Chadwick left London for Gloucestershire in 1946, where he rented a small dilapidated cottage which also served as his studio. In 1958, having won the international prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, his gallery, Marlborough Fine Art, advanced him the money to buy the buildings and gardens at Lypiatt Park.
Lypiatt Park is first recorded as a Manor House in 1220. In 1876, then owner, Sir John Dorrington, employed Thomas Henry Wyatt to make alterations to the house in the Gothic Revival style. The castellated Manor is perched on the edge of the Toadmoor valley.
By 1958 the house and outbuildings were in disrepair and scheduled for demolition, but Chadwick saw an opportunity to occupy a large space, with plenty of light that could be modified to suit his needs.
Chadwick intuitively minimised the unnecessary details and decorative aspects inside the house by white washing the interior. The setting became a back drop of immense purity and scale. He began working in the chapel, where Chadwick is photographed welding large armatures in the late 1950’s, later moving to the ballroom within the house in the early 1960s. By the 1970’s he had moved to the stable yard, and in 1971 began his own bronze casting foundry there.
The Manor house became a show space for his sculpture and a place for entertaining. The blank canvas left by the previous owners, had been a perfect starting point for Chadwick to design the spaces as he wished, to make them his own and suitable for both entertaining and showing his work in a totally unique way. Artists, designers, musicians and royalty of the time were amongst those that would spend long lunches turned dinners, draped around the heated terrazzo and concrete ‘furniture’ designed by Chadwick.
Though the parties were frequent, Chadwick had a rigorous work routine and over time, he could afford to renovate the Manor room by room, working his way from the East wing to the West. By the late 1960s Chadwick and his third wife Eva Reiner, resided harmoniously on separate sides of the house with separate lovers, but continued to eat together everyday in the central dining room.
In 1988 the park land adjoining the Manor House was purchased. It has become a setting in which to position his monumental sculptures and view them within the context of the natural environment, which greatly enhances the experience.
Around 1990, the young bronze founders, Rungwe and Claude Kingdon, came to reside in the coach house and take on the foundry dedicated to Chadwick’s work on-site. Together they perfected the casting process to meet the precise needs that Chadwick required. This included reproducing the ‘attitude’ and the unique and subtle textures of his working models more accurately than had been possible before, as well as developing the desired patina of the bronze casts. Their close working relationship formed the beginnings of the now internationally renowned artists’ foundry, Pangolin Editions, situated just four miles from Lypiatt Park, in the Chalford Valley, Gloucestershire.