A Georgian vision

Gatewick, Steyning, West Sussex The former home of Charles, James and Primrose Yorke A combination of discerning architectural improvement and collecting in the 1950s created a modern country house in the 18th-century spirit.

- John Martin Robinson

GATEWICK was the Sussex home of the Yorke family for two generations. It was bought in 1953 by David Yorke after his marriage to Anne Mackail, daughter of the writer Denis Mackail and great-granddaughter of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite. Yorke, who had read for the Bar at the Middle Temple, although he mostly practised law only as a JP, was an enthusiastic amateur architect and connoisseur, very much what the 18th century, his spiritual home, would have called a virtuoso. He acted as principal architectural adviser to the National Trust, when such a necessary role existed, and transformed and improved Gatewick-in the Picturesque sense-to his own designs. In the process, he created the most perfect small Georgian country house out of a modest property.

Gatewick is a southern equivalent of Rupert Alec-Smith's Old Rectory at Winestead in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which John Cornforth admired (COUNTRY LIFE, January 14, 1965). Both houses reflect a common aim; to bring together architectural fittings, fine collections of furniture, objets d'art and paintings with new architectural work, all melded into beautiful and convenient modern houses in a Georgian spirit that were compact enough to run, heat and manage in post-war conditions. Whereas Alec-Smith worked with a professional architect, Francis Johnson, Yorke was entirely his own designer. He was a friend of Clifford Musgrave, the ground-breaking post-war director and restorer of Brighton Pavilion in East Sussex, and Musgrave wrote an article—as part of a series on new country houses—on Gatewick in 1965 for The Connoisseur.