For this week’s newsletter we’re travelling to the hills of Val d’Orcia in Tuscany to discover a villa unchanged since the 18^th century.

The Villa Di Geggiano should really be first seen from the south.
Here the visitor arrives through an avenue of ancient trees which form a cool shaded canopy. As you stagger from the gloom to the sound of cicadas a welcoming stucco fronted façade emerges before you.

Though if you are, like myself, a lowly architectural adventurer and arrive at the staff entrance a better picture of the building’s humble medieval origins emerges.
I was here with my dad and our visit had been tacked on to an otherwise perfunctory day of travel back to the UK via Pisa Airport.

As we stood on the road sizing up the stone walls that towered above us, I reflected on what I had read about the building’s history.

The Villa di Geggiano sits under 10 miles from Siena and has been the home of one of its wealthiest families for some 500 years.

When the Bianchi Bandinelli family acquired the villa in 1527 it was but a simple 14^th century agricultural structure. These origins can still be glimpsed in the earthy heart of the house; a large kitchen cum living room with a ceiling supported by weighty overlapping arches.

After expansion in the 16^th Century the building would take its present form with the marriage of one of its son to a member of rival Sienese family, the Chigi’s.

This union provided the perfect opportunity to show the world that Tuscany was moving with the times. Over a period of about 20 years the house was redecorated to reflect the languid gentility of the 18^th century.

Ceilings were enhanced with decorative paintings, walls were covered with frescoes as well as the finest fabrics and wallpapers from France .

Whilst gazing at the villa’s rough hewn north façade I pressed the bell of the small “trade” entrance. No answer.

After a moment a head appeared from a window above and enquired who we were.
On communicating (in broken Italian) that we were meeting an appointment scheduled with one of the family members the gate swung open.

Within moments the chic figure of Laura the estate manager came gliding towards us.
Peering at our pale northern faces Laura seemed ever so slightly nonplussed at our presence.
“You have an appointment?” “Well, I’m afraid I know nothing of this”

After sharing evidence of my online exchange with one of the family members Laura softened and invited us inside.

Even my preparatory research couldn’t prepare us for the wonders we found.

Perhaps the most unusual space in the villa is the entrance hall. Though hall is perhaps not the best description. Instead this is more of a low tunnel-like corridor which cuts through the entire property.

This long space has been painted to give the allusion of travelling through a year-long Tuscan pageant. The fresco, created by Tyrolean born Ignazio Moder, depicts each of the seasons with joyful scenes of winter frolics and summer parties.
The venetian influence of Giandomenico Tiepolo is plain to see and demonstrates the Bandinelli’s wish to align themselves with the new enlightened ideas from the North.


Indeed the house boasts a direct link to a master of 18^th century Italian drama.
The playwright Vittorio Alfieri was a friend of the family, stayed here many times and staged dramas in the Villa’s outdoor theatre. You can still enjoy the room that Alfieri slept in complete with 18^th century wallpaper, curtains and bedhanging’s.

Indeed as you process through the building room after room of untouched 18^th century interiors emerge. The building’s remarkable preservation was explained by Laura. Its location made it more useful as a summer residence and for much of the year it remained shuttered and silent.

Laura escorted us around the villa with an air of good-humoured nonchalance.
Her trailing skirts billowing behind her as she un-shuttered room after room in this Aladdin’s cave of artisanal decoration.

Her sotto voce tones seeming to say;
“Of course the rooms are ancient and beautiful… would we expect anything less in this region so devoted to the art of living well”

After a blissful hour spent in the refined world of enlightment-era Tuscany we emerged blinking into the sunlight and acclimatised to modern day Italy.

Later as we travelled over bracing ‘racing track style’ autostrada’s and through the industrial sprawl of Pisa the peace and refinement of those silent rooms remained with us.

I hope dearly to have the pleasure of revisiting them again one day.

This week brought the sad news of the passing of Dame Penelope Keith.

This much-loved star of stage and screen became firmly embedded in the nation’s consciousness through her unforgettable portrayal of the archetypal middle-class snob, Margot Leadbetter, in the BBC sitcom The Good Life. Yet it would be her next leading role, in To the Manor Born, first broadcast in 1979, that would cement her status as a national treasure and forever link her with today’s historic house.

