A Magnificent Puzzle

Crichel, Dorset , part I The Home of Mr and Mrs Richard Chilton, Jr

In the first of two articles, John Martin Robinson looks at the Georgian evolution of this extraordinary building, which has, wrapped within its 1770s exterior, a 1740s house.

CRICHEL in Dorset is an unusual and fascinatingly complex house, an onion with a central core wrapped round with later layers. John Newman described it in ‘The Buildings of england’ as an ‘archaeological puzzle’ and Avray Tipping found his analysis for COUNTRY LIFE in 1925 hampered by ‘a complete absence of documentation’. in recent years, the deposit of the estate archives in the Dorset record Office and John cornforth’s research into the Napier Sturt bank accounts at hoare’s have produced some of the missing building accounts.

As yet, however, there are no drawings for the 18th-century phases. William Burn’s Victorian designs for crichel are at the riBA Drawings collection, but there is still little documentary evidence for the substantial neo-Georgian works in the 20th century. As a consequence, much of the history of this remarkable building must be unpicked from the physical and visual evidence.

Crichel belonged to the Napier and Sturt families for 400 years, but, after the death in 2010 of the late Mary Anna Marten, only daughter of the 3rd and last lord Alington, the property was sold as she left six children and beneficiaries. The well-managed estate, which comprised 10,000 acres and 150 houses and cottages, was broken up and dispersed in 2012. Fortunately, the main house, with some of its contents, and 1,300 acres including the park and 30 cottages, have been acquired by an Anglophile American family, the chiltons, who have made it their english home and refurbished the interior, restoring several James Wyatt rooms, which can now be seen as the masterpieces they are.

Much of the rest of the estate has been bought by Lord Phillimore, son of the neo Georgian architect Claud Phillimore, so cultural disaster has been averted and this beautiful part of Dorset continues to be cherished and managed on traditional lines by sympathetic new owners.