Landmark News The Landmark Trust newsletter
New Handbook published - page 8
Issued twice yearly
Heritage Lottery Fund pledges £1.467m towards Astley Castle - page 6
Appeal launched to save Warder’s Tower - page 7
The latest Landmark - page 8
Autumn 2008
Landmark’s next Scottish project - page 8
Silverton Park Stables opens after a four year restoration - page 2
Starting on site - page 6
Staying in Landmarks Letter from the Director Landmark’s Villa Saraceno is the only villa by Andrea Palladio of the Italian Renaissance in which you can stay with friends and family as if it were your own. Of perfect proportions yet built of simple materials, this is a farmstead on the scale of a temple. The influence of its architect on the classical buildings of Britain remains unsurpassed. In their different ways each of our four buildings in Italy demonstrate that the distinctive experiences Landmarks offer, and our means of saving buildings, need not be confined to these shores. Now we are forming a partnership which will take us to the coast of France. The Conservatoire du littoral, the excellent French organisation established to acquire and preserve the best of the French coastline, has invited us to restore (with funds raised in France) some of their many fine coastal historic buildings deteriorating through lack of a viable future. It is early days, but in time we hope to offer Landmarkers a similarly distinctive view of the history of France, that is so interwoven with our own.
The view along the old carriage drive towards Silverton Park Stables, Devon
Silverton Park Stables throws open its doors For his stables at Silverton Park, the Earl of Egremont chose to group coach house, stables and staff accommodation around a cobbled quadrangle. Our scheme for the newly completed Silverton Park Stables was carefully designed to alter this layout as little as possible. Today’s Landmark, for parties of up to fourteen, is a place that is almost collegiate in feel. The coach houses have become a light and spacious south-facing common room in which the whole party can cook, eat, read, and relax together around a large woodstove. The bedrooms, most with their own bathrooms and on both ground and first floors, lead off staircases around the quadrangle. On a sunny day, this courtyard, also with benches and a table, becomes a friendly outside living space in its own right, still redolent of past equestrian endeavour. Double bedroom off the north-west staircase Knowing that large groups usually plan their stays some way ahead, for the next few months Silverton Park Stables can be booked for parties of five or more at a reduced rate. For details, visit www.landmarktrust.org.uk/news/SilvertonParkStables.htm.
Peter Pearce, Director
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Larger Landmarks are popular for family celebrations and gatherings at any time of year. Other suggestions are Auchinleck House (for 13), Elton House (for 10), Gargunnock House (for 16), Goddards (for 12) and Gurney Manor (for 9). Booking Office 01628 825925 Monday to Friday 9am - 6pm and Saturday 10am - 4pm
Dinner is served
Animal Landmarks Horses are not the only animals to have inspired buildings that are among our most delightful and eccentric. Squire Barry of Fyling Hall at Robin Hood’s Bay chose to house his pigs in a miniature Doric Temple (The Pigsty). At Poultry Cottage, the model accommodation for the poultry in the Fowl House next door is also considerably grander than that for their keepers, while Fox Hall was built not for foxes but to put up, in some style, the aristocrats who found sport hunting them. Not to be outdone, we continue to welcome dogs in Landmarks wherever feasible.
The Pigsty, North Yorkshire
Short notice booking
South Street, Devon
The need for sustenance is of course something we share with our ancestors, although what we eat and how we consume it has changed much over the centuries. Landmark’s buildings reflect those changes. In our medieval great halls, everyone in the household, whatever their status, sat down together to eat roast meats on trenchers of bread. In a humble factory cottage like North Street, Cromford, seated at the window, with a glimpse of Arkwright’s mill, our forebears perhaps ate bacon from the pig they had reared in their own back garden.
If you book within one week of starting your break (or two weeks on Lundy), it is worth remembering that it may be possible to vary your start date and the length of your stay, providing your stay is for a minimum of three nights. See page 3 of the Landmark Price List for details. You can check which buildings are available on the website or by contacting the Booking Office.
Solving your present list With Christmas just over the horizon, Landmark gift vouchers make a creative gift to introduce your friends to staying in Landmarks or to give a special treat to someone who otherwise seems to need for nothing. We often find family members clubbing together to treat parents or grandparents to a break in a Landmark, while others choose to arrange a romantic weekend or a surprise visit to pursue a particular local interest. To order gift vouchers, contact the Booking Office.
