Park House and Park House Hotel

It is thought Park House may have dated back to the sixteenth century as a hunting lodge but it was occupied by Mary Nesbitt when married to Alexander Nesbitt and then as mistress of the Earl of Bristol until he died in 1779,  By this date she had inherited wealth from both men and enlarged Park House during the Earl of Bristol’s residence and after his death from 1806 to 1810. After Mary Nesbitt’s death Park House may have ceased to be a private residence. By 1832 it was run as a hotel by Richard Wright and by John    Mollard in 1833  By 1839 the owner of Park Hotel was John Crawley and remained in his hands until 1848 until it was converted for use as a convent. The fate of the house could easily have been different for in the 1840s there was a scheme to develop the estate with terraces on either side of the gates and an ambitious crescent of detached and semi-detached houses sweeping round what are now the playing fields. The hotel modernized and beautified was to be incorporated into the crescent.  It was to be financed through the Park House Tontine Scheme.