Stanway is an outstandingly beautiful example of a Jacobean manor house, owned by Tewkesbury Abbey for 800 years then for 500 years by the Tracy family and their descendants, the Earls of Wemyss. Stanway House is currently the home of Lord and Lady Neidpath. The Tracys, very unusually, claimed descent from Charlemagne, and were almost unique in England for having owned land (at nearby Toddington) since before the Norman Conquest. Their resulting self-confidence probably contributed to the sureness of their touch at Stanway: the house (in the opinion of Fodor’s Great Britain 1998 Guidebook "As perfect and pretty a Cotswold Manor House as anyone is likely to see"), its fascinating furniture, the jewel-like Gatehouse, the church and 14th-century Tithe Barn, the 18th-century water-garden (one of the finest in England), the specimen trees and avenues, the surrounding villages, farms, parkland and woodland – all subtly and harmoniously combine to create an enclave of very English and almost magical harmony.         Thanks to its location, at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, Stanway has been protected from many changes of the 20th century, but the last decade has seen the gradual restoration to its former glory of the 18th century watergarden, probably designed by the greatest of British landscape gardeners, Charles Bridgeman. The formal Canal, on a terrace above the house, the Cascade (the longest in England), the striking Pyramid and eight ponds have been reinstated, and a single-jet fountain, at 300 feet the highest fountain in Britain and the highest gravity fountain in the world, has been added.   back to top