Charles Berners 1767 – 1831

Charles Berners, the younger, born in 1767, inherited the Woolverstone Park estate in 1815. He had attended Monk Soham School, near Framlingham, followed by Westminster School between 1780 and 1785. He was matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford the same year, receiving his BA in 1789. This Gentleman’s education was followed by a Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East between 1791 and 1792.

Charles set off for Europe in the company of at least two other young gentlemen; George Graves and Henry Tilson. They travelled through continental Europe during the summer of 1791. The travellers were accompanied by artist Luigi Mayer (1755 – 1803) to capture scenes from the places of classical antiquity they visited.

The group left Constantinople (Istanbul) on 1^st February 1791, travelling through the Dardanelles, via Tenedos, Rhodes and Samos, arriving in Cyprus on 15^th February. From there they headed to Eygpt arriving in Alexandria ten days later. Next, they headed via Rosetta to Cairo but they failed to travel on to Thebes. They headed north through the Holy Land, Lebanon and Syria, though they were unable to stop at Tripoli because of an outbreak of plague.

The Ottoman leg of the Grand Tour saw the party head to south-west Turkey, an area that was virtually unknown to travellers at the time. On this leg they took a guide and translator. The tombs of the Ancient Lycian civilisation along the Anatolian coast were of particular interest. Charles Berners and his companions returned to Rome, via the Dodecanese islands, on 31st July 1792.

Luigi Mayer must have become a great friend of Charles Berners as in the late 1790s, Mayer spent a year with the Berners’ family at Woolverstone and produced a series of drawings of the estate.

A farmer’s dwelling in the vicinity of Woolverstone Park in Suffolk. The drawing is dated 1799. L Mayer Deli dipince. Drawn and Painted by Luigi Mayer (1755-1803). The number 7 seems to have been overlaid with number 8 in the portfolio.

Later, Mary Alice Spencer Warwick would write about Charles: “(Charles) is a great traveller in Eastern countries and in those in Southern Europe. He enriches Woolverstone Hall with many pictures and other Art treasures, and makes valuable additions to the library.”

A report in the Hereford Journal, February 1794, puts the income of the Berners at this time into perspective. “It is a singular circumstance, but correctly true, that when the ancestors of the present Duke of Portland gave but nine thousand pounds for, in the parish of Marybone, and around the New Road, now lets at thirty thousand pounds a year. What the family of Mr Berner, the proprietor of Berner’s-Street, purchased for six hundred pounds, now nets three thousand pounds annually.”  Josias’ purchase of Newlands was proving a shrewd investment, even outperforming the Duke of Portland’s portfolio. In the same year, the dividend from a single share in the New River Company was £431 9s 5d giving a total income for the 4 shares held by the Berners’ family of £1, 725 17 8d. The shares had a particularly strong showing for the next sixteen years.

Perhaps due to the influence gained through his travels, in 1823 Charles set about a course of alterations and extension to the Hall. He instructed the architect Thomas Hopper (1776 – 1856), notable for his work on country houses in the south of England, for some improvements. 

Hopper was responsible for the refaced wings and adding Doric columns and porticos to the wing buildings. On the garden front, an additional room was added running alongside the original colonnade giving space for the Orangery, with the introduction of Doric columns, made of cast iron, as was the balustrade on the roof line, painted to look like stone. 

These alterations added an extra layer of classical reference to the building as well as increasing the presence on both sides of the approach and the garden front. The changes to the wings can be seen in this engraving by Buckler some 13 years later. Charles Berners was appointed High Sheriff of Suffolk  for the years 1818 and 1819. He died unexpectedly after a short illness on 19^th October 1831 at the age of just 61 years, still a bachelor. The Woolverstone Park estate passed to his brother, the Venerable Revd. Henry Denny Berners.