F E AT U R E
An Inspirational Location Childwick Bury Manor is a manor in Hertfordshire, England, between St Albans and Harpenden
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revious owners were the Lomax family who bought the house in 1666 and who lived there until 1854 when Joshua Lomax sold it to Henry Hayman Toulmin, a wealthy ship owner and High Sheriff of Hertfordshire and mayor of St Albans. Toulmin left the property to Sir John Blundell Maple around 20 years later. Toulmin’s granddaughter, the author Mary Carbery, was born at the house. Sir John Blundell Maple bred and raced Thoroughbreds and built Childwick Bury Stud into a very successful horse breeding operation. Another prominent racehorse owner, Jack B. Joel, bought the estate including the stud farm farm in 1906. On his death in 1940, his son Jim Joel took over the operation. He too became a successful racehorse owner and breeder and maintained the property until 1978 when the stud and the manor were sold separately. It was advertised thus... “The Manor House, mainly 18th century has 12 Reception Rooms, 18 Bed and Dressing Rooms, 11 Staff Bedrooms, and 10 Bathrooms. Immaculate Timbered Grounds. Walled Garden. Courtyard with Garaging and Flat. Estate Office. Victorian Dairy House with about 19 Acres. Two Coach House Cottages with Magnificent Stable Yard with Paddock and Woodland 16 Acres [65,000 m2]. Cheapside and Shafford Farms, 2 Well Equipped Corn and Stock Farms with about 724 Acres. 146 Acres of Timbered Parkland, 37 Acres of Railed Paddock and 104 Acres of valuable Commercial Timber”. In addition there were “18 Attractive Houses and Cottages, some with Paddocks. Old Mill and other Buildings for conversion, Stud Buildings, 30 Loose Boxes, Potential Riding School, and fishing in River Ver and Mill Race. Total 1,100 Acres” Film director Stanley Kubrick 6 J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3
bought the manor in 1978. He used the estate as both a home and a nerve centre for his film productions. He lived there until his death in 1999 and is interred on its grounds. His widow, Christiane Kubrick, still lives in the manor house. Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American director, writer, producer, and photographer of films, who lived in the manor during most of the last 20 years of his career. Kubrick was noted for the scrupulous care with which he chose his subjects, his slow method of working, the variety of genres he worked in, his technical perfectionism and his reclusiveness about his films and personal life. He worked far beyond the confines of the Hollywood system, maintaining almost complete artistic control and making movies according to the whims and time constraints of no one but himself, but with the rare advantage of big-studio financial support for all his endeavours. Nominated several times for Oscars for both writing and directing, his only personal win was for the special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey, though his films have won many Oscars and other awards in other departments. Well known Kubrick films include Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss, The Killing, Paths of Glory, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick is widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished, innovative and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He directed a number of highly acclaimed and often controversial films that have often been perceived as a reflection of his obsessive and perfectionist nature. His films are characterized by a formal visual style and meticulous attention to detail – often combining elements of surrealism and expressionism with an ironic pessimism, while also being among the “most original, provocative, and visionary motion pictures ever made”.