The Grange Book- Sample Pages

HAmPsHiRE

1660 — 1786

Mr Henley’s delicate mansion The Grange’s modern history begins in 1662 when the 650 acres of undulating parkland which comprised the Northington and Swarraton estates were bought by a young lawyer Robert Henley, one of many men of means whose fortunes had been transformed by the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

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enley’s purchase reflected the changed temper of the times. After five decades of political uncertainty and a debilitating civil war, it was a time to reorientate and reassess. Andrew Marvell wittily distilled the mood, couched in the garden of Nunappleton House, home of Lord Fairfax, the Commonwealth’s most enlightened warrior: How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, the bays, And their uncessant labours see Crowned from some single herb or tree.

For men like Henley the 1660s were a time to put down roots and practise the arts of peace. It was also a time in which to build, and build in new ways. The old medieval order was gone. A new breed of educated and travelled patrons required dwellings that were airy, elegant and above all rational in their design and orientation.

Nor did their interests end at the front door. Gardens needed to be designed, landscapes managed. For the architectural profession and its legion of artisans a golden age was about to unfold.

PREVIOUS PAGE: Left: John Norden's 1607 map of Hampshire showing "Graung" Right: Miniature portrait by Samuel Cooper 1659, thought to depict Sir Robert Henley (c1624-1692) Victoria & Albert Museum, London RIGHT: Robert Henley (1708-1772), first Earl of Northington c1760 National Portrait Gallery, London

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LEFT: Dining room 1871 RIGHT: Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) c1825 by Alfred Edward Chalon BELOW: The inner sanctum at Bassae was Cockerell’s principal inspiration for the new dining room at The Grange

the size of the house and given the building a better overall proportion. Baring thought it over-ambitious and unnecessarily expensive. Cockerell’s more ‘affordable’ plan was to create an elegant new dining room with a servants’ hall beneath, at the west end of the building north of Smirke’s new wing, and to extend Smirke’s west wing at right angles southwards. This further extension would create a private sitting room for Ann Baring – ‘the beautifulest room you can imagine’, as Jane Carlyle later described it – which would connect directly to an elegant new conservatory, ‘a place of perpetual spring’.

XXX The dining room which Cockerell now set about designing was the fruit of the seven years he spent abroad after the completion his apprenticeship with Smirke in 1810. The European war had made travel difficult in France and Italy but Athens and Constantinople were more accessible. In Athens Cockerell joined an international set of young archaeologists, artists and poets. On a visit to the island of Aegina, where Lord

Byron was one of the party, the group discovered a limestone-faced temple with cream stucco work.

What was revelatory about the temple was evidence of elaborate polychromatic decoration, something which Johann Joachim Winckelmann, author of the sacred text on classicism in art, had always discounted.

An even greater discovery for Cockerell was the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae which Ictinus, architect of the Parthenon, had created in 420-400 BC. It was a revelation, not least because it broke so many hitherto accepted rules of classical architecture. The temple’s greatest prize was the 102-foot long high-relief marble frieze which decorated its cella, or inner sanctum.

The frieze was removed by Cockerell and the German archaeologist Haller von Hallerstein and later bought at auction by the British Museum which subsequently created a special room for it (the modern Room 16).

Before parting with the frieze, Cockerell had plaster casts made. The use he made of these can be seen in places as different as the Travellers’ Club in London, of which Cockerell was a founder member, and in his own great museum project, the Ashmolean in Oxford.

A new power in the land

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RIGHT: Robert Adam drawing 1764 for "New Designed Offices" at The Grange Trustees of Sir John Soane Museum, London

Henley died in 1772. As a young man in chambers he had been addicted to port. Whether this was a factor or not, he suffered greatly from gout, a condition that did nothing to soften a difficult temper. (As he once grumpily remarked, ‘If only I had known that these legs were one day to carry a Lord Chancellor, I’d have taken better care of them when I was a lad’).

His son Robert, the second Earl of Northington, shared his father’s gracelessness and also suffered from ill health. An ally of Charles James Fox, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1783, three other men, including the Duke of Devonshire, having already refused the position. It was an ill-fated assignment which lasted just eight months. A brief residence in Italy did nothing to improve Northington’s health. He died in Paris in 1788 whilst journeying back to England. There being no male heir, his sisters sold The Grange and what was by now its 3,000-acre estate to the Drummond family, the principal banking dynasty of the age. It would prove to be a fateful sale.

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Mr Henley’s delicate mansion

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RIGHT: George, Prince of Wales, 1792 by Richard Cosway (1742-1821). Watercolour on ivory, mounted in a fine gold locket with a 'true-love' lock of plaited hair on the reverse suggesting that it was intended as a love-token for either Mrs Fitzherbert or Mrs Crouch, the Prince's lovers at the time. National Portrait Gallery, London.

The Prince of Wales’ relationship with The Grange was a somewhat on-off affair. In the spring of 1796 he called in Henry Holland, the architect of the prince’s lavish makeover of his London residence Carlton House and of the fledgling Brighton Pavilion, to assess the state of the place. Holland recommended repairing the roof leading, renewing the sash windows, repainting the exterior wood and ironwork, and carrying out minor renovations in the park. Yet no sooner was the work done than the prince attempted to rid himself of the place. After the Duke of St Albans declined to take it in 1797, The Grange was sub-let to Lord Lonsdale whose sister the Duchess of Bolton briefly took up residence.

In 1799 the prince returned and embarked on a fresh spending spree. New papers by Robson and Hull were hung in the principal rooms, carpets arrived from Kent & Luck, Morells were paid £500 for reupholstery. Bespoke statuary arrived by the cartload for the gallery, dining room and staircase, along with ‘two vase lamps with two burners each and shades, japanned and richly ornamented’ which later ended up in the Royal Pavilion.

