Country Life early property pages 7th June 2023

EVERY WEEK

Royal Norfolk

How it became the county of kings

The farm with a theatre in the woods

The iris of my eye: a collector’s search for perfection

Suffolk horses, sweet cicely and London’s classical genius

Property market Penny Churchill

Treasures of the east

Rejuvenated Wolterton Hall and its 458-acre estate in the picturesque Bure Valley, north Norfolk, is on the market for the first time. £25m

TODAY’S COUNTRY L IFE sees the launch onto the open market, for the first time in its history, of Grade I-listed Wolterton Hall and its surrounding, 458-acre Wolterton Park estate near Itteringham, in north Norfolk’s picturesque Bure Valley, four miles from Aylsham, seven miles from Holt and a stone’s throw from the sublime north Norfolk coast. For sale at a guide price of £25 million through Tom Goodley of Strutt & Parker in Norwich (01603 883607) and Mark McAndrew in London (020–7691 2214), Wolterton Hall is one of north Norfolk’s four great Whig ‘power houses’— the others being Houghton Hall, home of the Marquess and Marchioness Cholmondely, Holkham Hall, home of the Earl and Countess of Leicester, and Raynham Hall, the seat of the Townshend family for almost 400 years.

Wolterton Hall was built between 1722 and 1742 by the diplomat and parliamentarian Horatio Walpole, 1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton,

whose family had been established as landed gentry in Norfolk since the 14th century. He was the younger brother of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, who inherited the 17,000-acre Houghton estate in 1700 and appointed his friend and royal architect Thomas Ripley to oversee the construction of Palladian Houghton Hall, where the first stone was laid in May 1722.

Horatio already owned a house at Wolterton, which burnt down during building works, and he was persuaded by Ripley to replace it with a grand country house designed in the Palladian tradition. Work began in earnest in 1727 and was completed in 1742. In the early 1800s, the Palladian steps leading to the Marble Hall were replaced by a porte cochère and, in 1828, George Repton, son of landscape designer Humphry, built on the East Wing and added the Portland-stone steps and balcony to the south façade.

By then, the Walpoles were also Earls of Orford, although they continued to live at Wolterton Hall until the mid 19th century, when the 4th Earl of Orford moved to nearby Mannington Hall. Wolterton remained empty and might well have been demolished had his successor, the 5th Earl, and his American wife, Louisa Corbin, not returned and restored it in 1905. The 5th Earl had no heir and the house and estate were left to Robert Henry Walpole, 7th Baron Walpole of Wolterton and 9th Baron Walpole of Walpole, who opened the house to the public in 1950.

Disaster struck in 1952 when a fire broke out in one of the attic bedrooms, gutting the entire floor and causing serious water damage in the rooms below as the fire brigade fought to contain the blaze. Undaunted, Lord Walpole embarked on a full-scale restoration and, three years later, the hall was back on track and once more open to the public.

A Whig power house is only one of the many jewels in East Anglia

In 1989, the hall and estate were inherited by his son, the 8th/10th Baron Walpole, but it was unoccupied for almost 30 years when, in 2016, the estate was bought privately by renovation specialists Peter Sheppard and Keith Day. Since arriving at Wolterton, the dynamic designers have worked tirelessly to return the Hall, its secondary houses, estate buildings, stables and parkland to their former splendour. Their efforts were recognised last year when they were joint winners of the Historic Houses Restoration Award for 2022 and the recipients of the Georgian Group’s Architectural Award for the Restoration of a Georgian Country House.

Seven years on, having decided to scale down their operation to ‘something more modest’, they leave behind a remarkable architectural legacy, notably in the eight double-height state rooms on the grand piano nobile. These rooms contain many original paintings, sculptures and furnishings acquired from the Walpole family, which may be for sale by separate negotiation. There are 12 working bedrooms in all, between the State Bedrooms on the first-floor piano nobile and nine further bedrooms on the second floor. The ground floor, which houses the Picture Room, a studio, two kitchens (including one by Smallbone), an atmospheric library and a light and homely sitting room, is used by the owners for ‘everyday living’. The attic floor is still largely a blank canvas.

The Marble Hall in the East Wing was previously the entrance hall before Repton’s removal of the Baroque staircase in 1828. The Saloon is the largest and most magnificent room in the house: hung throughout with slate-coloured linen, it has three full-height sash windows and access to a huge south-facing balcony, with spectacular views over the lake and parkland created by garden designer Charles Bridgeman, who also worked at Houghton Hall. The State Dining Room is covered in scarlet wool damask as used at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, the Gothic Revival villa built by Horatio’s nephew, Horace Walpole. The Venetian room is so-called for the vast Palladian window that covers the entire west wall. The Boudoir is one of three rooms used as a suite for important guests, such as the King or a high-ranking aristocrat.

