MOOR PARK.
A BENEFICENT INVASION. THE fate—both immediate and ultimate—of the • great English country houses has been fre- quently .canvassed in the Spectator with solicitude and some misgiving. It is heartening, however, to find that amongst the big houses of real architectural merit the mortality has thus far been small, for a house, even if unlived in, does not become a definite casualty until dilapidations or the housebreaker are allowed to make ,an end of it. The attributes of fine architecture and. good building are, in fact, proving to be- the best sort of life-insurance that an " outsize " country house can possess in these difficult times. Stowe was manifestly too noble a place to .perish (though it went near to it), and it has now found most honourable security as a Public School.
The fates of certain other houses, as precious archi- tecturally if not so historically exciting nor so vast, are still uncertain, but one at least amongst them—and that not the least—is now out of all danger of neglect, mishandling or demolition. That house is Moor Park, near Rickmansworth, and it has found salvation as a country club somewhat after the American model, but with certain novel developments that are all its own. To that architecturally minded public which reads Country Life and follows the activities of the Architecture Club, Moor 'Park is already well known as typifying the kind of baroque palace in which the rich Englishman of the early eighteenth century delighted to house himself. Formality, elaboration, display and ostentation daunted him not at all.; indeed, they were what he quite frankly sought for in his house and paid enormous sums to secure, while even mere vastness was prized as lending a reflected greatness to the sixty odd inches of humanity that it so grotesquely over-housed.
However unreasonable the Versailles standard may now seem to us for English lords and English merchants, even of the confident eighteenth-century sort, it is to these grand-mannered gentlemen and the artists they employed that we owe a large part of what is valiant and beautiful in architecture and in the fine and applied arts generally, by no means omitting the art of con- structing landscapes. Certainly at Moor Park the suc- cessive owners, who include an Archbishop, a Duke, a South Sea Bubble speculator, a noble Admiral, an Army contractor, an East India Company magnate and a Marquess, each left his mark upon the house or its setting—not always, perhaps, with wisdom. There has been much tearing down, removal, reshaping and addi- tional building and again destruction—as when at the end of the eighteenth century the sweeping colonnades designed by Robert Adam were light-heartedly removed. But on the whole the great house stands to-day very much as it left the hands of Sir James Thornhill and the Italian LeQni, to whom we must attribute the rich Palla- dian dress of Portland. stone that sits so becomingly. upon the sturdy brick frame of the earlier mansion that tradi- tion, somewhat wildly, ascribes to Sir Christopher Wren.
As a monument to the exuberant invention and skill of Thornhill and his Italian collaborator the great gal- leried hall at Moor is for ever precious ; as the lounge of a country club it is, as the committee .claim, " unique." It is also, at first encounter, a little staggering. We are accustomed to sports clubhouses designed in the prudent manner of Messrs. Boulton and Paul rather than in the more opulent fashion of Palladio. It is indeed, surprising how, converted to communal purposes, the whole great place suddenly looks reasonable and useful, active and aliveit has found, like Stowe, a fitting and congenial career that brings with it a new assurance and a new poise.
The proud, aloof, under-employed, handsome old house has. found a new job in a new world, and is no longer laughed at as .a useless and burdensome survival from a pompous past. Not only is the house itself secure because useful, but the surrounding park also has been consecrated by the laying-out of three golf courses which will stand for ever between the mansion and those parts of the estate set aside for building. According to advertisements, there are many paradises prepared. for golfers, but the most deserving will surely be found at Moor, where they may step happily forth from their own front doors almost straight on to one of the three park courses or that of Sandy Lodge adjoining. Only five per cent. of the three thousand acres will be covered by actual building even when the careful and farsighted development scheme of Messrs. Mawson, the garden architects, has been ultimately completed, so that the favoured residents are for ever secure of the amenities that now attract them. There will be none of that disastrous build-as-you-please " development " that has devastated so much of the twenty miles of once lovely country that lies between Moor and London—you must here build where you are told and your plans must be approved. That is the right way, the civilized way, and in the end the only profitable way, and less wisely regulated estates elsewhere are already in serious diffi- culties both practical and financial through working for quick returns without a properly considered programme.
From the standpoint of amenity nearly everything, of course, depends upon the competence and taste of the person who approves or rejects the plans, and it is really his capacity that we shall be judging when we applaud or condemn the Moor Park experiment say in two years' time.
The first buildings are of peculiar interest in them- selves, being blocks of flats designed by Messrs. Mawson for erection along the edge of No. 3 golf course. A country flat is sufficient of a novelty to warrant a little description. None of the blocks is more than three storeys high or contains more than six flats, whilst there are some of two storeys having one large flat on the first floor and two smaller ones below. The usual services are provided as well as central heating and perpetual hot water, and you buy your flat outright as you would a house, the only annual charge being for the said services, a share of the cost of garden upkeep and the like. Further, there is to be a servants' hostel and club where whole or part-time " dailies " may be hired, a central garage, estate buses to the estate station (" Whence London in 80 minutes "), and a general smoothing out of the rough way of the householder.
It has been said that if the Englishman's house is his castle it is often his wife's prison, and the company that is already removing the surprised turf of the old deer park to dig the foundations for their flats is certainly " doing something about it." But to whom is all this Utopian sounding project due ? Obviously there is someone very enterprising, very energetic and very rich behind it. Someone, too, who cares for beauty and has idealism as well as farsight. In fact, one is not at all surprised to find that it is Lord Leverhulme. It is almost incredible that the enterprise should not, inci- dentally, be a profitable one—it certainly deserves to be —but that should not diminish the gratitude of all those who will in the future have a share in the delights of Moor Park, or of those who above most things desire to see beautiful buildings and beautiful country preserved by being wisely used. On the same terms I would even see great individual riches preserved. " Exploitation of the people for the people " sounds indeed almost noble enough for a copybook or a Communist's slogan I Be that as it may, in Lord Leverhulme the hard-working golfer, the professional family man, and the moderately solvent generally have found their Lord Shaftesbury. If all the wage-earners could live in Port Sunlights and all the salary earners in Moor Parks ! No doubt it would be better for both if they lived together, but at present neither class would be so happy. Neither our civilization nor our manners arc yet up to the high standard that a one-class Utopia would demand.
Previous page