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The partying in 1799-1800 was on a grand scale.

A larger than usual staff was retained and wine bill arrears topped £700. Yet by the autumn of 1800 the prince had grown tired of the place and left, taking all the recently imported furnishings with him. The harem of sisters he had kept at The Grange also left. A Mrs Papendiek later recalled, ‘The brother of the females was raised from groom to head of the stud stables and at his death buried with honours of the royal liveries and his sisters afterwards taken into the queen’s household as assistant dressers’.

The most important legacy of the prince’s brief involvement with The Grange comes in the form of the detailed inventory that was drawn up for the implementation of the lease in October 1795.

It survives in the Royal Archive at Windsor and has been meticulously transcribed by the distinguished architectural historian Jane Geddes. As a record of the layouts and contents of Samwell’s house and of the Grange estate itself, it makes fascinating reading.

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LEFT: Alexander Hugh, fourth Lord Ashburton, detested extravagence and was horrified by his sister's use of a barouche with four horses and postilions.

This is an equally stylish traveller at The Grange c1860, possibly his father's sister Louisa of whom he said "she thought the wolf was at the door if she had less than ÂŁ16,000 in her current account"

A baron and two conspicuous women

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LEFT: Venetia Baring (1890-1937) by Bassano, 4 February 1925 Venetia was "in waiting" at Windsor. She writes in 1916 "The King, the three children and the second Belgian boy went haymaking with me in sole charge. We did quite a good afternoon's work and "turned" a large piece of the field!‌. I had the King at dinner last night, he was very easy to keep going and in better spirits than when I first came".

In 1930 she wrote "Deafness and Happiness", an overview of her suffering with guidance to others ABOVE: Alexander and Doris Baring with their son, John, who would become seventh Lord Ashburton

Sailing towards the sunset

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ABOVE: Game books This page, bottom left, January 1889. Alexander, fourth Lord Ashburton, was on his new yacht, Miranda. Frank, his eldest son, had Viscount Hood join the party.

He would marry Hood's daughter, Mabel, a few months later.

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LEFT: Charles Wallach shooting at The Grange c1952 ABOVE: Charles Wallach at The Grange c1952

completed his fourth round-the-world trip, a journey he undertook in part to experience high-speed flight on the new Comet jet aircraft. He continued to host modest shooting parties at The Grange, regaling local friends and celebrity acquaintances with risqué stories at the luncheon table. Otherwise the house itself – ‘this marvellous place’ as he called it – was little used. Wallach would like to have turned it into a centre for the treatment of polio but he knew that its interiors were too vast for it to be successfully converted into a hospital, nursing home or rehabilitation centre. In 1952 he hosted a party for 150 victims of the disease at The Grange. ‘It was the most enjoyable day I have ever had’ he said afterwards.

Though The Grange and its estate needed more attention than the ageing Wallach could possibly give it, he refused to contemplate its sale. When John Baring, the future Lord Ashburton, enquired about the possibility of buying it back, he was roundly snubbed. ‘You’re far too young to own the finest country house in England outside Windsor Castle’ was the octogenarian’s curious reply.

After Wallach’s death in August 1964, the estate was again put up for sale. The notice which appeared in

Country Life was somewhat more muted than the one that had appeared 31 years previously. The mansion was billed as ‘unoccupied in recent years’. The former Bachelors’ Wing, where Wallach had lived with his two housekeepers, appeared less generously appointed than the average four-bedroom house. The principal lure was the 664-acre estate with its 300 acres of arable land and its ‘splendid shooting and fishing’ though, curiously, it was the house itself, a brooding presence seen from across the lake, which the agents chose to illustrate.

Did they really think anyone would want to buy it?

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The Wallach Years

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RIGHT: Staircase 1979 BELOW: Staircase 1871

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Saving a lost cause

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ABOVE: 17th century plasterwork of the gallery 1963 RIGHT: The Napoleonic fireplace in the drawing room 1963

excited by the prospect of going through the process for a second time.

Demolition did eventually begin in the summer of 1972 in the wake of a sale of significant fixtures and fittings. Fireplaces, marble cladding, a doorcase associated with Cockerell’s dining room and, most importantly, the timberwork of the great staircase had been bought, the latter by the specialist conservationist firm Donald Insall Associates.

One of Donald Insall’s colleagues was the Dublinbased conservation architect John Redmill. He first visited The Grange one afternoon in April 1971. What he experienced was a mixture of Cockerell-like wonder at the building and its location, mingled with despair at the sight of the place ‘languishing and utterly abandoned’.

He decided that something must be done ‘despite finding out that everyone including all the conversation societies and experts had totally washed their hands of it’.

This latter point was a little harsh. The ruling by the Historic Buildings Council had not been taken lightly.

Nor was it the opinion of everyone within important lobby groups such as the Victorian Society that The

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Grange merited preservation. A notable dissenter was the architect and architectural historian John BrandonJones, Vice-President of the society, whose masterpiece, the offices of Hampshire County Council (1959), was only a few miles away in Winchester.

The first of The Grange buildings to be removed in August 1972 were, historically and aesthetically, the least important: Smirke’s 1820s west wing and Cox’s 1869-71 bachelors’ wing beyond the old conservatory. What remained, standing in proud juxtaposition to one another, were Wilkins’s temple and Cockerell’s gentler echo of it.

XXX The temple would have gone too had it not been for a remarkable turn of events in the first ten days of September 1972. On 9 September an exhibition opened in London entitled The Age of Neo-Classicism. Staged jointly by the Royal Academy and the Victoria & Albert Museum, the exhibition was sponsored by the Council of Europe as part of the Heath government’s preparations for Britain’s entry into the EEC. The Grange featured in the

New wine in an old bottle

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GRANGE PARK OPERA