Given the financial challenge involved in restoring the Hall’s 33,619sq ft of living space spread over three floors, attics, cellar and basement, the new owners started off by adapting some of the estate’s principal houses as rental properties. Already restored and producing a solid income are the seven-bedroom Regency East Wing designed by George Repton; the three-bedroom Steward’s House, originally part of the gatehouse; the Treasury where Lord Walpole and his butler kept the estate accounts; the Grade II-listed, three-bedroom Garden House designed by Thomas Ripley; and the Grade II-listed, three-bedroom Georgian gatehouse, plus various other estate houses and cottages. There is planning consent for five further dwellings in the 18th-century coach house and stable block designed by Ripley, with scope for further development elsewhere in the house and estate.

Down in Essex, Mark Rimell of Strutt & Parker’s country department (020–7591 2213) seeks ‘offers over £4.6m’ for Grade II*-listed Rivenhall Place at Rivenhall, which overlooks twin lakes at the heart of 68 acres of woods and rolling parkland designed by Humphry Repton, three miles from Witham and 12 miles equidistant from Chelmsford and Colchester.

Early records suggest that the grounds of Rivenhall Place were part of a hunting park owned by Edith of Wessex, who married Edward the Confessor and was Queen of England from 1045 to 1066. In 1590, the house was bought by Ralph Wiseman, the head of a Catholic family whose priest’s hole in the

fireplace of the Great Hall can still be seen. Three generations later, the Wisemans sold the house to the Western family, who renamed it Rivenhall Place.

Repton took on Rivenhall Place as his first commission in Essex in 1789, adding the second lake and the bridge, as well as advising on the transformation of the house into the Georgian style. Extensively restored in recent years, the main house offers 11,560sq ft of easy living space, including three fine reception rooms, a sitting room, study, kitchen/breakfast room and orangery, with the principal bedroom suite and four further bedrooms on the first floor and three more bedrooms and a games room on the second floor. Amenities include a tennis court, a swimming pool and hot tub, the latter concealed behind mature yew hedges. The three-bedroom cottage adjoining the house is currently let through Airbnb and provides a useful income.

Tim Phillips of Savills country department (07870 867218) is overseeing the sale, at a guide price of £5.75m, of elegant, Grade II-listed East Donyland Hall set in 83 acres of parkland, woods and farmland running down to the Roman River and saltmarsh near the quiet rural village of Fingringhoe, five miles south-east of Colchester in the heart of Roman Essex.

The first record of a house on the site was in 1463, followed in 1638 by that of a mansion house built around the medieval core and encircled by the moat that still exists today. In 1730, David Gansel, an architect, acquired

Rivenhall Place stands in 68 acres of Repton-designed grounds in Essex. Excess £4.6m

Dynamic designers have worked tirelessly to return the Hall and parkland to its former splendour

Property market

the property, had the house re-fronted in the Queen Anne style and built a model farm opposite the house with three matching listed buildings with pedimented gables comprising the stables, dairy and brew house. He also laid out a park and planted many cedar trees, some of which are still standing.

The classic Georgian interior provides some 6,535sq ft of free-flowing accommodation on three floors, including an entrance hall with a fine 18th-century staircase, four main reception rooms, a conservatory, a kitchen/ breakfast room, with a principal bedroom suite, four further bedrooms and two bathrooms on the first floor, and two further bedrooms on the floor above. There is also a two-room cellar, with access from the study. Further accommodation is available in the two-bedroom gate lodge, and two pretty estate cottages.

Approached along a private tree-lined drive, the Hall sits well within its setting, surrounded by lovely landscaped gardens. In all, the estate comprises some 21,000sq ft of houses and buildings, of which 10,000sq ft of farm buildings have potential for development, the agents say.

Finally, Karl Manning of Savills in Chelmsford (01245 293233) is handling the sale of enchanting, Grade I-listed The Abbey at Coggeshall, a historic former monastic complex of immense character and charm set in 25 acres

of beautifully landscaped gardens on the banks of the River Blackwater, less than a mile from the centre of the medieval market town of Coggeshall and 10 miles from Colchester.

He quotes a guide price of £2.5m for The Abbey, which offers a total of six bedrooms split across the main house and an adjoining one-bedroom cottage, a former monk’s lodgings. Other buildings include an entertaining barn/guest house, and a consecrated private chapel, which dates from 1162 and is one of the oldest buildings on the site. Two substantial Essex barns and extensive stabling are set around a central courtyard with direct access to a manège. Originally a Savignac religious house and later a Cistercian abbey

until the Dissolution, Coggeshall Abbey and its associated buildings were much altered in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, although the principal house still retains many of its earlier features including 16th-century chimney stacks, oriel windows and the west porch.

Ornate wood panelling features heavily throughout the building, alongside stone arches and some remarkable timbers. Of particular note is the splendid Grand Hall, which overlooks the north-facing lawn; also the family room, dining room, library and the kitchen, which enjoys riverside views. The first-floor accommodation comprises five bedrooms and three bathrooms, all orientated to make the most of the delightful setting.

