage asset.
Caversham Park pre-dated the current building as early as the 13th century when a fortified manor occupied a position close to the present-day Caversham Park. In the 16th century the manor was demolished and over the next three hundred years several houses, including a Georgian manor, were built on the site by various owners.
William Crawshay II bought the Georgian house which burnt down and was rebuilt to designs of Horace Jones in 1850. The Temple was built in the grounds c. 1844.
The Oratory School added a chapel and sanatorium after acquiring the site in 1922. The BBC subsequently purchased Caversham Park in 1941 which became the home of BBC monitoring from 1943 and was chosen as a site outside of London which was less likely to suffer bomb damage. The service was set up to monitor Nazi broadcasts and by the end of the war there were 1,000 people employed at the site.
Following the war the service continued although it downsized after 2010 when government funding ceased and it was subsequently relocated to London in 2018. Radio Berkshire who also occupied the site moved out at the same time.
The grounds of Caversham Park are also of heritage significance having been originally designed by renowned landscape architect Stephen Switzer and later amended by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Some limited features of the original designs are still evident today. Most of the grounds surrounding Caversham Park House are Registered Grade II on Historic England’s Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
The site has a rich history and one that Beechcroft is keen to preserve and enable the wider community to enjoy.
