Gothic Library, Sir George Staunton Country Park

3D Model

This model (which is upside down!) is a rough digital model of the Gothic Library in the Sir George Staunton Country Park, built by Sir George Staunton. This model was created in the University of Southampton’s Archaeological Computing Research Group.

The Gothic Library was built in 1832 to accommodate the book collection of Sir George Staunton, one of the first people in England to translate Chinese into English for general use. He bought the Leigh Park estate, in Havant near Portsmouth, in 1820 along with Leigh Park House. The Gothic Library was an add-on but complemented the Georgian architecture. However in 1857 the property was bought by William Stone, who built a new Leigh Park Hosue and demolished most of the old Leigh Park House. Today only the Gothic Library survives, and archaeological work including geophysics and excavation prove that the demolition was total, even taking the foundations away! However traces of the pleasure gardens in the park do survive above and below ground.