Above: East Donyland Hall at Fingringhoe in Roman Essex. £5.75m. Right: The Abbey at Coggeshall, Essex, is full of charm. £2.5m

Properties of the week

James

Fisher

Eastern promises

Suffolk, £1.45 million

When Sheila Kirk was driving down Pakenham Road, near Bury St Edmunds, she spotted something strange, but familiar—chimneys. But not just any chimneys, no, these were for sure chimneys in the vernacular of Philip Webb, one of the ‘fathers’ of the Arts-and-Crafts Movement, and Ms Kirk had ‘discovered’ one of his previously unknown buildings. That very property, Manor Farm, is now on the market, with five bedrooms and some six acres of land. Originally built to be the farm manager’s house by the Greene family of Suffolk, the property is listed Grade II* and is a wonderful example of Webb’s design and ideas. Situated on the outskirts of both Pakenham and Thurston, the property is in a convenient location, as well as retaining its rural appeal. Bedfords (01284 769999)

Suffolk, £1.1 million

Few phrases inspire as much joy as ‘newly thatched’ and Mayhews Farm near Old Newton is exactly that. With five bedrooms, four bathrooms and four reception rooms, this colourful farmhouse is a characterful family home with exceptional interiors and a host of original features throughout. Extra space has been added in recent years with the newly appointed garden room, which provides excellent views of the surrounding grounds and countryside, and a well-appointed kitchen flows directly into the new space, providing lots of room for entertaining. Outside, the 1.4 acres of gardens and grounds are a delight and include a range of outbuildings such as an office, greenhouse and workshop, as well as lawned areas, well-stocked borders, two natural ponds with decked seating areas and a variety of mature trees.

Strutt & Parker (01473 220433)

The property market of East Anglia is still as rich and fertile as the soil

Properties of the week

Cambridgeshire, OIEO £1.1 million

Listed Grade II and situated in a semirural position on the outskirts of the village of Ashdon, The Old Farmhouse is a substantial 5/6-bedroom family home with lashings of character. A rare example of a house awash with period farmhouse features, as well as plenty of ceiling height, the property is more than suited to modern living, with plenty of contemporary elements, a highlight of which is surely the living/dining room extension, with triple-aspect views of the surrounding gardens. The gardens themselves extend to about half an acre and mostly consist of a large lawned area with well-stocked borders, mature shrubs and trees. The market town of Saffron Walden, with its extensive amenities, is only five miles down the road and regular trains run from nearby Audley End to London Liverpool Street and Cambridge. Knight Frank (01223 972911)

Norfolk, £1.425 million

Dating from the 18th century, The Old Rectory on Low Road near Shelton is a splendid Georgian red-brick home that sits in a private and peaceful 3.2 acres with lovely views of the neighbouring church and the countryside beyond. The property has eight bedrooms over its three floors and, with 4,000sq ft of living space, offers more than enough room for a large family or entertaining. A ‘thorough yet sympathetic’ programme of restoration has been undertaken in recent years, bringing out the best of the many period features throughout, as well as providing all of the comforts of modern living. The garden and grounds surrounding the Old Rectory are generous and include a beech tree planted to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar, plus extensive lawns, woodland, a walled garden and even a 1,300sq ft coach house that provides plenty of scope for alternative uses, whether that be as a home office, art studio, ancillary accommodation or games room.

Savills (01603 229229)

Cambridgeshire, £1.6 million

Originally built in the 13th century, Lordship Cottage was once a church, then a school house and even had a moat. These days, it’s an immaculate four-bedroom family home, which has been extensively refurbished and modernised by its current owners, but not without taking extra care of the many period features throughout. A highlight of the recent works is the vast vaulted sitting room, which includes floor-to-ceiling windows on one end to maximise the natural light flowing through the property. Another highlight would be the state-of-the-art kitchen to the rear, which comes with two dishwashers, Gaggenau appliances and 12ft-long island. The property, which looks traditional and unassuming from the outside, also sits in about half an acre of gardens and grounds that include spacious lawns, an outdoor kitchen, and an annexe/games room and home office.

Cheffins (01223 214214)

London Life

Your indispensable guide to the capital

A fresh face

JUST as faces age, a few unwelcome lines were beginning to show on the National Portrait Gallery, so it was decided that a little bit of work was called for—although something more than a light nip and tuck. Three years and £35.5 million later, the results are ready to be unveiled (on June 22).

The National Portrait Gallery has occupied its site next to the National Gallery since 1896 and it has always been an underwhelming spot. Rather than a stately atrium, some revolving doors were all that separated it from the buses, pedestrians and mish-mash of traffic lights and zebra crossings on the Charing Cross Road. As an introduction to a pantheon of Britain’s great and good, it was all rather apologetic.

Now, it is getting a new entrance on its north façade by Irving Street, its 40 galleries are being revivified, new commercial facilities added, subterranean spaces opened up, a new Learning Centre fashioned and the entire collection rehung.

During the gallery’s closure, many of its pictures have been out at its regional outposts and partner venues (Beningbrough Hall in North Yorkshire, Montacute House in Somerset and Bodelwyddan Castle in Denbighshire among them). Together with their return to London, the National Portrait Gallery is relaunching with exhibitions of the work of Paul McCartney and the pioneering portrait photographer Madame Yevonde.

