Shotley Park

54°52′29.755″N 1°51′19.544″W / 54.87493194°N 1.85542889°W / 54.87493194; -1.85542889

Shotley Park House in 2006.

Shotley Park is a former stately home and estate near the town of Shotley Bridge in County Durham, England. It is a listed building with grade II.[1]

The house was built by Jonathan Richardson, the founder of Shotley Bridge Spa, the driving force in the town’s rapid growth in the mid 19th century.[2] Richardson was also heavily involved in the Derwent Iron Company (later the Consett Iron Company). With the demise of the Derwent Iron Company and financial crisis, Richardson moved to Woodlands Hall (near Knitsley).[3]

The Richardson family sold Shotley Park to the Priestman family in the late 19th century following the death of Jonathan Richardson on Christmas Day 1871. Following wartime use as a nursing home during WW2 and the Priestmans moving to Slaley Hall the main property fell into institutional use before being gifted to Barnardo's in the 1950s and was a children’s home til the late 1980s when Shotley Park was turned into a residential care home for the elderly which closed in 2023. It was then bought by a developer who has had plans approved to turn it into a hotel

  1. ^ Historic England. "SHOTLEY PARK, County Durham (1067547)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 20 October 2018.
  2. ^ "Shotley Spa". 2018-06-22.
  3. ^ O'Donnell, Elizabeth (2003). "Deviating from the Path of Safety: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth Century Quaker Meeting". Quaker Studies. 8: 1.