The house in question is the elegant neo-Classical Georgian gem of Cricket House in Somerset, known to millions of viewers simply as Grantleigh Manor.

In the second episode of To the Manor Born, Keith’s character, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, takes to the wheel of her Rolls-Royce with the pragmatic stiff upper lip viewers would come to know and love. As Audrey prepares to leave the ancestral seat that has long been her home, the silhouette of Grantleigh Manor dominates the horizon behind her as she drives towards an uncertain future.

Any viewers expecting Audrey to begin a new life in a terraced house in Stockport will be swiftly disappointed. Instead, she brings the Rolls to a halt just outside the estate gates before taking up residence in the attractive gabled lodge that becomes both her home and her nexus of power for the following three series.

With this deceptively simple plot device, writer Peter Spence pulls off a remarkably neat trick.

Anyone instinctively—or politically—opposed to Audrey’s unapologetically aristocratic outlook immediately finds themselves on her side. After all, the sadness of leaving a beloved home is a universal experience, particularly when the decision has been forced upon us.

By placing Audrey in a house smaller than even the average suburban family home, Spence transforms an initially remote character into someone surprisingly relatable.

The plot device also immediately unites the audience at home with Keith’s character in a shared universal longing to take up residence at ‘the big house’.
While, for most of us, such dreams will remain just that, it perhaps explains why Grantleigh Manor—or rather Cricket House—has occupied such an enduring place in the affections of viewers in Britain and abroad.

Before we dive into its television legacy, it’s worth taking a moment to explore the real-life origins of this classical architectural beauty.

Situated near Chard in Somerset, there’s been a manor on the site since the fourteenth century, although the house owes its present appearance largely to the late 1700s, when it was purchased by Admiral Alexander Hood. Confusingly, at this point the property was known as Cricket Lodge.

Hood was introduced to Sir John Soane by one of the architect’s early patrons, Lord Camelford, beginning a professional and personal relationship that would last for many years. Soane’s work at Cricket was carried out in two principal phases. The remodelling of the west front began in 1788, while a northern extension incorporating a new library followed in 1806.

For many years it was assumed that Soane demolished the earlier medieval house and rebuilt it on a new site. More recent research into the archives held by the RIBA, however, suggests that he instead adapted an existing three-storey building, transforming the medieval core rather than replacing it.

Refacing much of the exterior in warm honey-coloured oolitic limestone, Soane created a restrained rectangular composition of remarkable elegance. Although the interiors have undergone significant alterations since his day, a superb 1803 perspective drawing by Joseph Gandy survives, offering a tantalising glimpse of Soane’s original vision. In the sketch, which I assume is The Library, light flows through huge window panes. Anyone familiar with Pitzhanger Manor or Soane’s own house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields will recognise favourite motifs including shallow domes, apsidal ends and those magnificent rounded windows.

Thankfully, Soane’s genius remains clearly visible on the principal façades. His treatment of the south-east front, with its long, low portico, is particularly successful. Sadly, no drawings survive showing the house before his alterations, so we can only speculate just how much architectural ingenuity was required to create such a serene vision of mathematical order.

For the producers of To the Manor Born, Cricket House came with one enormous advantage: it was the very house that inspired the series.

Writer Peter Spence’s father-in-law owned the estate, and it was during visits there after his marriage that much of the programme’s central premise took shape.

So despite no long search for the perfect house, the reason why it made such an effective choice is very clear. It was grand enough to be aspirational, but not sufficiently vast or ancient to inspire trepidation.

The series also landed at an interesting time culturally. When the first episode aired in September 1979, Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minster for around four months.
Audrey represented the old landed order, while Richard DeVere—born Bedřich Polouvicek—a self-made supermarket entrepreneur, embodied the new wealth that Thatcher’s free-market Britain would increasingly lionise.

The brilliance of Spence’s writing lies in the fact that neither side is treated with contempt. Both the aristocracy and the nouveau riche are affectionately satirised against a backdrop of village fêtes, church fundraisers and rolling Somerset pastures. The result is a comedy that feels both timeless and unmistakably rooted in its era.

