A DREAM HOUSE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23618, 30 March 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

A DREAM HOUSE

It was Planned Ninety Years Ago

WOODCHESTER PARK, Stroud, Gloucestershire, a £-20,000 pseudo-Gothic mansion which has stood without floors, ceilings or doors since it was built 00 years ago, is to be occupied. It has been bought for a fraction of its original value and will be opened as a home for mental patients. The house was built in a 1000-acre park hy Mr. William Leigh, who planned to revive in it the, spirit and customs of the Middle Ages, building a rose-windowed chapel, brewery, bakery and cheeseroom in the medieval style.

would bo needed to complete anc modernise the huge empty hoyse. A member of the firm which negotiated the sale by private treaty, told a Sunday Kx press representative: " The house, with its twenty empty bedrooms and great reception room?, is exactly as it was seen by Mr. Leigh .1 day or two before he dial. When the builders' men move in they will even find dust-covered tools left by the workmen in the middle of last century. " Some of the rooms have chimneys but no fireplaces, many have no doors, and others no floors or ceilings," Windows have been broken and never repaired, there is a staircase with no banister, and there is not even a front door.

Twenty Bedrooms He died before it could be completed. The house eventually came to his two granddaughters, the Misses Leigh, who have now sold the home in which they never lived. The two sisters, now elderly women, live near their mansion in a cottace where tens are served to tourists. It has been estimated that, nearly £SOOO