Serendipitously, visitors will also be greeted by Joshua Reynolds’s great Portrait of Omai (about 1776), jointly acquired by the UK gallery and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, US, for £50 million. Now, at last, the National Portrait Gallery has the glamour and swagger to match Omai’s own.

Michael Prodger

London Life Need to know

Shop of the month

Jeeves of Belgravia, 8–10, Pont Street, SW1

ONCE, at a Mayfair club, a server dropped a chicken masala over my shoulder and the upshot was a paidfor visit to Jeeves of Belgravia on Pont Street. The dry cleaner has held a Royal Warrant since 1980 and has a reputation for troubleshooting: the racks are hung with heritage mending, scuffed Chanel handbags and Nice Things worn when eating hot dogs. Jeeves manufactures its own stain remover (travel size and regular), as well as Wool and Cashmere Shampoo and Gentleman’s Laundry Liquid.

Open Monday to Saturday, 9am–6pm (020–7235 1101; www.jeevesofbelgravia.com)

Seasonal suggestions

Go now

The V&A’s ‘DIVA’ exhibition, opening June 24, shines a light on divas across history, from Maria Callas to Tina Turner (right) and Elton John. Highlights include Bob Mackie’s designs and a dress worn by Marilyn Monroe (www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/diva)

‘Paul McCartney, Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm’ launches at the newly

opened National Portrait Gallery (‘A fresh face’, page 97 ) on June 28 with never-beforeseen images taken during The Beatles’ meteoric rise to fame (www.npg.org.uk/ whatson/exhibitions/2023/paul-mccartneyphotographs-1963-eyes-of-the-storm)

Musical comedy Operation Mincemeat based on a daring, Second World War military deception—has opened at the Fortune Theatre to rave reviews. Tickets from £19.50 (www.operationmincemeat.com)

Book ahead

A handful of tickets to FANE’s An Evening with Rory Stewart (left) at The Barbican, EC2, on September 4, is currently available (www.barbican.org.uk)

Tickets for the Wyndham Theatre’s 2024 production of Long Day’s Journey into Night, starring Succession’s Brian Cox, are on sale now (www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk)

New restaurants

Following an extensive refurbishment, the Hockney-clad George Club is once again open. It claims Mayfair’s largest outdoor terrace and offers an inspired menu from chef Marcus Eaves (www.georgeclub.com)

The first shop opened in 1969, three years after one of the original owners, Sydney Jacob, wrote to P. G. Wodehouse’s literary agent and asked to borrow the name of the cure-all butler from his novels. The response from the agent, Hilary Rubinstein, is on the wall in Pont Street: ‘I am glad to say I have heard from Mr Wodehouse this morning that he is quite happy about your using the name “Jeeves” as a trading name in your new business adventure and good luck to it.’ Jo Rodgers

A green space

Exchange Square, Broadgate, EC2

THIS busy square tucked away behind Liverpool Street Station ( page 110) demonstrates the power of good design. Once an uninspiring rectangle of grass, it has now (thanks to a collaboration between DSDHA architects and FFLO landscape architects) been transformed into an inviting arena— a place to visit rather than merely pass through.

Here’s looking at London’s languages

• London has always been one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, attracting invaders and settlers, economic migrants and refugees. Today, more than 300 languages are spoken across the capital

• When the Romans invaded and later settled, they brought their Latin tongue with them. It quickly became the principal language in Roman towns, but people living in rural areas stuck to the old Celtic language

• Old French was the mother tongue of every British king between 1066 and 1413, then, in the late 17th century, Huguenots (French Protestants) came to London to escape religious persecution in France. They brought with them their skills (silk weaving, metalwork, engraving) and their language. The former lasted much longer—French silk-weaving survived into the 1900s—and a single Huguenot church, French Church in Soho Square (above), remains from an original 23

• A Chinese ‘chop book’, on display at the Museum of London, suggests that dock

Need to know London Life

My plate of view Kuro Eatery, 5, Hillgate Street, W8

Meandering paths invite you to linger, tactile terrazzo steps call out to be touched or sat upon and a subtle water feature, trickling down the steps to form a series of natural pools, offers refreshment, reflections and a sense of fun.

Some 14,000 plants totalling more than 140 different species provide a significant biodiversity uplift, too. Go now for alliums, the flattened umbels of Baltic parsley and the elegant spires of foxgloves.

