The apogee of English taste

In the second of two articles, Jeremy Musson looks at the restoration of an outstanding Regency house and its garden, both integrally conceived with a celebrated Repton landscape

- Jeremy Musson

Sheringham Hall, Norfolk, part II The home of Paul Doyle and Gergely Battha-Pajor

SHELTERED by Cromer Ridge on the north Norfolk coast, Sheringham Hall is the focal point of a beguiling landscaped park designed by Humphry Repton in 1812. As described last week, this was perhaps Repton’s most characteristic mature work and the one he called his ‘most favourite’ and his ‘darling child’. Since 1986, the park and woodland have been preserved by the National Trust, which works to maintain the famous vistas and walks of the estate. The house built for Abbot and Charlotte Upcher by Repton and completed by their son, Henry, remained in the family until it was bought by the Trust and, subsequently, has always been privately occupied.

In August 2008, Regency expert and architectural enthusiast Paul Doyle acquired a 99- year leasehold, with his husband, Gergely Battha-Pajor, and they have masterminded the restoration and care of the house and gardens ever since. Mr Doyle read History and History of Art at Trinity College, Cambridge —producing a dissertation on the architecture of John Nash, who worked with Repton —and regards the architecture of the Regency period as ‘the apogee of English taste’.

In concert with careers in the City, he and Mr Battha-Pajor have restored, refurbished and redecorated a number of properties in Europe, including one on Lake Lugano, another in Prague and two in Budapest. Mr Doyle also restored the 1790s Manor House at Bintree, Norfolk—built by Thomas Coke, of Holkham fame—and laid out the gardens with the help of the late Antony King-Deacon, who earned first-hand knowledge of Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst gardens when working for Sir Harold Nicolson.