Availability List is updated daily at www.landmarktrust.org.uk
Danescombe Mine, Cornwall
West Banqueting House, Gloucestershire
The Banqueting Houses at Old Campden House represent a Jacobean fashion for a course now entirely lost – not a banquet in today’s sense but more a varied dessert course of sweetmeats and fine wines, away from the main table. You will find a seventeenth-century recipe book on the bookshelves there to try such things yourselves.
Email bookings@landmarktrust.org.uk
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Landmark’s libraries Since Landmark’s beginning in 1965, our libraries have been selected and overseen by Clayre Percy, helped soon after by Sonia Rolt. After years of inspiring service, Clayre and Sonia decided to stand down in June. We and tens of thousands of Landmarkers are enormously grateful for their years of hard work and erudition.
Church Houses, It can be unnerving to realise how a once very familiar part of daily life can vanish almost completely. There is a late-medieval building type hardly heard of today that was once found in almost every parish and lies at the heart of our collective folk memory of ‘merrie England’ – the church house. Landmark has two, perhaps three, church houses in its care, apparently unremarkable buildings providing a direct link with the communal lives of our ancestors. In the Middle Ages the repair and maintenance of the nave of the parish church was the responsibility of the parish. The money to pay for this was raised through ‘church ales’, village fundraising feasts where the bread was baked and ale was brewed communally, and everyone paid a penny or brought a contribution.
Clayre Percy and Sonia Rolt at East Banqueting House
Thanks to Clayre and Sonia, books have always been an important part of staying in a Landmark. They are carefully chosen to illuminate the building’s history and geography in an imaginative, entertaining and often quirky way, and joined by the sort of reference books you sometimes need to get the most out of a wide-ranging conversation or good walk. Landmark’s Historian, Caroline Stanford, is guiding our new Regional Librarians to ensure that these high standards are maintained in the future. 4
Above: Methwold Old Vicarage, Norfolk Below: The Priest’s House, Devon
Originally these ales were held in the church itself but by the mid-fifteenth century, the church authorities began to disapprove of such riotous behaviour in church. The parish was encouraged instead to build
Cakes and Ale
Parish House, Somerset
dedicated buildings for such purposes, and this led to a very distinctive building type. By 1500, church houses were found in most parishes. Typically located on the edge of the churchyard, they were built according to local traditions but to a high standard, a source of pride to the parish. Church houses had unusually large rooms and often had two storeys, with an external staircase. They also had large chimneystacks at a period when these were by no means common, to help with the brewing and baking. Church ales were officially held at Whitsun or on saints’ days but our ancestors, like us, loved a good gathering and held ales for many other charitable purposes too. The churchwardens might hire out the church house equipment – trestles, cauldrons, trenchers and spits – or let the premises for guest accommodation or to host travelling players.
Then came the Reformation and in the 1530s England became Protestant. ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?’, Sir Toby Belch taunts the puritanical Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in a direct reference to church ales. The church authorities now disapproved of such frivolity even in a good cause. By 1600, church ales were outlawed, leaving church houses to find other uses as poorhouses, inns, schools or tenements. By our own time, they had largely passed from view. That Landmark has two church houses in its care, aptly named the Parish House and The
The Priest’s House, Devon
MS Oldenburg celebrations 6 August 2008 marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of MS Oldenburg, our doughty passenger ship and supply vessel for Lundy. MS Oldenburg was built by shipbuilders Rolandwerft GmbH of Bremen in Germany. After her launch in 1958, she had earlier careers as a ferry and then a butter cruiser, before being bought by Landmark in 1985. MS Oldenburg has played an essential role in securing Lundy’s future ever since, even if a helicopter now assumes her duties during stormier winter weather.
Priest’s House, gives a chance to study these fascinating buildings while living in them. Five centuries on, the ground floor of the Parish House still fulfils part of its original purpose as a parish meeting room. The third Landmark that might have been a church house (documentary evidence has yet to surface) is Methwold Old Vicarage, which dates from 1500 and has many of the same characteristics. In any of these buildings, with their fine churchyard settings, it takes little imagination to connect with the bustling village life of the past. So much has changed, and yet in how much we remain the same.
