Mentmore: A Step Too Far

How the 1977 ‘sale of the century’ of a magnificent home’s art treasures and contents helped to change how we view national heritage.

THESE days we are likely to find iconic architect-designed homes and offices built in the 1960s and 70s becoming Listed Buildings, but the truth is that era also saw some blithe destruction of properties many would now fight tooth and nail to save.

As the bulldozers moved in to clear sites, sometimes a couple of centuries of history were just crunched into the mud as new roads, snazzy homes and business parks rapidly replaced admittedly sometimes tumbledown Victorian and Georgian properties.

The New ruled, and quickly. Echoes of the Second World War were finally fading and a new middle class (including a finally better off ‘working class made good’) wanted better homes and leisure facilities to go with their lifestyles and Baby Boomer families.

When we finally said ‘goodbye’ to Downton Abbey on our TV screens, most agreed it was a good place to finish the series. Not just because the cast would have trouble ageing, but that next stop would have to be the miserable 1930s and the brilliant Dame Maggie Smith’s Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, would surely have had to pass on. Storylines were already heading in the direction of the demise of a world of masters and servants and the loss of grand country houses.

The gentry had been depleted in the First World War alongside the ranks and the first sales of valuable contents were already taking place by the 1920s. Among them was a sale of some 3,700 lots from Stowe, which saw stunning collections spread across a growing worldwide market.

By the 1960s and 70s the social order was having a new shake up. Welcome to the arrival of the throw-away world woven in with a minimal interest in heritage.