Access unclearno public right of way confirmed — check locally before setting out
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Purnell Bransby Purnell inherited Stancombe in 1805, aged fourteen, and spent the following decades filling its valley with tunnels, a grotto and a Doric temple by the lake — much of it built, by family account, by soldiers newly home from the Napoleonic wars. The result is a Regency exercise in the Picturesque. Evelyn Waugh lived close by at Piers Court, and a version of that lakeside temple turns up in Brideshead Revisited. Stancombe stays a private family estate near Dursley, with the Cotswold Way running along its edge, but the garden opens for a charity open day most summers; check locally for the date.
