Snowshill Manor

Snowshill Manor

Snowshill Manor is a Cotswold manor house with eclectic collection and Arts & Crafts-style garden located in Snowshill near Broadway.

Snowshill Manor contains Charles Paget Wade’s extraordinary collection of craftmanship and design, including musical instruments, clocks, toys, bicycles, weavers’ and spinners’ tools and Japanese armour. Run on organic principles, the intimate garden is laid out as a series of outdoor rooms, with terraces and ponds, and wonderful views across the Cotswold countryside.

Built of traditional golden yellow Cotswold Stone, Snowshill Manor was one described as 'a house for the evening hours, surely the loveliest spell of the day'. Snowshill Manor is set on a hillside above the Vale of Evesham and is home one of the most remarkable collections that the National Trust maintains. Snowhill Manor is surrounded by an intriguing and intimate garden.

The manor of Snowshill, including the Snowshill Manor House itself was owned by Winchcombe Abbey from 821 until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 when it passed to the Crown, and was given as a gift to Katherine Parr, wife to King Henry VIII. Since then, Snowshill Manor has had many owners and tenants and been subject to many alterations and additions.

The south front displays details of around 1720 but the main part of the house dates from c1500, and was altered and extended in the seventeenth century.

In 1919 Charles Paget Wade bought what was by then a semi-derelict farm, and restored it. It was the neglect that the house had suffered from that attracted Charles Paget Wade as there were no modern additions or alterations and so it was the ideal place to display his historic and unique collection.

Charles Paget Wade

Charles Wade, from Yoxford in Suffolk, was an architect and craftsman who inherited sugar estates in the West Indies from his father. From 1900 until 1951 Wade amassed his enormous and varied collection of craftsmanship, which he acquired mainly from antique shops and dealers in the UK. He lived in the old priest's house in the courtyard of Snowshill Manor and he spent many hours in the manor house arranging and restoring his collection. In 1951 he gave the Manor and its collection to the National Trust.
The writer J. B. Priestly described Wade as 'My eccentric, but charming friend of the fantastic manor house.'

The Contents of Snowshill Manor

A 2000 piece costume collection and 22,000 other items, plus a 2000 piece costume collection fill the manor house. Wade collected even everyday functional objects like cow bells, butter stamps and locks. Visitors to Snowshill will find clocks, bicycles, children's toys and even 26 suits of Samurai armour.

Snowshill Manor - The Garden

Charles Wade designed a garden using the land surrounding the manor house in collaboration with Arts and Crafts architect, M H Baillie-Scott and laid out its terraces and ponds between 1920 and 1923 on the site of the old farmyard.