MS Oldenburg
To celebrate the birthday, the ship set forth on a black-tie cruise up the River Torridge. Guests included Reinhardt Hempen, son of MS Oldenburg’s very first captain, and Gert Huber, a former engineer. MS Oldenburg has become an essential and much-loved part of life on Lundy and we look forward to many more years of faithful service. 5
Projects & Restoration Queen Anne’s Summerhouse funding boost We were delighted to learn in June that we had been awarded £350,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund towards restoring Queen Anne’s Summerhouse, an eighteenth-century folly on the Shuttleworth Estate at Old Warden in Bedfordshire. Having now raised all the funds needed we are preparing to start restoration work. We are enormously grateful to everyone who has contributed to our appeal. Astley Castle, Warwickshire
Astley Castle: A Landmark for the future Queen Anne’s Summerhouse, Bedfordshire
Project Guardians Our Guardians of Cowside scheme has proved very successful and has already raised £83,000. We are now extending the Guardians’ concept to other fundraising projects. Becoming a Guardian enables donors to be closely involved with the building in return for a gift of £6,000. Guardians will enjoy a number of benefits including exclusive visits with members of the Landmark team and regular updates throughout the life of the project. To find out more please contact the Development Office or visit our website. 6
Astley Castle is a ruinous moated site in North Warwickshire, fortified in 1266 but occupied for far longer. Owned by three queens of England and added to in most centuries since, it had become a hotel when devastated by a fire in 1978, leaving it a derelict and crumbling pile, all internal features gone. In 2005, we sought a project to celebrate our fortieth anniversary. We resolved to find a solution for Astley Castle, cited as one of English Heritage’s most at risk sites but still an immensely important and resonant one, set in an ancient and picturesque landscape. The winners of our consequent architectural competition, Witherford Watson & Mann, have created an imaginative scheme for a two-storey Landmark for eight people in the oldest part of the castle, using modern materials in well-designed spaces. It will stitch together and protect the wallheads of the surviving main walls of the castle, leaving the castle’s external profile largely unchanged. The result will be one of our most innovative solutions to date and a remarkable place to stay. Detailed local consultation has been carried out and all necessary planning permissions have been granted. We are delighted to announce that English Heritage has awarded £300,000 towards emergency repairs, to start this autumn, and that the Heritage Lottery Fund has pledged £1.467 million. We hope to convert that pledge to a grant, and with other funding already secured we have £236,585 to raise to meet the total project cost of £2.175 million. Until these funds are raised, Astley Castle’s survival hangs in the balance. We launched an emergency appeal in September and every donation counts. After 30 years, a solution is finally within reach. Please help us make it a reality. To find out more and make a donation to Astley Castle, visit www.landmarktrust.org.uk.
To make a donation to support our work and ensure historic buildings have a secure future call 01628 825920
‘A capital retreat’ (1871 Sales Particulars) In June we launched an appeal for the restoration of Warder’s Tower in Staffordshire. This rugged yet romantic tower stands in a picturesque landscape, now the Greenway Bank Country Park near Biddulph. In earlier times, this was the Knypersley Estate, owned by the Bateman family. James Bateman, who grew up here, created the famous gardens at nearby Biddulph Grange, today restored by the National Trust. James’s father John had moulded a different kind of landscape at Knypersley, benefiting from the natural contours of the North Staffordshire moorland. In the 1820s John Bateman extended existing pools to feed the canal network, creating the extensive lakes that remain today. On a promontory, he built this tower in 1828 as a home for his gamekeeper (or warder). It was in the best Picturesque tradition, a miniature bastion that pleased the eye from wherever it was glimpsed. As so often with such isolated buildings, by the 1950s Warder’s Tower was left derelict, without water or electricity. We have taken a long lease and Warder’s Tower will now make a capital Landmark, its roof terrace placing you at treetop level among the many birds that thrive in the heavily wooded park, with fine views across the lakes. Our thanks to all those who have helped us so far to raise £213,000 which includes a very generous donation of £75,000 from the Country Houses Foundation. We still have a long way to go to meet overall restoration costs of £700,000. To make a donation, please contact the Development Office or visit our website.
Warder’s Tower, Staffordshire
Re-thatching Woodsford Castle
Safe from lightning
Woodsford Castle, which dates from the 14th century, has the largest thatched roof in Dorset, more than 3,000 sq ft. We have a rolling repair programme and Dave Symonds from Chideock, a thatcher of 42 years’ experience, has just re-thatched both main roof slopes with his team. They used water reed, the traditional thatching material for Dorset, laid to a depth of 350mm. In earlier times the Woodsford thatchers probably harvested their material from the banks of Woodsford Castle, Dorset the River Frome nearby, but such supplies are no longer available in any quantity. Supplies of Norfolk water reed, our biggest homegrown source, tend to be snapped up locally, so we have used Austrian water reed, 2,400 bundles of it, fixed with hazel spars which Dave harvests from the nearby Kingston Lacy estate and splits during the winter. The castle, which inspired Thomas Hardy, has also been redecorated.