Natasha Goodfellow is the author of ‘A London Floral’ and ‘A Cotswold Garden Companion’ (www.finchpublishing.co.uk)

In my other life, I’m an author of romantic comedies, so the first thing that pops into my head when somebody says ‘Notting Hill’ to me is Hugh Grant blushing in a bookshop. The second is Bridget Jones convening love-life crisis summits with Shazza and Jude at 192, a real-life restaurant on Kensington Park Road that put W11 on the gastronomic map. It closed in 2004, so, between then and 2019, Notting Hill (like Hampstead, bafflingly) wasn’t really somewhere you’d make a special trip to for dinner, barring a booking at The Ledbury. That changed when Jackson Boxer’s homage to the Hebrides, Orasay, opened. Then came Caia, Dorian, The Counter, Akub, The Butter Club, Straker’s… Barely a week seems to go by without a press release about another new opening materialising in my inbox. Most of these are to the north of W11, clustered on and around Golborne Road. But one really notable exception is in the opposite direction, just south of Notting Hill Gate Tube station: Kuro Eatery.

officials receiving tea cargos had a basic grasp of the Chinese language. Chinese sailors were some of the first people from their country to settle in London and Limehouse became Europe’s first Chinatown • Although the term Cockney typically refers to a person from the East End or born within earshot of the church bells of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, it is also a recognised dialect of the English language. Cockney rhyming slang originated in the 1840s, as a way for people to communicate with one another without passers-by and the police being able to understand

I arrive for dinner with a friend who also writes romantic comedies and, looking out at the sun setting over the magnolialined terraces, we mistily agree that it feels like rewinding to 1999. But there’s nothing backward-looking about Kuro’s wine list, which furnishes us with glasses of a fantastically crunchy Georgian orange, or the main menu, which moves between Mediterranean and minimalist with a generous pinch of Japanese influence. There’s cod ‘ham’ with early harvest olive oil, lamb yakitori with truffle and mint and furikake-dusted tenderstem broccoli. The dish of the night for us is a flatbread so light it’s practically levitating, topped with goat’s cheese and fermented hot honey, tear-andshare taken to a whole new level.

The puddings (chocolate mousse, a clever and nostalgic banana-shaped banana pudding) lend themselves to two spoons. Everything apart from them comes to the table when it’s ready, which normally irritates me a bit, but, here, it works; it means the conversation flows around the food, rather than being brought to a halt by it. Perfect if you’re setting the world to rights—or convening a crisis summit about your love life.

Emma Hughes

Polly Crossman; Alamy; Daniel Fisher; Getty; Bob Mackie; Millie Pilkington

London Life Need to know

London curiosities Do not pass go The Strand

London property of the month

47, Grosvenor Square, W1

HOUSES may have come and gone at 47, Grosvenor Square, W1, and even the address has changed slightly (it was once No 42), but the profile of the people who live there has remained very much the same across the centuries. This elegant, red-brick building has long been the address of choice for the great and the good, counting among its past residents two MPs, at least six aristocrats and philanthropists Sir Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. The building as it stands today dates from the late 1930s and it’s split into apartments, one of which, on the 5th floor, became home, in 1948, to Raine, née McCorquodale (later Countess Spencer), and her first husband, Gerald Legge, later Earl of Dartmouth.

Now for sale with an asking price of £8.5 million, the 2,145sq ft apartment is in need of extensive renovation, so selling agents Wetherell (020–7529 5566; www.wetherell. co.uk) have commissioned award-winning design studio Casa e Progetti to create a CGI impression of what the interiors—inspired by the designs created by David Hicks for Raine Spencer—could look like. The cost for the work, estimated at up to £1.5 million, is not insignificant. However, Wetherell say the fully renovated flat could be worth £10.5 million.

In the hot seat Sophia Money-Coutts

Best cocktail A glass of Champagne, sitting at the 45 Jermyn Street bar

Dream bus route One that will carry me home to Crystal Palace from 45 Jermyn Street without stopping

Favourite building The London Library—it’s crammed with more than a million books

Where do you go in the rain? To the Fortnum’s Food Hall to cheer myself up with a delicious treat North or south of the river South, always What’s the best place in London that no one goes to? The ladies’ loos in the basement of the London Library, where I put my face on before going out. Exceptional lighting

Sophia Money-Coutts is an author and columnist. Her latest novel, ‘Looking Out For Love’, is out now (HarperCollins, £8.99)

The Strand is the start of London’s continuous history. The name’s the clue: it means beach in Anglo-Saxon (as it still does in German). It was up this northern Thames shore, sloping steeply to dry land, that Friesian sailors, aided by changing tides, pulled their boats, establishing a settlement and a food and slave market. They called it Ludenwic. Due to Viking attacks, King Alfred later moved the city back within the repaired city walls. The Saxon name survives in Aldwych.

For 500 years, The Strand was a street of palaces. For royal brides and favourites (Anne Boleyn, George Villiers), protectors (John of Gaunt, Edward Seymour, Oliver Cromwell), courtiers (Robert Devereux, Lord Burghley) and bishops, it was the place to live. Their titles survive in hotel or office names. The Strand itself was ‘constantly adorned with a liquid, noxious mud’, according to one visitor, Pierre-Jean Grosley.

Most travelled by boat. The Strand’s palaces, like Venetian palazzi, faced the river. Briefly the Strand was fashionable. Disraeli called it ‘perhaps the finest street in Europe’. Music-hall songs exhorted revellers to ‘go down the Strand, the place for fun and noise’. Friesian trading boats no longer beach on the riverbank. Lamborghinis park in Savoy Court instead. The Strand’s transmogrified. But it’s still there.

