From Windows in the library a grand view was obtained over "a most beautiful and undulating country". The lake (which occupies ), the radiating avenues, and the ancient oaks added to its beauty. "There is, indeed, all over Worcestershire a soft beauty of landscape that is very bewitching". Although the house and large lake remain, the park is now a shadow of its former self. For example the only remaining tree-lined avenue is a straight one that leads from Droitwich to the gatehouse. Eustachia de Say and her son Osbert FitzHugh gave the church located at Westwood to Fontevraud Abbey, in the Loire valley, where Henry II of England, his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and their son Richard I (the Lionheart) are buried. Soon afterwards, a small priory was erected at Westwood, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, for six Benedictine nuns. Over the centuries the convent grew until it ultimately numbered eighteen sisters. The last prioress, Joyce Acton, received at the dissolution an annual pension of ten pounds. After the dissolution Henry VIII granted Westwood, with its demesne lands, to Sir John Pakington. The Pakington family seat in the adjacent village of Hampton Lovett, but that house was burnt down during the English Civil War so they moved to Westwood, which had been built in the reign of Elizabeth as a banqueting house. They enlarged and repaired it and laid out the park. During the latter part of the war and the Interregnum the house was the residence of Sir John Pakington (1621–1680), an ardent Royalist who was tried for his life by the Parliament; his estates were sequestered, and he was greatly plundered, but he ultimately compounded with the Parliamentary Committee for £5,000. His house was the refuge of learned men who support the King's cause: Dr. Henry Hammond found shelter with him, as did the Bishops Morley, Fell, Gunning. There is a link between "Whole Duty of Man" (an influential and popular Anglican tract) and Westwood House, because while the author is unknown, the introduction was written by Henry Hammond, and this has led some to speculate that Sir John's wife, Dorothy, Lady Pakington, may have been the author. During and after the Glorious Revolution the tried hospitality of Westwood House was extended to those who scrupled to take the oath of allegiance to William of Orange, and Dean George Hickes wrote several of his important works at Westwood.