Additional information
Terrain
- Gravel tracks, roads and tow paths
Landscape
- Forest, country park and canal
Dog friendliness
- Must be kept on lead near main roads and in park
Parking
- Seven Springs car park
Toilets en route
- None on route
About the walk
Shugborough, a 900-acre (365ha) estate on the edge of Cannock Chase, is without doubt the grandest stately home in Staffordshire. As the ancestral pile of the Earls of Lichfield for more than 300 years, it was home to Thomas Patrick Anson, Fifth Earl of Lichfield, until his death in 2005. He was... better known as the world-famous photographer Patrick Lichfield, who was a second cousin the late Queen Elizabeth II. Originally built in 1693 as a small country manor, it has been altered and added to by successive generations of the Anson family, and by two people in particular: Thomas Anson (1695–1773) and his brother George (1697–1762). Thomas, well-travelled and well-educated, inherited the house in 1720, and made major changes over the next 50 years. The most significant alteration – or at least the one most apparent from the outside – was the addition of a magnificent eight-columned ionic portico designed by Samuel Wyatt in 1794. Much of this work was paid for out of George’s own fortune: during his lifetime he had earned considerable fame and riches as a naval officer by capturing a Spanish treasure galleon. He later went on to become an admiral. As a well-travelled man, Thomas would have been very aware of what was considered good taste throughout his dealings with architects, and the house as we see it today is testimony to his ideals and what was considered the height of fashion for much of the 18th century. This, it’s important to remember, was the age of reason, when industry and science were starting to take over the world; architects and their employers were keen to reflect this idea in their country piles, and the geometric simplicity of ancient Greek and Roman architecture seemed like a logical choice. It embodied the ideals of man being at the centre of the universe, taming nature with his new-found knowledge. The gardens, too, were ordered and regimented, set out in a formal geometric pattern with the house at the centre of the estate, and, by implication, the universe. It was the same ideal that made classical motifs on Wedgwood pottery so enduring, and it’s no surprise that Thomas Anson was a patron of the famous potter. Almost as a direct consequence of this insistence on law and order in gardens and architecture, the architects of the 19th century instigated a backlash against reason: romance was king, disorder was beauty, and the so-called ‘Gothic’ style enjoyed a revival in mansions and follies across England. From the outside, the mansion today is much the same as it must have been during Thomas Anson’s day. In 1966, following the death of the Fourth Earl of Lichfield, the estate was given to the National Trust. The house isn’t open all year, but as the route of the walk is on either a public bridleway or established rights of way it can be completed at any time of year.
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