WHEN John Dennys’s designs for the 5th Duke of Westminster’s new Eaton Hall were published in 1970, the Duke of Bedford wrote to the editor of the Architectural Association’s AA Notes to say that ‘one of the virtues of the Grosvenor family is that they frequently demolish their stately home. I trust future generations will continue this tradition’.
Dennys’s startling Modernist creation sent shockwaves through the conservative world of country-house connoisseurship.
The previous Eaton Hall, a magnificent Gothic monster designed for the 1st Duke by Alfred Waterhouse in the 1870s, was described by an awestruck Nikolaus Pevsner as a ‘Wagnerian palace [and] the most ambitious instance of Gothic Revival domestic architecture anywhere in the country’. But it had been demolished in 1961. Now, a new Eaton Hall rose like an angular white phoenix in rural Cheshire, gleaming white and flat-roofed.
The Duke of Bedford’s wish soon came true. Only 15 years after it was completed, the 6th Duke of Westminster announced that he had decided to take ‘a long hard look at the design of the house in order to achieve greater harmony with its surroundings’. With rather more directness, an estate spokesman said simply: ‘The building is an eyesore.’ The Cardiff-based Percy Thomas Partnership was brought in to add a new gabled roof, to replace the white marble cladding with local red sandstone, and to redesign the interiors with advice from Hugh Casson ‘in a manner more in keeping with the lifestyle of the landed gentry’.
Denne historien er fra September 29, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 29, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
