The house was designed by John Nash in 1802[3] for Francis Walford.[4] Walford was a friend of Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick, of nearby Attingham Park, and the agent for Berwick's Attingham estates.[4] Mansbridge considers that the design was "almost certainly inspired" by Claude Lorrain's painting "Landscape near Rome with a View of the Ponte Molle."[5] Lord Berwick was the owner of two Claude landscapes.[2] Walford lived at Cronkhill, managing Lord Berwick's Attingham interests, until their relationship ended acrimoniously in 1828, when Walford left the house.[6] It was then occupied by members of the Berwick family, often when Attingham Park was let, until their final return to Attingham in the 1920s.[6] Cronkhill, along with Attingham Park, was gifted to the National Trust in the post-war period.[4]
Architecture
The body of the house is a rectangular two-storey block,[4] with a circular, three-storey, tower to the north and a square, three-storey, tower to the west.[1] A loggia links the two towers.[1] The walls are now white stucco,[4] although the colour may originally have been designed to imitate ashlar.[4] Internally, the main reception rooms are simply decorated, comprising a drawing room in the round tower, a library in the square tower and a dining room in the body of the house.[2] Although influential, the house, as with much of Nash's work, was subject to criticism, Davis describing the round tower as "merely a dramatic architectural trick, (containing neither) a circular staircase, nor even one circular room."[7] In 2016, the National Trust undertook a major restoration of the house to "restore Cronkhill's appearance back to Nash's original design."[8]
