Wiston House

This historic family home, mentioned in the Domesday Book as ‘Wistanestun’, nestles in fifteen acres of formal gardens, surrounded by a further six thousand acres of parkland.

We host the majority of our events at Wiston House, our home for over 60 years. This is a beautiful, modernised 16th century Grade I listed building set in the South Downs National Park on the south coast of England, surrounded by over 6,000 acres of parkland with magnificent views and a mile long driveway through the park.

A brief history

1086

Wiston Manor appears in the Domesday Book, the register of English possessions of William the Conqueror, compiled twenty years after the Battle of Hastings.

1573

Sir Thomas Sherley began building his new house in the year he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I; the resulting house was much larger than it is today.

1602

The Sherley family found themselves in financial difficulties soon after the start of the building of Wiston House.

1649

During the English Civil War, Wiston House was occupied, first by forces loyal to King Charles I, then by parliamentarian soldiers. The estate was sequestrated by Parliament before being purchased at a bargain price by John Fagge, a young parliamentarian commander from East Sussex. Robert Fagge, his great-grandson, died in 1740 leaving a sister, Elizabeth, as heiress to the Estate.

1743

Elizabeth married Sir Charles Goring a neighbouring landowner.

1839

Wiston House was remodelled by a fashionable architect Edward Blore.

1927

For the first time in its long history, the House was privately leased. It was then used as the Canadian Army headquarters before the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Afterwards, the House temporarily became a girls’ school.

1951
Wilton Park, an executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office specialising in high level, international policy dialogues took over the lease and 2016 marks 65 years of their time here