, 1818. Prior to
World War II, Silwood Park was a private
residence—the
manor house of
Sunninghill—then during the war, it became a
convalescent home for airmen. on part of the present house and demolished the old "Eastmore"; he called it
Selwood or
Silwood Park. The name stems from the Old English for Sallow (
Salix caprea Agg.) which presumably grew then along the banks of the streams that flow through the Park. The grounds were landscaped by
Humphry Repton, most celebrated landscape designer of his generation. In 1854 Silwood was bought by
Lancashire cotton mill owner
John Hargreaves Jr and was an associate of novelist
Mrs Oliphant. John Hargreaves died in 1874 and his
trustees, one of whom was
John Hick, sold the estate to engineer
Charles Patrick Stewart in 1875.
Silwood Park and
Silwood Lodge were demolished in 1876 and the present mansion commissioned by Stewart to the design of
Alfred Waterhouse, completed in 1878. Stewart was keen on
horse racing and
partying, and built his new house around a grand
ballroom where, on race days and holidays he would entertain the sons of
Queen Victoria amongst other racing enthusiasts. Architectural historian
Nikolaus Pevsner described the new manor house as
"Red brick and huge. Free Tudor with a freer tower". Waterhouse's use of Silwood-style bricks for new university buildings at Manchester and London gave rise to the phrase
red-brick universities. In 1947, Silwood Park was purchased by Imperial College for
entomological research and field studies. Initially, pioneering developments in insect pest management took place, but more recently the emphasis has been on ecology and
evolutionary biology. Staff and research students of the Zoology Department were the first college personnel at Silwood when the Field Station moved from
Slough, but the department of Civil Engineering has used it since 1947 for courses in surveying.
Botany and
Meteorology started work there about thirty years ago and the nuclear reactor was opened in 1965. Over a thousand postgraduate students have been trained at Silwood since its establishment, about half of them taking PhDs. They have come from more than sixty countries, and Silwood-trained graduates have gone to almost every corner of the globe. There are over 200 graduate staff and students working there at any one time. Undergraduates from South Kensington attend for field courses and some final-year projects. In 1981, the departments of Zoology and Botany were merged to form the Department of Biology. A low power nuclear
research reactor (100 kW thermal), named CONSORT II, was licensed at the site on 20 December 1962, completed February 1963, and achieved first
criticality in 1965. After a decline in research conducted there, the reactor was shut down in 2012 and defueled by 2014. followed by the demolition of the reactor building. In 1984, the
CAB International Institute of Biological Control (IIBC) moved its headquarters to Silwood Park. From 1989 to 2008, the Institute occupied its own new building at Silwood Park, which also housed the Michael Way Library, specialising in ecology, entomology and crop protection. From January 1998, IIBC and its sister Institutes of Entomology, Mycology and Parasitology were integrated on two sites as CABI Bioscience. The Silwood site was the centre for the
LUBILOSA Programme, where an inter-disciplinary team could be set up, combining IIBCs
biological control skills with (bio)
pesticide application (
IPARC) and host-pathogen ecology (CPB). CABI continued to focus on biological pest, disease and weed management in Silwood Park until consolidation at
Egham (to become the UK Centre) in 2008. The celebrated Entomology Masters in Science (Msc) course was suspended in 2012, causing faculty to move their work to
Harper Adams University. ==See also==