From des res to rubble

Hugh Massingberd

ENGLAND'S LOST HOUSES: FROM THE ARCHIVES OF COUNTRY LIFE by Giles Worsley Aurum Press, £35, pp. 192, ISBN 1854108204

S oon after I started writing about country houses and their owners in the 1960s, I was fortunate enough to run into Peter Reid, one of the unsung heroes of conservation. Nobody, in my experience, knows more about country houses and, equally important, the families who have lived in them than the remarkable Mr Reid. It was his exhaustive researches in family albums and the like that laid the foundations for the memorable exhibition at the V&A, 'The Destruction of the Country house', in 1974, which effectively triggered the Heritage movement as we know it today. How fitting therefore is Giles Worsley's tribute to Peter Reid's 'pioneering work' in the acknowledgments of this handsome survey of some 100 English houses that were captured on camera by Country Life's masterly photographers before disappearing in the course of the 20th century.

As Worsley says, John Harris's 'gravelly voice' mournfully reciting the toll of lost houses at the V&A, amid grisly sound effects of the housebreaker's trade, still echoes in our ears nearly 30 years on. Yet now that copies of the catalogue of that haunting show are hard to come by, this fresh examination of the subject is thoroughly worthwhile. Like a true scholar, Worsley eschews the traditional clichés and the emotional polemics so beloved of the 'Wrong but Wromantic' School of countryhouse chroniclers (mett culpa, I fear) and puts everything in its historical context. As he points out, there is nothing new about country houses being demolished. Indeed, he writes:

It could he argued that the most dramatic change to the country house in the 20th century was not the loss of political significance, nor even the scale of demolitions, hut the introduction of the state planning controls which makes it almost impossible to demolish or significantly alter a country house ...

In the early 20th century there was nothing to stop owners doing what they liked. When, during the furore over the demolition of Trentham in Staffordshire in 1911 by the Duke of Sutherland (who, having six other seats, found this particular pile surplus to requirements), it was suggested that some sort of 'control' might be introduced, the Duke of Rutland was outraged:

A massive piece of impudence Fancy my not being allowed to make a necessary alteration to Haddon without first obtaining the leave of some inspector!

(I must confess to a sneaking sympathy with His Grace's attitude.)

Such ruthless rationalisation by great landowners was a significant factor in the demolition rate, along with increasing industrialisation and the encroaching spread of towns. By the 1930s, falling rents, rising taxes and a collapsing stock market were squeezing hard. Then came that great climacteric for the country house, the second world war, which saw many places requisitioned and accordingly wrecked beyond repair. And in the 1950s the floodgates opened: at least 48 houses, nearly one a week, were demolished in 1955 alone. At last, in 1968, the Town and Country Planning Act forced owners to seek permission to demolish houses.

Fire, however, remains a terrible risk and it is instructive to be reminded of what a scourge it has been for the country house. Conflagrations accounted for such gems as Uffington in Lincolnshire, Oulton in Cheshire, Stoke Edith in Herefordshire and my own favourite, Cole shill on the Berkshire/Wiltshire borders, the masterpiece of Sir Roger Pratt. As Worsley says:

Nowhere else was it possible to get such an effective sense of the rich decorative style that Hie.° Jones had introduced to the Stuart Court.

On gazing at the marvellous photographs ('I gaze and gaze and gaze', as the Cole Porter lyric goes), one of them previously unpublished, of these outstanding interiors that were destroyed 50 years ago this September, I don't mind admitting that I felt overcome with emotion.

Worsley's commentaries, though, remain admirably cool and objective as he explains the reasons why the individual houses were demolished. Of Marks Hall in Essex, for example, he notes that the story appears to be one of

the original owners running out of cash and their successors lacking the resolution to maintain what was not a very large house — though wartime damage also played its part.

The fascinating case studies are frequently illuminated by the author's acute eye for amusing detail. Twenty-eight hells atop a 183-feet clock tower would play 'Home, Sweet Home' whenever the Duke of Westminster returned to Eaton. At Rolls Park, in Essex, a Country Life scribe unwisely swallowed everything that he was told by an eight-year-old guide; a subsequent letter in the magazine 'made clear that virtually every fact he stated was inaccurate'. Changing fashions are nicely indicated. Thus a 1907 description of the Painted Dining Room at Drake"owe, Derbyshire, as being in 'the depraved taste of the late 18th century' had become by 1932 'the high watermark of the cult of the picturesque'.

The gazetteer at the end of the book comprises a useful check-list of English country houses demolished or severely reduced in the 20th century. To Peter Reid's original list of some 700 houses in 'The Destruction of the Country House' catalogue have been added another 500, though Worsley reckons that a further 500 might well be added to that — making an aggregate figure of some 1,700, perhaps a sixth of the overall total of country houses. As he invites corrections and amendments to this 'working document', I would query his inclusion of Westacre High House in Norfolk, which was certainly standing a few years ago when I interviewed the present squire for The Field. Furthermore, Apley Park in Shropshire, which is used to illustrate the demolished Apley Castle, is also still there; and Dangstein, Lady Dorothy Nevi11's exotic grove, should be listed under Sussex not Hampshire.

An exhibition accompanying this book, featuring photographs from Country Life's picture libraty, is on show at Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2, Tuesdays to Saturdays until 21 September (admission free).