Considering its territorial and social influence and the superlative nature of its indigenous collections - which since 1735 has included one of the most significant late seventeenth century London art collections - Weston Park is not as well known as one might expect.

The House, with its thousand acre landscape park and contents, was gifted to the nation in 1986 by Richard, 7th Earl of Bradford and was vested by the NHMF in the Weston Park Foundation, an independent charitable trust. Until then, the house had always passed by descent, often through the female line, and it had stood at the centre of an estate with a wide geographical spread, with tentacles linking this quintessential English country house not only with the adjacent counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire but with more distant estates which included the urban centres of Walsall, Bolton and Wigan.

Weston Park's owners and staff had a pivotal role in the development of these places, whilst the family's involvement in politics, the legal profession, and the military brought them to the forefront of national affairs on frequent occasions. Their seat at Weston Park provided not only a fitting home, visited by royalty and politicians, but also became a repository of important patronage and of collections. These included not only important Regency and pre-Revolutionary French decorative arts but, in 1735, the highly significant late seventeenth and early eighteenth century collection of paintings that had been assembled by Francis Newport, 1st Earl of Bradford of the first creation and his younger son, Thomas, Baron Torrington.

Meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated, this book seeks to tell the story of the House, its setting, extraordinary collections, and the influence that it has had on wider communities through the history of those who have owned and cared for it.

Foreword by HRH the Duke of Gloucester
Introduction
1 Dramatis Personae
2 Powerful Patronage in the Provinces: Lady Wilbraham and Architectural Ambition
3 Civil War, Restoration and the Creation of a Collection: Francis Newport, Earl of Bradford and Thomas Newport, Lord Torrington
4 The Early Bridgemans: A Bishop, a Baronetcy and the Birth of a Dynasty in Lancashire, Warwickshire and Shropshire
5 Georgian Weston: Lunacy and Sociability; Arcadia and Industry
6 The Early Nineteenth Century: Royalty and an Earl's Inheritance
7 A Changing World: The Bradfords, Bolton, Wigan and Walsall
8 The Reign of Victoria - Enrichment, Tragedy and Disraeli
9 Edwardian Weston - an Indian Summer and Dark Clouds of War
10 The Reality of the Twentieth Century: From Private to Public
11 The Weston Park Foundation: Forging a Hospitable Future from the Past
Bibliography
Index

GARETH WILLIAMS has been a regional director of Sothebys and a curator for the National Trust at Nostell Park. He is now curator at Weston Park, one of the major country houses in Staffordshire, and head of learning at the education centre there.