Description:This photograph was taken during the Ingestre Festival which was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the building of the current Ingestre Hall.
Ingestre Orangery was built in about 1770 by Samuel and Joseph Wyatt after the designs by James Athenian Stuart for the Grade ll* listed Orangery at nearby Blithfield Hall.
The building faces south and is an Athenian style building with a temple structure at both ends and a Doric colonnade. It is built of brick, with the front of the south-east elevation and the return elevations being clad in limestone ashlar. The rear elevation is bare brick. The building has pitched glazed roofs and the temple facades have a pair of niches and pilasters on either side of a central doorway with a fluted frieze above. The building comprises a single open area; nine equal bays of south facing window with a wider pedimented pavilion at each end. The other walls are blank. A fully glazed, pitched roof spans north/south throughout the main area and east/west plus metal framed windows. Brickwork returns at a high level to separate the wings from the central zone. The floor is of sandstone with an integrated grille.
The Orangery was used for growing exotic fruit and plants.
Nearby is Ingestre Hall which was built by Sir Walter Chetwynd in 1613. By the eighteenth century it had been acquired by the Talbots, who remodelled parts of the hall in the early 1800s. The Talbots became the Earls of Shrewsbury in 1856. After a fire in 1882 John Birch was employed to restore the building.
Ingestre Hall remained in the hands of the same family until it was sold in 1960 to what is now Sandwell Council who use the Hall as a Residential Arts Centre and a venue for weddings, meetings and courses.
Sandwell Council have offered the 'Friends of Ingestre Orangery' a 30 year lease with a peppercorn rent for it to be restored to a sustainable use by the community