Petworth House is a magnificent 17th-century house with an incredible art collection. It was inspired by the Baroque palaces of Europe and comes with a Pleasure Garden that includes formal borders, woodland walks and architectural features, such as the Ionic Rotunda. In 1947, the 3rd Lord Leconfield gifted the property to the National Trust but the current Lord and Lady Egremont continue to live in a section of the house. It is open to the public as a National Trust property and it sits on the edge of Petworth Park, an equally magnificent deer park.
The 700-acre park, which was transformed in the 1750s and 1760s by the famous landscape architect Lancelot Brown, is free to visit and is described by the National Trust as “one of the finest surviving and unspoilt examples of an English landscape designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown”. It has two lakes / ponds – Upper Pond and Lower Pond. It is enclosed with a wall, borders the famous Kennels and leads on to Pheasant Copse. There are various paths across and around the park and the Serpent Trail runs along its border. The Petworth Way will take you across it.
Walks at Petworth Park
Parking is free for National Trust members or paid for non members. There are two car parks to the side of the A283. There is often a coffee trailer in the northern car park. There are buses to Petworth and if you want a short cut into the park from the town, go via the Cowyard Tunnel (through gates through the wall behind St Mary the Virgin Church in the town).
The National Trust have information about local walks in the area, but for a guided tour, contact Gerald Gresham Cooke on Geraldgreshamcooke@gmail.com or 07748 597 568. He offers an Ancient Trees Guided Tour at various times through the summer and a Deer Rutting walk in the last two weeks of October. He is a font of all local knowledge.
The joy of a walk at Petworth Park is that you can make it as long or as short as you want. From the tunnel, you may just want to walk across the lawns between the house and Upper Pond, admiring both and this is a distance of less than a kilometre to the gate and back. Or you might want to do a full circuit of the park which is about 7 km.
Ancient Trees
The Ancient Trees walk is about 6.5 km long and is fun, interesting and stunning. Unless you are really strong on identifying trees, my advice would be to join Gerald’s tour because at times (and even with the help of detailed instructions) it can be easy to miss some of the specimens. Look out for the Beelzebub Oak tucked up against the wall. It is about 250 years old and used to mark the parish boundary, and as the land beyond was considered spiritually dubious, this was your due warning not to go further. You’ll also see huge old chestnuts (probably 500 years old) and an old English oak that may be 950 years old!
A lake, a dog, a boathouse and a folly
Upper Pond, the lake in the middle of the park, is hard to miss. Here you’ll spot the Dog of Alcibiades sculpture. It was commissioned by the 3rd Earl of Egremont as a memorial to his favourite hound who drowned in the lake. Alcibiades was a 5th century aristocrat who was rather controversial and wanted to draw attention to his magnificent dog by docking its tail. The statue is a copy of an antique of the same name, erected in 1829.
From in front of the pond you can see the Boat House to the right, built in about 1756, and painted by Turner in about 1810. It has a viewing platform.
Talking of Turner, look out for The Monument, a large folly in the north west corner of the park north of Upperton (it’s a steep climb to get to it but the views are worth it). The folly is late 18th century and was probably a verderer’s look out. A verderer being a forestry official. Strictly speaking a folly was a building built without a purpose so it doesn’t qualify. It was also painted by Turner.
Wildlife
Of course, Petworth Park is most famous for its herds of fallow deer. Henry VIII visited Petworth in the 1520s and may have hunted the ancestors of this herd and you would be unlucky not to spot them if you’re walking around or across the park. As you might expect, there is lots of other wildlife here too and down at the lakes you are likely to see swallows, swifts, birds of prey and geese.
Once you’ve finished exploring the park, you might want to visit the house, or head into the town where you’ll find lots of cafés and independent shops and boutiques.
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