When the estate was sold in the late 1990s, Warner Hotels wisely recognised its enduring appeal. Their acquisition allowed fans of the sitcom to enjoy the closest thing possible to the “Manor Born” experience, and the hotel at Cricket St Thomas has welcomed guests ever since.

With Dame Penelope Keith’s passing, there will almost certainly be a renewed interest in the series. Many viewers will revisit To the Manor Born not only to celebrate one of Britain’s finest comic actresses, but also to spend a few more hours in the company of Grantleigh Manor—a house that has become every bit as memorable as the characters who inhabited it.

My visit to Norney Grange, Surrey, on an overcast May afternoon had an inauspicious start.

The trip to the house had been arranged by my friend Theo, who was responsible for its sale back in 2021 to the current owners. After I featured the house in an article here back in March, a plan was hatched to revisit it for the benefit of the braying architectural lovers of Instagram.

On our arrival at this much-hailed structure via the Stable Lodge, we were met by a wooden gate tied by a rope to a post. Theo hopped out of his sturdy Audi A6 Allroad to move this ineffective security measure out of the way.

Subscribe now

With the gate seemingly safely positioned, he scampered back to the driver’s seat to pull the car through. No sooner had the vehicle cleared the gate post than the restless gate decided to relieve itself of its stationary position, just in time to leave its mark on the door of the car.

Feeling sufficiently guilty that I hadn’t held the thing in place, the wounded vehicle crept towards the north side of the house.

With the damage to the car fresh in our minds, we gazed through the drizzle striking the windscreen at the building emerging before us.

Reader, at this point I’ll admit: I was not blown away by what I could see.

For arriving from the north side of the house is not how Voysey designed the approach. From this angle, the building can seem very long and unprepossessing, almost like a row of outbuildings that have somehow wandered away from the grand hall they were built to serve.

So let us do Voysey justice and imagine we are arriving from Elstead Road on the south-east perimeter of the estate.

Had we done so, the first sight to greet us would have been the delightful gate lodge cottage, also designed by Voysey. All sloping roofs and asymmetrical details, the lodge seems to have housed many interesting tenants. Since posting about Norney, I’ve received countless messages from followers telling me about the various fascinating occupants who have called it home.

Subscribe now

Progressing from the gate lodge, you wind your way through thick foliage towards the south-east façade of the building.

This is the façade that truly demonstrates Voysey’s power. The entrance porch projects dramatically from the front elevation. Both welcoming and theatrical, it extends above the doorway to incorporate a large roundel window. There is something of Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins and his Bag End about it all.

On either side of the porch are gabled wings that project from the main body of the house. The left-hand wing contains an inviting rounded bay designed to make the most of its south-eastern aspect.

Entering the house, you are welcomed by a double-height hall. As Pevsner described it, the interior is “one of Voysey’s most thrilling”. Certainly the immediate impression is that of a home boasting elegance, simplicity and comfort.

This house exemplifies precisely why the Arts and Crafts style remains such a unifying force. It is perhaps the only architectural style capable of uniting Guardian-reading Walthamstow urbanites with horse-loving Country Life subscribers from the Home Counties.

For here we have the beginnings of modernism in English interiors.

Take the entrance hall. Voysey creates a staircase with closely spaced strip balustrades. The stair rises to a first-floor gallery from which hosts could observe guests arriving below.

There is nothing here that could be described as ornamental. Instead, Voysey plays with form, introducing a curved bow to the gallery that projects into the double-height space.

The purlins—the horizontal structural beams—are left exposed, creating an extraordinary sense of height despite the house itself being so low.

Across the house, the interiors unfold graciously. Nothing clamours for attention.

There is a fine panelled library with a delightful square bay window affording views across the garden. In the former billiard room, an inglenook fireplace is faced with richly veined marble.

This room took centre stage in the 2021 film The Dig, which used Norney as one of its principal locations. In one memorable scene, Edith Pretty’s dining table is framed by the broad arch spanning the hearth. Edith and her son are placed at the far end of the table, dramatically highlighting the reduced family unit in the wake of her husband’s death.

