English: Spetchley Hall is the Worcestershire home of the Berkeley family, who also own Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The present Georgian house was constructed in Bath Stone in the Palladian Style in 1811. The architect was John Tasker. During World War II, Spetchley Park had been ear-marked as the residence for Winston Churchill, part of Operation Black Move, had the Nazi invaded Britain. This house along with a number of buildings in this region had been identified for government and prominent people. The original residence was a moated Tudor house, situated to the south of the present house. This earlier house was home first to the Lyttleton family and then to the Sheldon family, before wealthy wool merchant and banker, Rowland Berkeley, bought the estate in 1605. During the English Civil War despite Sir Robert Berkeley's Royalist sympathies the earlier house was burned to the ground by a disgruntled band of Scottish Presbyterians. Though also Royalists their aim was to prevent Cromwell from using the house as his headquarters during the Battle of Worcester.
This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. See this photograph's page on the Geograph website for the photographer's contact details. The copyright on this image is owned by Philip Halling and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.