Originally built on the foundations of a 13th century Augustinian monastery Wroxton Abbey is a 17th century Jacobean mansion. It is built in ochre Horton stone, with slate-roofed gables. It seems to date from the 1600's when William Pope built it.
The fantastic gardens were landscaped in 1728 by Tilleman Bobart. They comprise of 56 acres including woodland and fields. There are Serpentine style aspects, possibly to the design of Lord North, later to become the Earl of Guildford from 1731-1751. There are 2 lakes, a cascade and river and a Roman Doric Temple. A knot garden was added in the twentieth century. The grounds are open to the public to explore and walk around in the daytime.
Today the Abbey is the Fairleigh Dickinson College, where American students study under the British Tutorial System.
This is a good website to read about the area: (
visit link)
Wikipedia has some further details:
'Wroxton Abbey, named for its twelfth-century origins as a monastery that fell into disrepair after Henry VIII's 1536 dissolution. Remnants of that structure remain in the basement beams, though the building literally rose from the ruins when rebuilt by William Pope in the early 1600s and added to for several centuries after that as the property passed from the Popes to the Norths in 1677.
The various Lords North and their families, including Frederick, Lord North and their royal, literary, and Presidential visitors — James I, Charles I, George IV, William IV, Teddy Roosevelt, Horace Walpole, Henry James, Frederick, Prince of Wales as well as the structure itself, led to the Abbey's designation as a Grade One historic site.
The grounds are composed of 56 acres (230,000 m²) of lawns, lakes, and woodlands, and comprise a serpentine lake, a cascade, a rill and a number of follies: the Gothic Dovecote attributed to Sanderson Miller and his Temple-on-the-Mount; the Drayton Arch was built by David Hiorn in 1771. William Andrews Nesfield advised on a formal flower garden on the south side of the house. A knot garden has been added in the twentieth century and was illustrated by Blomfield as an example of a 'modern garden'. He wrote that 'Nothing can be more beautiful than some of the walks under the apple trees in the gardens of Penshurst'.
Since 1965, Wroxton Abbey has served as home to Fairleigh Dickinson University's Wroxton College. This campus serves American students from Fairleigh Dickinson's New Jersey campuses and other American students studying under the British tutorial system.'