Cowdray Park, West Sussex

Cowdray Park is a country house at the centre of the 16,500-acre (6,700-hectare) Cowdray Estate in Midhurst, West Sussex.

A picture of Cowdray Park published in 1880.

Overview

The park lies in the South Downs National Park. The estate belongs to Viscount Cowdray, whose family have owned it since 1908. It has a golf course, and it offers clay pigeon shooting and corporate activity days, as well as the more traditional activities of agriculture, forestry and property lets.

Cowdray Park Polo Club

The estate is home to the Cowdray Park Polo Club, one of the leading polo clubs in the United Kingdom.[1] The sport has been played here for over 100 years. Over 450 polo matches are held at the park each season. The highlight of the polo season is the annual British Open Polo Championship, for the Gold Cup, sponsored for many years by Veuve Clicquot, and now by Jaeger-LeCoultre. The Gold Cup tournament starts at the end of June and runs until the Final late in July. The 2017 Final is on Sunday 23 July 2017.In 2020, the King Power Gold Cup, which is the culmination of the tournament for the British Open Polo is the premier polo tournament in the world at 22 goal (high goal) level. Semifinals and final match will be played between July 15th and 19th.

Cowdray House

The estate also features the Cowdray House - the former home of the Montague family, built in 1542 and largely destroyed by fire in 1793. In 2005 the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded a grant of £2.7m towards the cost of stabilising the ruins and they were opened to the public on 31 March 2007.[2] The house is not open to the public.

In May 2009 it was announced that Lord Cowdray was seeking a business partner to turn the house into a country house hotel, but the project was abandoned when Cowdray failed to find a partner.[3] It was also announced that Cowdray will be moving to another family property at Fernhurst.[4] The following year, in September 2010, it was announced that Cowdray House was put on the market for £25 million.[5] Michael Pearson, the fourth Viscount Cowdray, claimed that he did not want his son to inherit the burden of maintaining the house.[3] However, as of September 2011, Lord Cowdray has not found a buyer for the house, which would not include the wider estate, including the Polo Club.[3] The collection housed within Cowdray Park was auctioned in situ by Christie's over three days, between September 13 and 15 2011.[6] Among the objects sold were furniture, silver, paintings, tapestries and porcelain, with a portrait previously identified as Queen Elizabeth I (but now considered more likely to be Catherine Howard, née Carey, Countess of Nottingham) achieving the highest auction price of £325,250.[7] In total, the auction raised £7.9 million.[7]

Notes
  1. "Queen At Polo". The Examiner (Tasmania). CXII (123). Tasmania, Australia. 7 August 1953. p. 4. Retrieved 11 January 2019 – via National Library of Australia. ...The Queen is greeted by Lord and Lady Cowdray when she arrives at Cowdray Park, Sussex, to watch the Duke of Edinburgh play in a polo match. She wore a pale mauve dress with a triple-row pearl necklace...
  2. Cowdray Ruins, accessed 25 July 2007
  3. Wardrop, Murray (9 September 2010). "Polo paradise: Cowdray Park House up for sale for £25m". London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
  4. Midhurst and Petworth Observer, May 21, 2009
  5. "Cowdray Park House goes on the market for £25m". BBC News. 15 September 2010. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
  6. "The Cowdray Sale: Works of art from Cowdray Park and Dunecht House". Christie's. Retrieved 26 December 2011.
  7. Lumley, Ruth. "Cowdray Park sale fetches £7.9 million". The Argus. Retrieved 26 December 2011.

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