Woodchester Mansion

While most mansions fell into disrepair after decades of use, Woodchester Mansion was never actually finished. The mansion was commissioned by William Leigh in the 1850s, but the Victorian workmen mysteriously downed their tools and abandoned it mid-construction in 1873.

According to rumour, a French plasterer was bludgeoned to death in the kitchen and his spirit scared the tradesmen off the site. However, the more likely explanation for its abandonment is that the owner, William Leigh, ran out of money after taking out a £10,000 mortgage.

The building, located in the beautiful surroundings of Woodchester Park, is now owned by Stroud District Council and is managed by Woodchester Mansion Trust.

The entire mansion is left in different states of incompletion, but the carved stonework is some of the best in the country.

Woodchester Mansion currently attracts about 6,000 visitors yearly and is open six days a week between April and October. It hosts Paranormal Nights and has an Indoor Theatre.

With support from English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and other grant-giving trusts, Woodchester Mansion Trust has set about rescuing the Mansion from potentially catastrophic decay, repairing it to the condition in which building work was abandoned in the late 1870s and opening the house to the public.
 
The Trust has established many successful partnerships since its foundation, most notably staging the One Big Room heritage training conference and launching the National Heritage Training Academy South West, the country’s first educational partnership, forging training links between colleges, heritage bodies and funders to address the critical shortage of young craftsmen in the UK.
 
Woodchester Mansion Trust currently provides on-site skills training for the Prince’s Trust’s Get Into Heritage scheme and for The Prince of Wales’s Building Crafts Apprentices Scheme.

Bats

Despite now standing empty, Woodchester Mansion does have some unusual residents. It houses five different breeds of bat. Two of the bat colonies, the lesser horseshoe and greater horseshoe, live in the attics of the mansion.