Stanway House & Fountain

The House

Stanway House is noted for its mellow, peaceful atmosphere, created by its age (it was finished in the calm decade before the Civil War), by its stone (a delicious Cotswold stone known as Guiting Yellow), by its architecture (Jacobean mullions and gables and Cotswold slates), by its furniture (most of which, like the Charles I working shuffleboard table, has been in the house since it was made), and by its setting (sheltered in a hollow at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, close to the church, Gatehouse, Tithe Barn and cottages and surrounded by an enchanting garden and ancient parkland). The charming interior gives every appearance of being lived in, and in no sense resembles a museum.

The Fountain

The glory of the Stanway watergarden is the single-jet fountain in the Canal, opened on 5th June 2004. Originally suggested by Paul Edwards, the landscape architect, and engineered by David Bracey of The Fountain Workshop Limited, the fountain rises magnificently to over 300 feet, making it the tallest fountain in Britain (seconded by Witley Court at 121 feet), the tallest gravity fountain in the world (seconded by the Fountain of Fame at La Granja de San Ildefonso, Segovia, Spain at 154 feet), and the second tallest fountain in Europe, after the 400-foot-high turbine-driven fountain in Lake Geneva. The fountain has a 2–inch bronze nozzle and is driven from an 100,000-gallon reservoir, 580 feet above the Canal, via a 12-inch diameter medium-density polyethylene pipe 2 kilometres long.