Nicholas Boys Smith is the author of ‘No Free Parking’ (www.bonnierbooks.co.uk)

London Life Founding fathers

The hall at Syon House, inspired by Roman baths and basilicas—one of a host of high-profile remodelling projects undertaken by Adam

The Adam family

THE road to London runs through Rome. Or so it did for Robert Adam, who left his native Scotland (and a place in the family’s established, but regional practice) for a European Grand Tour that eventually propelled him to worldwide architectural glory. Adam headed to Italy in 1754, at the age of 26, and became part of an international circle that included architectural designer Charles-Louis Clérisseau and artist and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He had ambition—‘Scotland is but a narrow place,’ he once wrote, revealing his desire for ‘a greater, more extensive and more honourable scene’—and the determination to pursue it, even when this required a rather elastic relationship with the truth: cultivating for a time the image of the distinguished dilettante, he embellished his stories with the odd, well- timed ‘lye’, as he openly admitted to his family.

By the time he returned to Britain in 1757, the Scottish squire had become a gentleman of the world and London was his proverbial oyster. Adam made neo-Classicism his own, replacing the (occasionally stuck-up) rigour of the Palladians with an elegant, imaginative style that fished from the wide pool of Classical and Renaissance architecture and combined different elements with gusto. From putti to Corinthian leaves, no classical motif was left behind, although his signature trait was perhaps movement, often created with the generous recourse to apses and pilasters.

One of his earliest projects was the extension of Thistleworth (now Gordon) House in St Margarets, then in Middlesex and today in Greater London, for Lt-Gen Humphrey Bland and his wife, Elizabeth: he designed a new wing, complete with spectacular drawing room, much of which surprisingly survived the building’s decades as a school (now, it’s once again a private home and Adam’s original designs for it are preserved at the Sir John Soane’s Museum).

Much of the Adam practice’s work centred on remodelling—not least at Syon Park in Brentford; at Kenwood House in Hampstead; and perhaps most gloriously at Osterley Park, in Isleworth, which he shaped over the course of 18 years into what Horace Walpole would

call ‘the palace of palaces’, a triumph of soaring columns, delicate arabesques and maniacal attention to detail (Adam designed everything, down to the hangings of the state bed). But perhaps this tinkering with the designs of others was also a spur for Robert, who had by then been joined by his brothers James and William to launch new developments that he could truly call his own.

The deceptively understated houses in Marylebone’s Portland Place and Mansfield Street—where the graceful porticos and the delicate fanlights framing the entrance doors hint at the decorative splendour of the interiors —and Chandos House, where measured elegance belies a history of lavish excess as the Regency-era home of spendthrift Austrian ambassador and Hungarian prince Pál Antal Esterházy, are testament to the Adam brothers’

exceptional skill. However, their financial savvy didn’t quite match their visual flair. With their funds spread thinly across many schemes and expensive Chandos House taking years to find a buyer, the brothers found themselves facing ‘a very disagreeable pinch for money’ and, in 1785, had to sell some of their newly developed properties at a loss. It didn’t help that plans to build a grandiose mansion for the 3rd Duke of Portland never came to fruition (the Duke himself being in dire financial straits). But what had nearly tipped the practice over the edge was the Adelphi, an elegant terrace inspired by no less than Emperor Diocletian’s palace in Split, Croatia, in which aristocratic houses, often featuring ceilings frescoed by Adam’s Italian friend Antonio Zucchi, stood above ‘dark’ vaulted warehouses that would later beguile Charles Dickens.

Only the Royal Society of Arts in John Adam Street—a playful take on a Greek temple, all columns, friezes and pilasters— and a handful of other buildings remain of the original scheme. The rest was knocked down in 1936—including 4, Adelphi Terrace, home to the Temple of Health of master quack James Graham OWL (Oh Wonderful Love). There, he treated society’s rich and gullible with ‘aethereal balsams’, elixirs and even an ‘electrical throne’ that delivered mild shocks, before launching a ‘celestial bed’ where couples were sure to conceive ‘strong, healthful and most beautiful offspring’ for a mere 50 to 500 guineas a pop (about £7,500 to £76,000 in today’s money).

The buildings’ demolition was an inglorious, but fitting end to a scheme that had been ill-fated from the outset. The Adams’ plan for the Adelphi was bold: reclaim land flooded by the Thames at high tide and turn it into the definitive consecration of their success, down to the naming of the project (from the Greek for brothers) and of the streets it rose on, which were christened after various family members. Their execution was even bolder: as the Survey of London notes, the brothers began the works, in 1768, not only before securing Parliament’s permission to create the riverside banks (for which they faced bitter opposition from the City of London), but

The king of classical motifs, Robert Adam festooned late-18th-century London with exquisite plasterwork, fluted columns and fanciful pilasters, but, in his drive to succeed, he nearly lost it all, as Carla Passino discovers

Adam replaced the rigour of the Palladians with an elegant, imaginative style that fished from a wide pool

Gentleman of the world: architect Robert Adam

London Life Founding fathers

also before signing an agreement with the Duke of St Albans, who owned the land’s freehold. Alas, the Latin proverb that audaces fortuna iuvat didn’t prove true: a few years into the project, hit by the 1772 Scottish banking crisis, they ran out of money, with many buildings still left unfinished and unsold. It was a turn of events that had been foreseen by another Scottish luminary, David Hume, who, although expressing concern for the Adams, wrote to a common friend, the economist Adam Smith: ‘To me the scheme of the Adelphi always appeared so imprudent that my wonder is how they could have gone on so long.’

