Devon failure
John Martin Robinson
Until a week ago, the majority of the historic contents of the superb Regency cottage ome at Endsleigh in Devon remained intact. Now they have been sold. This is all the more depressing as only eight years ago they were lent to a charitable trust to preserve them, at least for the foreseeable future.
Endsleigh Cottage, one of the key manifestations of the English Picturesque, was created between 1810 and 1814 by the 6th Duke of Bedford in a ravishing position overlooking the Tamar valley. The duke's architect was Sir Jeffry Wyatville, of Windsor Castle fame, and his landscape gardener was Humphry Repton, The result is the finest cottage °rile' and Picturesque landscape in Britain; an ensemble of international importance.
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Endsleigh remained a much-loved holiday retreat of the Bedfords, and as a result was preserved intact as an unchanging world of happy memories. Following the death of the 12th duke in 1953, and consequent death duties, the family let the house to a fishing club, which ran it as a little hotel and finally bought it, complete with contents, in 1962. The club has looked after Endsleigh well and, apart from modernising the kitchens and bedrooms, kept the main rooms just as they were, with graining, stencilling, heraldic glass, Regency oak furniture, little classical statues over the library bookcases and even Wyatville's framed watercolour elevation still hanging on the wall.
The club, however, had only about 40 members and by the 1980s found the upkeep of the Repton landscape beyond it. A compromise was reached whereby two of the chief garden buildings, the Swiss Cottage and Wyatville's dairy, were taken over and restored by the Landmark Trust; a charitable trust was also set up in 1989 responsible for 'the maintenance of the mansion house buildings, gardens and grounds'. A condition of the latter was that the landscape was open to the public four days a week in summer.
In 1996, the Endsleigh Charitable Trust received a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of £1.25 million, and the historic furniture in the principal rooms was lent to the charitable trust by the fishing club in order to preserve this vital ingredient of the tout ensemble. This was done specifically at the request of the HLF, whose then advisers realised that the magic of Endsleigh was its totality: the untouched architecture, furniture and landscape, and the planned rela
tion between them. The removal of any element would diminish the whole.
In retrospect, the HLF grant was an error. The fishing club now regrets it ever got involved. The HLF has been inflexibly bureaucratic. The money was extravagantly spent, not necessarily on essential things (such as marble table tops). Visitors have proved a liability, as only 3,000 a year came — not enough to pay for the extra gardeners needed for the HLF-restored rockeries and parterres. The upshot is that the club has sold the house, the charitable trust has closed and the 'heritage furniture' has been auctioned. The HLF has done nothing to prevent this debacle.
The Endsleigh trustees must also bear some responsibility, and their failure to cooperate with or seek advice from local museums, statutory heritage bodies, the national amenity societies or even the local planning authority seems very strange. (Plymouth Museum, which has a strong interest in Devon-made furniture, was not even sent a copy of the sale catalogue.) The seven trustees were fly-fishermen and money-men, such as the chairman Sir Richard Lloyd (late of Hill Samuel) or the more influential Sir David Scholey (late of Warburgs), who used to take the shooting in the winter, fill the house with flowers and bring his own domestic staff from London for the weekend; but there was nobody on the board with any real architectural knowledge or heritage expertise.
The HLF itself, originally an informed and committed body with people of the calibre of Dame Jennifer Jenkins as trustees, is now just another face of the New Labour Establishment, staffed with apparatchiks and paid bureaucrats. Its website sings of the glories of 'inclusiveness', 'outreach', `sustainability' and 'alternative communities'. Obviously, with such important objectives, a mere Grade I Georgian house, in a Grade I Repton landscape, surrounded by a constellation of six lesser Grade I buildings, is an irrelevance, and so the HLF has concentrated on clawing back its million pounds and left the original object to fend for itself.
The official line of the HLF 'Chair', Liz Forgan, is that there was not enough time to 'put a rescue package together' to save the Endsleigh contents. But the HLF has known for over a year that the club wanted to sell. It could have acquired the contents in part payment of the grant. They were valued by Hotspur Ltd at 1397,350, by Christie's at £500,000 and sold on the day for £638,651. The National Trust considered acquisition in May 2003, believing it to be a 'fantastic property' in a 'stunning' location with 'magical' gardens and 'rewarding, rare and virtually unchanged interiors', but, so soon after Tyntesfield, could not raise the money for an openmarket purchase. The Landmark Trust came to the same conclusion.
In the event, the house and grounds have been bought by Olga Polizzi as a small hotel. She was offered the contents at the Christie's valuation, but with no professional guidance as to which were of greatest importance. She could not afford the whole lot and chose some of the smaller items. The decision as to which items were part of the historic building and which should be auctioned seems to have been made by Savills, the house agents. English Heritage, the responsible statutory body, failed even to get involved — too busy reorganising itself again.
In the event, it was left to Save and the Georgian Group to salvage something. The Bedford family also bought some furniture. The Georgian Group bid at the auction and acquired Wyatville's dining-room chairs and other pieces as a holding operation, with the intention of lending them back to Endsleigh. The Georgian Group has an annual budget of £300,000 and a staff of eight. The HLF has an annual budget of £300 million and an administrative staff of 199. It is a story of David and Goliath.
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