Tall buildings need protection from lightning but scaffolding the whole can be expensive. When Laughton Place needed a lightning conductor, it was fitted by abseilers working their way down the Tudor brickwork on ropes and carefully concealing the conductor behind the drainpipes. Care is also taken to merge in the down-tape to the brickwork behind.
Abseilers working at Laughton Place, East Sussex
You can now make donations online securely and quickly at www.landmarktrust.org.uk
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The Shore Cottages
The Shore Cottages, Caithness (centre)
These nineteenth-century fishermen’s cottages at Berriedale will be Landmark’s next Scottish project and, once funded and restored, our most northerly buildings. Found in an idyllic cove on the Caithness coastline just south of Dunbeath, the cottages were built when the fishing industry provided an alternative livelihood for crofters forced off the land during the Clearances. The cottages have been empty and derelict for half a century, but retain much of their original joinery.
Theo Williams OBE We heard with deep sadness in March of the death of Theo Williams OBE. Theo first worked for Landmark as a Chartered Surveyor on Lundy in 1969 and then served with great dedication and humour as Trustee from 1989 until 2002. We are grateful for all Theo did for Landmark.
New Handbook The new edition of the Landmark Trust Handbook and the 2009 Price List are now available. In full colour, the Handbook includes entries for six new Landmarks and an expanded introductory section of features on Landmark’s work, restoration and architectural history. The 190 building entries make absorbing reading for everyone interested in history or architecture as well as providing up-to-date floor plans to help you plan your stay. The Handbook can be bought by post, telephone or via the website and costs £10 plus postage and packing; when you next book a Landmark, the Handbook cost can be refunded against it. The Handbook also makes an original and inspirational Christmas present.
Clavell Tower – back from the edge After two years of work, Clavell Tower’s restoration is complete. This 1830 folly has been recorded, dismantled piece by piece and reassembled some twenty five metres back from the crumbling cliff ’s edge. As much of the original material was incorporated in the rebuilt tower as possible, but the interior finishes had been entirely lost to weather and decay. Before fitting out the interior Clavell Tower, Dorset and armed with small fragments of surviving joinery, we consulted Charles Brooking, curator of an exhaustive collection of architectural details, for dated examples of windows, shutters, stair newels and balusters, to be consistent with what Reverend Clavell would have used in 1830. The successful rescue of this small building sums up Landmark’s dauntless determination to save worthy historic survivals, however precarious their position. We could not have achieved this without the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Country Houses Foundation and our many other supporters. Thousands of walkers along the South West Coast Path have watched our contractor, Carrek of Wells, progress through the months and many more will now be able to learn about the tower’s history as they pass. All craftsmen departed, the tower has quietly taken its place again on this dramatic stretch of Dorset coastline, a reassuring landmark for miles around and an incomparable place to stay.
The Landmark Trust Shottesbrooke Maidenhead Berkshire SL6 3SW Bookings 01628 825925 Office 01628 825920 Website www.landmarktrust.org.uk
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Order your New Handbook To order a Handbook or make a donation to help us rescue buildings at risk, please complete the form below, telephone the Booking Office or go online. The Handbook costs £10 plus postage and packing: • £3 UK second class post • £5 UK first class post • £10 to Europe and rest of the world (USA and Canada see overleaf)
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Return to: The Landmark Trust, Shottesbrooke, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 3SW
New Handbook
The new Handbook, the 23rd edition, features 190 historic buildings available to stay in – follies, castles, towers, banqueting houses, cottages and other unusual buildings. Through the building entries and a collection of articles, the Handbook traces our architectural heritage from the 12th to the 20th century. The 232-page Handbook costs just £10 plus postage and packing. The Handbook cost is refundable against your first booking or you may wish to use the refund voucher to make a donation to support Landmark’s work in rescuing historic buildings. Residents of USA and Canada can order a copy for US $28 from Landmark USA, 707 Kipling Road, Dummerston, Vermont 05301, USA. Tel: 802-254-6868.
Order your Handbook • Online
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• Booking • Or
Office on 01628 825925
complete the form overleaf and return it to The Landmark Trust, Shottesbrooke, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 3SW