Summary
Stone-lined dam earthwork incorporating central early-C19 overbridge, paved spillway, sluice and weirs.
Reasons for Designation
The early-C19 weir with bridge and sluice in Repton Park is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: the triple-arched weir bridge is impressive in terms of its design and fine quality masonry, and it forms an important and picturesque element in the park.
* Intactness: it is an essential component of the water management system that controls the large man-made pond, and has survived, along with its associated structures, with a high degree of intactness.
* Historic interest: it forms part of a designed landscape that was largely created in the early C19 for the Harpur family of Calke.
* Group value: it has strong group value with the Grade II listed stable ruin and the Grade II listed Lawn Bridge, with which it has a particularly important aesthetic relationship.
History
The origins of Repton Park date to the early C17 when the Harpur family of Swarkestone, later of Calke, built a lodge and stable in the newly-purchased woodlands there. The stable, now partly ruinous, is listed at Grade II. The earliest known plan of the park, produced in 1762, shows a natural landscape, the only designed element being the large pond in the north-west corner. It is rectangular in shape with a separate apsidal-shaped section at the north end. The stream flows into the north-west corner of the main pond and flows out of the south-east corner. The estate accounts record a payment made in 1705 for making a pond, but this could refer to its enlargement or to the creation of the smaller pond on the north side of the main pond.
The 1762 map shows a wide band of trees along the east side of the water, following the route of the stream. In the northern part of the woodland the lodge and stables are shown, and in the open landscape to the south-east a solitary building, probably a field barn, is depicted. In the late C18 or early C19, a new farmstead called Repton Park Farm was built alongside this barn, and the south part of the park became farmland.
In 1810-12 the lodge was refashioned in a Gothick style for Sir Henry Crewe of Calke by the architect Samuel Brown of Derby. It was altered again between 1821 and 1827 to become a country house for two young brothers in the Crewe family. A map produced in 1829 shows that work was also carried out in the park, possibly under the direction of Samuel Brown. The map shows that the pond has been elongated southwards, an island created in the middle of it, and a boat house erected on its eastern edge. The wide band of trees has been mostly cleared except for the plantation surrounding the house.
On the northern tip of the plantation is the stable building, its side wings clearly delineated on the map. Later work to the parkland included the creation of pleasure grounds and grassy glades to the west of the house, and the planting of a lime avenue running north-south from the park entrance on Red Lane to the edge of the plantation, marked clearly on the 1887 Ordnance Survey map.
The house was demolished in 1896, as a result of a family dispute, and only its foundations remain. The park itself has not been maintained since the late C19. There is no trace of the boat house and the lake is heavily silted up. At the north-west corner of the main pond are the remains of a controlled spillway with a pit (now covered) and shuttle gate which would have been raised and lowered to control the outflow.
Details
MATERIALS: Stone, ashlared and rubble.
PLAN: The pond is situated along the western edge of a small, steep-sided valley. It is divided into two unequal parts with the main pond roughly rectangular in shape whilst the smaller pond at its northern end is apsidal-shaped. The water is controlled over the change in ground level between the two ponds and the stream by three weirs and a sluice outfall.
EXTERIOR: The stone wall of the dam extends along the northern edge of the larger pond. From the centre of the dam a stone-paved spillway extends northwards from under the triple-arched, picturesque bridge which is constructed of ashlared stone. At the eastern end of the dam are masonry linings to a spillway controlling the overflow channel. At the western side is a semi-circular sluice outfall built of rubble stone which has a lintel carved with the date 1779. At the north-west tip of the smaller, apsidal-shaped pond, is another weir with masonry walls which controls the outflow.