Financial redemption came in the form of a lottery, authorised by Parliament and held on March 3, 1774: a £50 ticket opened up the chance to win a range of prizes that included houses in the Adelphi development and on Mansfield Street—legend has it that the first ticket to be drawn had only been sold half an hour before the lottery was due to begin. Keen to restore their fortunes, the brothers also published The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, in which they spelled out the principles of their style: ‘If we

have any claim to approbation,’ they wrote, ‘we found it on this alone: That we flatter ourselves, we have been able to seize, with some degree of success, the beautiful spirit of antiquity, and to transfuse it, with novelty and variety, through all our numerous works.’

Unfortunately, neither their reputation nor their finances ever completely recovered. Walpole, a reliable thermometer of social popularity, turned from adoration to criticism, accusing Robert Adam of being ‘a notorious cheat’ because the lottery prizes were worth less than their estimated value. The Adelphi

At home in Robert Adam’s London

St John’s Wood, £12.5 million

Much like his 18th-century namesake, Winchester architect Robert Adam is lauded for his elegant, classical style. He designed 10 neo-Georgian townhouses in St John’s Wood, of which this is one. Spanning 6,115sq ft, it has five bedrooms and grand reception rooms. Savills (020–3043 3600; www.savills.co.uk)

Mayfair,

£8 million

Set in a Grade II-listed building designed by Robert Adam, this fourbedroom lateral flat has 2,700sq ft of beautifully finished interiors, featuring everything from bespoke kitchen and joinery to underfloor heating and Lutron lighting. Savills (020–3527 7415; www.savills.co.uk)

predictably went down in architectural history as a synonym for hubris and the Adam practice, by then run by William, eventually went bankrupt in 1817.

Nonetheless, when Robert died in 1792, The Gentleman’s Magazine wrote: ‘The many elegant buildings, public and private, erected in various parts of the kingdom by Mr. Adam will remain lasting monuments of his taste and genius.’ The one-time architect from the provinces had achieved the dream of his youth and ascended to the pantheon of Britain’s great and good.

Strand, £1.55 million

Situated in John Adam Street, on the site where 18th-century caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson once lived, this 1,100sq ft apartment has two bedrooms, a roomy living and dining area (with separate kitchen) and views of the London Eye. CBRE (020–7420 3050; www.cbreresidential.com)

The many elegant buildings will remain lasting monuments of his taste and genius

The ‘palace of palaces’: Adam’s Osterley House

Chandos House exudes a measured elegance

Alamy; Susannah Fields

The end of the line?

THE current opposition to plans to erect a cantilevered, 16-storey tower over the concourse of Liverpool Street Station is the latest in a series of stand-offs across the decades to protect the best of London’s railway architecture. At the time of writing, the scheme was opposed by eight conservation groups and Historic England. A public petition, See it, Say It, Save It!, had more than 11,000 signatures. A Victorian Society-led Liverpool Street Station Campaign (Athena, May 10), with Griff Rhys Jones installed as president, has revived memories of the 1970s battle at Liverpool Street, spearheaded by Sir John Betjeman, which eventually ended in a remodelling widely applauded for its sensitivity towards the historic fabric.

It’s worth remembering that the great London Victorian railway terminals so fiercely prized today must have seemed overwhelming monstrosities to locals in their time, their infrastructures carving through communities and causing the displacement of many inhabitants. Even so, it’s generally accepted that London has a proud legacy of railway buildings from that period, several of the terminals among the finest in the world. The oldest, London Bridge, the capital’s first rail terminal on opening in 1836, is not among them, although the Architects’ Journal described it as ‘the most curiously uplifting’ of London’s stations after a highly effective upgrading by Grimshaw Architects

in 2019 (winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize). Technically second in seniority, Euston (1837), is a heritage bypass. The demolition of Philip Hardwick’s Great Hall and Euston Arch (the station’s original neo-Classical entrance), together with the rest of the station’s front buildings between 1961–63, was a galvanising event for the built conservation movement. All that remains of the formal layout of the old station are the entrance lodges (Grade II listed).

