Mells Park

The deer park was enclosed between 1604 and 1642, probably by Sir John Horner. In 1724 Thomas Strangways Horner commissioned Nathaniel Ireson to build the first Park House, and the family moved there from Mells Manor House. His nephew Thomas Horner expanded the park and planted extensive woodlands, a work continued by his son Colonel Thomas Strangways Horner. The house is on high ground towards the northern end of the park, surrounded by river valleys. Further north, to the rear of the house, the park includes a lake fed by the Mells River. Pleasure grounds around the house and towards the lake were laid out by the landscape designer William Sawrey Gilpin between 1825 and 1832. the daughter of Liberal MP and art patron William Graham. Finding Park House too expensive to inhabit, in c. 1900 the Horners let it out and moved back into Mells Manor House. Park House burnt down in 1917, although an arcaded service court at the rear of the house survived. Lilley Batch Lodge, built c. 1790, and a folly called the Duckery, also built c. 1790. ==Second Park House==

The architect Edwin Lutyens had known the Horners, and Mells Park, since 1896. However, Reginald McKenna, the chairman of Midland Bank, and formerly Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Asquith, was married to Pamela Jekyll, the niece of Frances Horner. In 1924, the Horners agreed to let Mells Park to them for a nominal rent, on the understanding that the McKennas would rebuild the house. Lutyens rebuilt Park House in neoclassical style in 1925. He built a two-storey, hip-roofed house in Bath stone, on the outline of the previous building, The McKennas had already left Mells Park, for Halnaker, Sussex, where they commissioned Lutyens to build another country house. This was Halnaker Park, built in 1938. ==South African negotiations==

Mells Park was later owned by the South African mining company Consolidated Gold Fields. In the late 1980s the company provided Park House as the venue for secret negotiations between Thabo Mbeki of the African National Congress, who was later the President of South Africa, and representatives of the then-governing National Party. The talks, which lasted from 1987 till the time of Nelson Mandela's release in 1990, were depicted in the 2009 film Endgame. ==In literature==

Mells Park appears as "Falls Park" in Thomas Hardy's short story "The First Countess of Wessex", in the 1891 collection A Group of Noble Dames. ==See also==