My week with the Winterthur Museum Tour, Country Life Fair Ball and Curt di Camillo's grand Georgian Dinner at The Georgian Group

The other week I think I really over did it - driving to London from Derbyshire and then back and forth from the West Country twice, visiting Castle Hill, Melbury House, St Giles House, Lytes Cary, Cranborne Manor, Longford Castle, Shaftesbury and Great Fosters, singing at The Country Life Fair Ball with New Georgian Opera on the Wednesday and then taking a tour of fourteen Americans around the amazing 68 Dean Street and putting on a banquet for them at 6 Fitzroy Square, AKA The Georgian Group. No one ever said the self-employed life was dull! The funny thing about really great architecture and fascinating people is you forget you're tired and feel on a constant high...so it was a very nice week! I was also accepted on to the Masters course I'd applied for in History of Architecture at Cambridge, so a funny and really rather wonderful week it was!

Here are some of the highlights of this magical mystery tour of the south west.

Castle Hill in approach is the West Country's Chatsworth. Follies, immaculate parkland and woods alert one to the fact that this is a noble demesne and all there is to remind one that they have not been inadvertently transported to heaven is a single bellowing factory chimney on the horizon. This is a little piece of paradise for sure.

Nell Arran was the perfect hostess and welcomed the group to her home with utmost interest and encouragement. The extraordinary thing about this house is that it was nothing more than a roofless shell only eighty years ago. A great fire consumed the house, which Nell's Grandparents, Lord and Lady Fortescue, decided to rebuild in brilliantly sensitive way.

One of the temples is, on closer inspection, wonderfully barn-like...Inigo Jones would approve!

Tom Savage, the brilliant leader of the group, was absent so we made do with a cardboard version...with my dinner jacket

From Castlehill our next stop was Melbury House. On the way I stopped at a house which belonged to ancestors of mine in the dim and distant past, Lytes Cary. Grace Lyte had married my ancestor Barnabas Leigh. I am descended from their son, Barnaby (died 1626)and their elder son, Sir John, is remembered on the wall of the chapel. I said a little prayer in the Chapel for my Cambridge bid.

                                                The garden at Lytes Cary

Lytes Cary is a marvellous example of a late Mediaeval manor house.

The Chapel at Lytes Cary

The Leigh arms in the Chapel

                           Melbury House

Melbury has been the seat of the Strangways family since 1500. Sir Giles built the core of the present house in the 1540's, including the astonishing crossing-tower-like hexagonal tower.

In the late Seventeenth century Melbury was given its three wonderful facades, which are palatial but hint at provincial Baroque, so are charming and welcoming despite their scale. 

The house goes all Oxbridge collegiate on us to the rear with a gargantuan wing with a great hall and an enormous tower. This is a giant of a house!

Mrs Townshend showed us around the great house and even managed to get the whole party to climb the tower to take in some breathtaking views across the park.

The church nestling beneath the bulk of the sprawling mansion is well worth a look - it is a curious mix of real and faux Mediaeval and has the air of a M R James story.

A recumbent knight at Melbury Church

From Melbury I dashed back to London, donned my Grandfather's 1953 Huntsman smoking jacket and headed for the Natural History Museum to meet best friend soprano Meeta Raval. We were there to sing at the Country Life Fair Ball.

We belted out Parry's 'Jerusalem' to around two thousand revellers - luckily the light on stage was so blinding that we couldn't see the size of the audience 

We partied the night away and then it was bed and up and off early back to Dorset and to St Giles House

Built in 1651 St Giles looks like the epitome of stately and unspoiled, nestling at the centre of a huge park. First impressions are very deceptive - this house had been Victorianised to within an inch of its life, complete with hideous giant mansard roofs, and until recently it was wallowing in stately decay. Nicholas, the present Earl of Shaftesbury and his wife, Dinah, have taken on the brave and enormous challenge of getting the house back in to shape and making it a home. This sort of heroism is to be greatly supported.

                    The poor old house, Victorianised to within an inch of its life

                             The house today

The Shaftesburys have restored all of the state rooms, including the magnificent Dining Room, which has been left in a semi-derelict state, which I am sure will ever remind the subsequent inhabitants of the plight of country house stewardship.

New stonework on the porch 

New brickwork meets the old

In the grounds is a large Georgian grotto, which took my breath away. Inside it is a veritable sea palace with thousands of shells and rocks decorating every inch of ceiling and wall.

After a little sing song by me in the hall and a delicious lunch we were off to Cranborne Manor, setting for one of my favourite old films,  Tony Richardson's 1963 version of Fielding's 'Tom Jones'.

 Cranborne was originally a grand late Mediaeval hunting lodge, which was given its present miniature 'Prodigy House' treatment in the early Seventeenth Century.

The two facades are as organically marvellous as each other - both have grown over the centuries and their odd asymmetry serves to only make them more picturesque.

Cranborne is in one of these wonderfully forgotten and peaceful corners of England where the birds sing and the lapse of time seems irrelevant.


In the evening I gave a talk on what historic houses mean to younger people today, which I hope the guests enjoyed. 

Our final stop on this energetic architectural tour was Longford Castle, seat of the Earls of Radnor. This place is so secret that I got lost several times within only two miles of the house. When one does actually get close to it the house pops out like Chambord across a majestic park - Anthony Salvin did this to the house, which is in no way regrettable. The original triangular house of 1591 is still at the centre of the present structure, representing the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. The Huguenot merchant family of Bouverie (now Earls of Radnor) purchased Longford in 1717. 

The house is home to certainly the finest set of early Georgian furniture I have ever seen, amongst other treasures. There is The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II's chiseled iron chair in one of the state rooms which Hitler had wanted to buy and, probably, intended as his coronation chair - Lord Radnor would not sell.

Longford is a wonderful secret and we all felt very lucky to see it.

After a very comfy night at Great Fosters it was back to London to take Curt di Camillo's group around 68 Dean Street and host a Georgian banquet at 6 Fitzroy Square, AKA The Georgian Group.

A fine finish to a fantastic week!

For information on Castlehill please go to; http://www.castlehilldevon.co.uk/about-us

For Lytes Cary; http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lytes-cary-manor/

St Giles house; http://www.shaftesburyestates.com/stgileshouse.php

Cranborne Manor; http://www.cranborne.co.uk

and

Longford Castle; http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/longford-castle-july

All the images and work in this blog are copyright to Oliver Gerrish, please ask before using, thank you.