A Georgian Renaissance

In the second of two articles, John Martin Robinson looks at the recent restoration of this magnificent Georgian house and its dazzling series of re-created 1770s interiors by James Wyatt.

- James Wyatt

Crichel is one of the finest Georgian houses in Dorset. As we discovered last week, its unusual, even unconventional, design is substantially the result of the input of its late-18th-century  owner Humphrey Sturt. In the past century, however, it has undergone three ambitious phases of neo-Georgian remodelling by his descendants, as well as a recent exemplary restoration by Richard Chilton. These last changes have preserved the integrity of the many-layered history of the house and also re-created a spectacular series of 1770s interiors by James Wyatt.

The 1st lord Alington died in 1904 and was succeeded by his son, Humphrey. With his wife, Feodorowna, a daughter of the 5th earl of Hardwicke (‘champagne Charlie’), he embarked on ambitious improvements to Crichel in 1905, notably the laying out of a very elaborate Italian garden on the south front (removed after the Second World War). It was designed by Harold Peto, who had been in partnership with Sir Ernest George before he focused on garden design after recuperating in Italy from an illness.

There is no evidence for the architect of the interiors at Crichel of about 1908–14, but they could also have been by Peto as he designed many houses in Chelsea and was responsible for the Georgian interiors of the Cunard liner Mauretania (1906), with panelling by H. H. Martyn of Cheltenham.

This ‘Georgianising’ at Crichel involved the complete remodelling of Burns’s entrance hall, billiard room and family dining room in a remarkably convincing Georgian manner. It also included the formation of the long Drawing room from two pre-existing smaller spaces and the addition of pilasters to the Wyatt Drawing room.