Give the dog a throne

Devoted dog owners, past and present, have created a veritable barkitectural digest. Flora Watkins pays tribute to some of the most palatial pet houses in the land

- Flora Watkins

AS one of the smartest architects in Georgian England, James Wyatt was the natural choice for the 3rd Duke of Richmond when he wanted to build a new dwelling on his Goodwood estate in West Sussex. Wyatt, who had already remodelled and enlarged the main house, set to work on the new project in 1787. The fine, flint Palladian building with two long, low wings that sat so gracefully in its Classical landscape was notable not only for its elegance, but for an early form of central heating. Rooms were lined on one side with metal plates, heated from behind by large fires.

That the occupants of The Kennels were the Duke’s prized foxhounds—it would be another 100 years before Goodwood House itself had central heating installed—is one of those classic English country-house scenarios, where dogs and horses matter far more than the humans. (Historic England notes, rather sniffily, that Goodwood’s stables, designed by Sir William Chambers, are ‘more distinguished architecturally than the outside of the [main] house’.) As distinguished visitors shivered in their bedrooms, the Duke of Richmond’s hounds luxuriated in what must have been the finest quarters in the country.

Queen Victoria paid similar attention to her dogs’ creature comforts when the royal kennels were built at Windsor in 1840. An article from an 1894 issue of the children’s magazine St Nicholas explained that ‘the yards are paved with red and blue tiles and the compartments in which the little dogs sleep are warmed with hot water’. Outside, the Queen’s pugs, collies, dachshunds, Skye terriers, her toy Pomeranian ‘Gina’ and prize-winning Spitz ‘Marco’ (a total of 55) were allowed to ‘scamper to and fro over green lawns’. There were ‘umbrella-like affairs on these lawns’ where they could lie in the shade and pools of water where they could take a bath.