Venue: The Wodehouse
Town: Wombourne, GB

The Wodehouse is a Grade II* listed English country house near Wombourne, Staffordshire, notable as the family seat of the Georgian landscape designer and musicologist Sir Samuel Hellier and, a century later, Colonel Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier, director of the Royal Military School of Music. For almost 200 years the family owned the Hellier Stradivarius. It is claimed that the Wodehouse has not been sold for over 900 years, though more than once the family has died out. The Wodehouse is situated on the Wom Brook, to the east of the village, and the estate has existed since medieval times. The manor house itself was listed by English Heritage in 1953 as Grade II*, as were the stable block and coach house in 1963. The early-eighteenth-century Wodehouse farmhouse and mill, across the road from the main house, were grade II* listed in 1973. In 1987, the barn, the dam over the mill pool, and the causeway over its other end all received grade II status. In the middle of the 18th century, the Wodehouse was turned into a centre of culture. The 18 acres (73,000 m2) of grounds were laid out in fashionable style: The Wodehouse [...] became in the later 18th century, an early Alton Towers, the resort both of 'people of consequence' and of 'tag, rag and rabble' for here, in 1763, Sir Samuel Hellier laid out a pleasure garden which, besides having all the usual decorative features of gardens of the time, temples, grottoes, a root house, a druid’s circle, also had a music room with working organ, a hermitage with life-sized model of a hermit and boards set up along the paths with appropriate verses to enlighten visitors. The whole garden was a clearly a caricature of the finest achievements in 18th-century gardening. Some of this, such as Handel's temple, was the first commission of James Gandon after leaving the studios of Sir William Chambers. A series of drawings of the garden features are all that survive. The Shaw Helliers and some of their properties are mentioned in the 18