However, London’s three Grade I-listed terminals—King’s Cross, Paddington and St Pancras International—are emotive survivors of the so-called Golden Age of Steam, each a distinctive landmark in Victorian railway architecture. Although Paddington opened in 1854, two years after King’s Cross, trains had been running from the site since 1838, from a temporary terminal built by the Great Western Railway (GWR) for its new line between the capital and Bristol. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, with help from Matthew Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones, designed the new station which, of all the large London terminals, seems the least changed. Its visual impact begins the moment you walk down the ramp from Praed Street, Brunel’s train-shed roof visible ahead. The layout is simple, the station combining

functionality with elegance; the decorative ironwork as depicted in William Powell Frith’s The Railway Station (1862) remains intact. Above all, Paddington still feels like a place of travel, as opposed to the retail experience offered elsewhere, when the trains, all but invisible until you pass beyond the ticket barrier, seem like afterthoughts.

Lewis Cubitt’s King’s Cross, built for the Great Northern Railway, also has a pleasing simplicity. The monumental frontage is entirely lacking in pomposity, the plain yellow brick walls fortress-like when glimpsed around the corner from the Gothic frippery of neighbouring St Pancras. The two round-arched openings echo the shape of the train-shed roofs behind them. There is little attempt to disguise the building as anything other than a train station, all the more appropriate for one that became associated with express travel to Scotland and northern England and the record-breaking exploits of Flying Scotsman and Mallard The fan-vaulted swirl of the roof to a new concourse by John McAslan is striking and much admired, if not strictly in character with the austerity of the exterior.

The trend of fronting railway stations with luxury hotels kicked off with Hardwick’s Great

There are shocking plans afoot to modernise Liverpool Street Station, but it’s not the first of London’s historic Victorian stations to come under attack, says Jack Watkins, as he takes a look at some of the ones saved and those that were less fortunate

Getty; Alamy

Western Hotel (now a Hilton) at Paddington, but the most spectacular example is George Gilbert Scott’s former Midland Hotel, now the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel (COUNTRY L IFE , May 4, 2011), originally built for the Midland Railway’s St Pancras station. Scott used materials from destinations served by the line, including red brick, granite and grey stone, in its construction. The restless skyline of towers, spires, chimney pots and gables is unequalled, but, for years, the façade was a depressing spectacle, grimy and unloved, even after demolition plans were beaten off in the 1960s. Only the switch of Eurostar services from London Waterloo to St Pancras in 2007 facilitated a triumphant rebirth. W. H. Barlow and R. M. Ordish’s train shed was, on completion in 1868 (a decade ahead of the hotel), the widest single-arc roof span (245ft) in the world. The only major misstep in St Pancras’s renewal is the placement of a 30ft statue, The Meeting Place, at the end of the platforms, one of the most spectacularly tacky, over-sized pieces of public art in London.

Of the other large London terminals, Liverpool Street (opened in 1874 and designed by Edward Wilson for the Great Eastern Railway),

is also worth a visit, if only to marvel at the architecture alone. The 1980s refit has worn well enough and, if you venture to the upper level of the concourse and slip down a passage to one side you will enjoy elevated views of the almost startlingly beautiful western trainshed roof (Grade II listed). Liverpool Street may no longer be ‘the most picturesque and interesting of the London termini’, as Betjeman once put it, but it is still one of the most enjoyable to walk around.

Of the rest, well, it’s difficult to get excited about Victoria, although Simon Jenkins in his essential Britain’s 100 Best Railway Stations reckons a closer study reveals a building ‘both eccentric and enjoyable’. Busy Waterloo has its Victory Arch and little

else. H. S. Goodhart-Rendel once dismissed Charing Cross’s hotel front as ‘a stripy pile of sandwiches’. Pevsner’s ‘Buildings of England’ series is very rude about our tiny friend from the Monopoly board: Fenchurch Street’s ‘clumsy big segmental pediment’ dominates its frontage. In fact, its curvature offsets the tediously square office blocks that have grown up around the first of the City stations.

There are two more that merit attention, although all that remains of one, old Cannon Street (1866), are the gargantuan side walls and two Grade II-listed towers that look out across the River Thames. If you walk down the bank’s steps, onto the shingle when the tide is low, the eastern one looms grimly above you like a medieval bell tower. Old Cannon Street was gutted in the 1970s and we have the Railway Heritage Trust to thank for the towers’ restoration.

Happily, Marylebone has survived intact, the last of the Victorian London mainline terminals to be built in 1899. Its red-brick and terracotta exterior is not particularly grand, despite a swish iron and glass porte-cochère linking it with the hotel opposite, but it oozes provincial, period charm. You can imagine Betjeman, who loved the station, sitting in his old mac and pork-pie hat in the bar, which retains its Victorian plasterwork. Marylebone, he wrote, was like ‘a public library from Nottingham which has unexpectedly found itself in London’. One of a series of boards on its history notes that ‘few London stations have survived with so little alteration to their façades’ as this gateway to the poet and conservationist’s beloved Metroland. Campaigners will be re-drawing on his inspirational love of old stations as they man the barricades once more for the less fortunate Liverpool Street.

Battle lines drawn: campaigners are fighting plans to modernise Liverpool Street Station

Gone, but not forgotten: the demolition of Euston Arch caused much consternation

London has a proud legacy of Victorian railway buildings, several among the finest in the world