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Weston Park is a country house in Weston-under-Lizard, Staffordshire, England, set in more than of park landscaped by Capability Brown. The park is located north-west of Wolverhampton, and east of Telford, close to the border with Shropshire. The 17th-century Hall is a Grade I listed building and several other features of the estate, such as the Orangery and the Stable block, are separately listed as Grade II.
Weston Park House and the surrounding parkland were given to the nation in 1986 by the 7th Earl of Bradford, with the support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund. It is now in the care of the trustees of the Weston Park Foundation. The house retains its art collection with over 30,000 objects and is open to the public.
The house was built in 1671 for Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham. Although it is often claimed that she was her own architect, there is no conclusive documentary evidence for this and it is most likely that the executant architect was William Taylor, who is known to have been at Weston Park in 1674. Lady Wilbraham was evidently an enthusiastic patron, however, and her heavily-annotated copy of Palladio’s book ( I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura) remains in the collection at Weston Park. The three-storey, twelve-bayed south front of the house was originally the entrance front but alterations and improvements carried out in the latter 19th century for Countess Selina Bridgeman and Orlando Bridgeman, 3rd Earl of Bradford of the second creation, involved the movement of the main entrance to the east front. The original courtyard of the U-shaped house was roofed over above the ground floor, and closed off by a new front.
In the eighteenth century, with the failure of the male line of the Newport Earls of Bradford, Weston was inherited by Sir Henry Bridgeman, 5th Baronet, whose mother Lady Anne Bridgeman (née Newport) was a granddaughter of Lady Wilbraham. The Bridgemans were already substantial landowners in Shropshire and in Warwickshire but chose to make Weston their main seat. Sir Henry Bridgeman commissioned Capability Brown to landscape the park. He also employed James Paine in the 1760s to make alteration to the house and to add a Roman Bridge and Temple of Diana in the park.
There are gardens and a large park, which includes a lake and a miniature railway. The Grade I listed Roman Bridge crosses the Temple Pool in a single stone built arch. The Grade I listed Temple of Diana is actually an orangery and garden house. Built in stone ashlar in three bays and fronted with ionic columns, the interior is decorated with painted panels by Giovanni Battista Innocenzo Colombo, depicting the life of the goddess Diana. Paine, its architect, later described the temple as "my greenhouse at Weston". Weston Hall suggests that hall and gardens were the inspiration for Blandings Castle in the Lord Emsworth stories by P.G. Wodehouse.
In 1998 the G8 Summit Retreat was held at the house with heads of State or government present including US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
From 1999 until 2017 the grounds of Weston Park were used as one of the sites of the annual dual-site Virgin Group sponsored V Festival, the other site being Hylands Park in Chelmsford.
The park is the site for the annual Midland Game Fair which takes place on the third weekend of September. The fair, which consists of traditional British country pursuits including working dog trials, fishing and animal husbandry, attracts up to 50,000 visitors from both Britain and Ireland. In 2023, Weston Park hosted Camp Bestival Shropshire.
In 2024, the site hosted the English National Cross Country Championships.
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