ON Friday we went to see-oh! the palace of palaces! and yet a palace without crown, without coronet -but such expense! Such taste! Such profusion!' So begins Horace Walpole's enthusiastic description of Osterley Park, Middlesex, in a letter dated June 21, 1773, to his muse on domestic subjects, Anne, Countess of Upper Ossory.
Osterley had been acquired in 1562 by the Elizabethan founder of the Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham, and redeveloped by him as a grand courtyard house. What commanded Walpole's admiration two centuries later, however, was not the Tudor building, but its complete overhaul by the vastly wealthy banking family, the Childs.
Walpole's emphasis that this was a palace without a crown or coronet-in other words, that it was neither royal nor aristocraticis significant. It was built instead with money from the City of London; as Walpole describes it, a shop is the estate'. If the title was the conventional adjunct of great wealth, Osterley represented something quite different: mercantile wealth as derived from Britain's trading empire.
The unrivalled scale and reach of Britain's trade was on display throughout the house, as Walpole noted: 'Mrs. Child's dressing-room is full of pictures, gold filigree, China and Japan. So is all the house-the chairs are taken from antique lyres, and make charming harmony... Not to mention a kitchen garden that costs £1400 a year, a menagerie full of birds that come from a thousand islands...'
Denne historien er fra August 17, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 17, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
