FROM humble farmhouse to Victorian edifice, to elegant, Regency-style country house, the evolution of The Denbies House at Ranmore Common, near Dorking, reflects the changing fortunes of the rich and famous in Surrey, from the mid 18th century to the present day.
Named after John Denby, who farmed the land in the 16th century, the original farmhouse and its surrounding Surrey Hills estate were bought in the mid 1700s as a weekend retreat by Jonathan Tyers, the owner of London’s fashionable Vauxhall Gardens. Having converted some of the former farm buildings into a modest, two-storey house, Tyers went on to develop gardens at Denbies, the theme of which was death and damnation.
Following Tyers’s death in 1767, the estate was bought by Lord King of Ockham (Property Market, February 26), who had Tyers’s collection of macabre artefacts removed and the grounds greatly altered.
In 1787, Denbies was purchased by banker Joseph Denison, who spent part of a vast fortune—gained through ‘unabated industry and the most rigid frugality’—buying up estates. He died in 1806, leaving his property to his son, William, also a banker, who increased the acreage of the Denbies demesne to 3,900 acres and created extensive, well-designed gardens. He died a bachelor in 1849, leaving his fortune to his nephew, Albert, later Baron Londesborough, who sold the Denbies estate to master builder Thomas Cubitt in 1850.
Esta historia es de la edición March 18, 2020 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición March 18, 2020 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
