BY STEWART SLATER There is something about the country house which speaks to the British soul. The National Union of Students may be the largest membership organisation in the land, but add together the National Trust and English Heritage and you comfortably top it. Indeed, the former has more members than all the trades unions affiliated with the TUC combined – thanks, Maggie. Millions of … Continue reading The Country House Theory of Britain
BY CHARLES EVANS Ascott House was originally a farm house, built in the reign of James I and known as “Ascott Hall”. In 1873 it was acquired by Baron Mayer de Rothschild (of the neighbouring Mentmore Towers estate). The Rothschild family had begun to acquire vast tracts of land in Buckinghamshire earlier in the century, on which they built a series of large mansions from … Continue reading Ascott
BY CHARLES EVANS Holmwood House is the finest and most elaborate residential villa designed by the Scottish architect Alexander “Greek” Thomson. It is also rare in retaining much of its original interior decor, and being open to the public. The villa is located at Cathcart in the southern suburbs of Glasgow. Holmwood is considered to be immensely influential by several architectural historians, because the design … Continue reading Holmwood House
BY CHARLES EVANS Ightham, Kent is a medieval moated manor house. The architectural writer John Newman describes it as “the most complete small medieval manor house in the county.” Ightham Mote and its gardens are owned by the National Trust and are open to the public. The house is a Grade I listed building, and parts of it are a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The origins … Continue reading Ightham
BY CHARLES EVANS Folkington Manor was built in 1843 by the architect W.J Donthorne, near the site of a manor that was recorded in the Domesday Book. The previous manor was home to Viscount Monckton in the 14th century, advisor to King Edward III. The Place, as it was formerly called, is a site of some antiquity, having been the seat of the Culpepers in … Continue reading Folkington
BY CHARLES EVANS Felbrigg Hall is a 17th-century English country house near the village of that name in Norfolk. Part of a National Trust property, the unaltered 17th-century house is noted for its Jacobean architecture and fine Georgian interior. Outside the house are a walled garden, an orangery and orchards. The estate originated with the Felbrigg family. It passed to John Wyndham (died 1475), and … Continue reading Felbrigg Hall
BY CHARLES EVANS Seaton Delaval Hall is a Grade I listed country house in Northumberland. It is near the coast just north of Newcastle upon Tyne. Located between Seaton Sluice and Seaton Delaval, it was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in 1718 for Admiral George Delaval and is now owned by the National Trust. Since completion of the house in 1728, it has had an … Continue reading Seaton Delaval
BY CHARLES EVANS Hinton Ampner House is a stately home with gardens within the civil parish of Bramdean and Hinton Ampner, near Alresford, Hampshire. The garden was created by Ralph Stawell Dutton (1898–1985), the 8th and last Baron Sherborne, starting in 1930, making this a modern 20th-century garden. The property is now more noted for its garden than the house. Previously, the parkland came directly … Continue reading Hinton Ampner
BY CHARLES EVANS Scotney Castle is an English country house with formal gardens south-east of Lamberhurst in the valley of the River Bewl in Kent, England. It belongs to the National Trust. Scotney Castle is not one but two houses. At the top of the hill is the new house, designed by Anthony Salvin in Elizabethan style and built in 1837 for Edward Hussey III, … Continue reading Scotney Castle
BY CHARLES EVANS Standen is an Arts and Crafts house located to the south of East Grinstead, West Sussex, England. The house and its surrounding gardens belong to the National Trust and are open to the public. It is a Grade I listed building. Between 1891 and 1894 architect Philip Webb, who was a friend of William Morris, designed the house for a prosperous London … Continue reading Standen
BY CHARLES EVANS ‘That’s She! The Only She! Make an honest woman of her – quick!’ was how Rudyard Kipling and his wife, Carrie, felt the first time they saw Bateman’s. Surrounded by the wooded landscape of the Sussex Weald, this 17th-century house, with its mullioned windows and oak beams, provided a much needed sanctuary to this world-famous writer. The rooms, described by him as … Continue reading Bateman’s
BY CHARLES EVANS Hinchingbrooke House in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was built around an 11th-century nunnery. After the Reformation, it passed into the hands of the Cromwell family, and subsequently, became the home of the Earls of Sandwich, including John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, reputedly the “inventor” of the modern sandwich. On 8 March 1538, Richard Williams (alias Cromwell) had the grant of the nunnery of … Continue reading Hinchingbrooke
BY CHARLES EVANS Syon House, and its 200-acre park, Syon Park, is in west London, historically within the parish of Isleworth, in the county of Middlesex. It belongs to the Duke of Northumberland and is now his family’s London residence. After the dissolution of the convent on the site, Syon was occupied by Protector Somerset and John Dudley, Duke of Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, … Continue reading Syon
BY CHARLES EVANS Among several English houses with the name Charlton House, the most prominent is a Jacobean building in Charlton, London. It is regarded as the best-preserved ambitious Jacobean house in Greater London. It was built in 1607–12 of red brick with stone dressing, and has an “E”-plan layout. The interior features a great hall, chapel, state dining room, saloon and gallery. The house … Continue reading Charlton House
BY CHARLES EVANS Sir William Sharington, a man of the Tudor renaissance, preserved the entire cloister (13th and 15th centuries) of the nunnery at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire which, c. 1550, he converted into a highly picturesque dwelling. Sharington, servant of Protector Somerset, was a pioneer, with Sir John Thynne of Longleat in the new Italian architecture, and his work here comprises some of its … Continue reading Lacock Abbey
BY CHARLES EVANS Barrington Court in Langport, Somerset, was built between 1514-20 for Lord Daubeny, a military commander who had served Henry VIII in his French war and been present at the famous pageant of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The material is the local Ham Hill stone, of a rich golden colour, of which the quarries also produced a notable school of … Continue reading Barrington Court
BY CHARLES EVANS In 1871 William Morris fell in love with, and acquired, the grey gabled manor house lying among the Thames-side water meadows and enclosed in a romantic old garden. It was probably built around 1570, in the style traditional of the Cotswolds, on the fringe of which it stands, in Lechlade in Oxfordshire. But Morris’s coming is the more significant date; for it … Continue reading Kelmscott Manor
BY CHARLES EVANS Henry William Paget, Earl of Uxbridge, who commanded the Allied Cavalry and lost a leg at Waterloo, was, in recognition, created Marquess of Anglesea and remembered by his family as Uncle One-Leg. About 1810 he had engaged James Wyatt to remodel Plas Newydd, which stands on the Southern shore of the island near the end of the Victoria Bridge and looking across … Continue reading Plas Newydd, Anglesea
BY CHARLES EVANS A London architect must have conceived this very remarkable house built by Sir Henry Griffith in 1600-10, for it has little in common with other Yorkshire houses, but is one of the most mature of late Elizabethan designs. Burton Agnes Hall is located in Driffield, Yorkshire. Approached through a gatehouse with four domed turrets, the front is a symmetrical composition contained by … Continue reading Burton Agnes Hall
BY CHARLES EVANS The builder of Loseley, where a house existed from much earlier times, was Sir William More, a kinsman of the Blessed Sir Thomas More, and son of Sir Christopher More, a trusted servant of Henry VIII. Building accounts show the work to have occupied the years 1561-69, so that the house is one of the earliest built under Queen Elizabeth – who … Continue reading Loseley Park
