and park. His achievement was recognised in 2015, when St Giles won the Historic Houses Association and Sotheby’s Restoration Award for that year. The family have returned to live in St Giles, residing in an apartment in one wing. Garden grotto and estate park The garden grotto, c. 1751–53 and the estate park itself are both recorded on the Register as a Grade II* listed buildings. The Grade II* list records buildings (and parks and gardens) that are "particularly important [with] more than special interest".Built of flint and rubble with a tiled and slated roof, the grotto is positioned so that the structure appears to be the source of a spring feeding the ornamental lake. The ante-chamber is lined with flints, fossils and minerals, and the main chamber has walls lined with shells, fossils, coral and stone. Some of the shells were sent from the Caribbean by the father of William Thomas Beckford of Fonthill. Rather than just a shell room, the grotto was an attempt to create a room that felt underwater, and is considered a remarkable example of antique surrealism. After falling into decay, it was restored by the 12th Earl. The Riding House is an early 17th century range set on the southern side of the home farm complex near St Giles House. Investigations by Historic England in 2016 discovered that the building was constructed as a stable block in 1616–18. Historically, the building had been misidentified as a riding house. Persecution of Birds of Prey On 4th January 2023, a gamekeeper linked to the Estate plead guilty to multiple charges of persecution of birds of prey including the possession of six buzzards (killed by shooting) and the remains of three more. Charges relating to a dead red kite (killed by eating a poison-laced dead rat) found on the estate were dropped by the prosecution. He also plead guilty to several firearms offences, and the possession of banned pesticides. In January 2022, a rare white-tailed eagle was found dead on the Estate, with post-mortem showing it had ingested 7 times the lethal dose of a banned rat poison, Brodifacoum. It cannot be inferred that the eagle was poisoned on the Estate, because its satellite tag data show that it visited several other nearby shooting grounds in the days preceding its death. Dorset is known for being a hotspot of wild bird persecution. References Further reading Betjeman, J.,