Incidentally, the film is well worth watching and stands as a testament to how buildings can become principal characters in their own right when handled well.

The real story of the house is neither dramatic nor tragic.

The original client was the Rev. Leighton Crane, who had the aforementioned gate lodge built first so that he could live on site and watch the house taking shape. The first phase of construction took place between 1897 and 1898, though Crane’s tenure was short-lived as he could not afford the upkeep of such a large house.

Norney was extended in 1903, again to Voysey’s designs, and has been occupied by only five families since its completion, including the current owners.

Charlotte Lockhart and Andrew Barnes are an intrepid couple hailing from New Zealand. Upon purchasing the house five years ago, they immediately invited members of the Voysey Society to visit and advise on any alterations they wished to make.

Suffice to say that all of their work has been both respectful and of the highest quality.

I was particularly interested to hear how Charlotte struggled to find a solution when they wished to add additional bathrooms on the first floor. As the exterior is listed and cannot be altered, there was no possibility of service pipes disturbing the façade.

Instead, a panelled recess in the library was brought flush with an adjoining bookcase. If Charlotte had not led me to this precise spot and pointed out exactly what had been changed, I would never have noticed.

Norney is not regularly open to the public, but I have created three films about the building which will be posted on my Instagram over the coming weeks.

Subscribe now

Click here to watch Part 1.

For more details about the house click here.

As a child I was frequently escorted by my parents to many a historic house.
I have no recollection of ever being “dragged” of or finding any element of the experience “inaccessible”. This was due in part to my mother’s ability to tell a cracking yarn about any location we might visit.
For her, narrative and atmosphere were far more important than mere facts.
As a result, history and dates were sculpted to give the best dramatic outcome.

My dear mum understood something many a curator of a house museum does not.
If you can pull in your audience with feeling, they will learn the facts later anyway.

This thought came back to me a few days ago as I reclined in an ample Wingback which forms part of Max Rollitt’s current installation at WOW!House 2026. The event is a design showcase for designers and interiors brands but Rollitt has done something slightly different.

For his room, titled the Schumacher Dining Room, he has shunned creating a perfect scheme, instead opting to create something more akin to stage scenery or art installation.

When I spoke to him earlier this week, he told me he was inspired by that “Kentian period” of English interior design from around 1720 to 1730. Think of the bold schemes of Holkham Hall, where rooms are swathed in luscious brocades and baroque chandeliers dominate the centre of rooms.

As the visitor enters Rollitt’s room they are first met with the gentle sound of birdsong.
The walls are lined with portraits from the period which sit on a terracotta brocatelle by Schumacher. Above the fireplace stands a delightful rococo overmantel in the manner of Linnel.

The eye is caught by two high octagonal windows from which streams a blue dusk light recreating that ambient haze of a warm summer’s evening.

The central dining table has been lit with real candles (“Am I allowed?” says Max. “I’m not sure, but I’ve done it anyway”). Under the tablecloth there sits a toy train set discarded mid-play as if its owner has just been called away to have his bath.
Listen closely as you crouch and you can even make out an audiobook of Just William.

The result is immersive and intoxicating.

I was immediately struck by the comparison of this experience with a recent visit to Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire. This fine 17^th and early 18^th century house has undergone a vigorous restoration by the National Trust in the last few years.

Panelling has been stripped and repainted. Rooms have been combed of objects that do not date from the exact period the house when was built and uplighting introduced in the ceiling of the great hall.

It is as if some “destination” restaurant chain had been given the keys.
The Ned’s latest Cotswolds branch, if you will.

The effect removes the idea of taste, personal choice and evolution from the interiors of this great home. We are not told which mind made these decisions, but only that the room has been redecorated for historical accuracy. I’m not sure which Georgian aristo was installing strip lighting into their plaster ceiling but I’m always prepared to be illuminated.

This approach was not always the way with the Trust. In the 20^th century maverick designers such as John Fowler were given free reign to impart their vision on a home.

Fowler’s choices were rarely safe and sometimes rattled the owners of the homes he worked on. When he chose to repaint the dramatic carved staircase of Sudbury in a dusty yellow the Vernon’s were appalled. A few decades later, the staircase is hailed and Farrow & Ball have even released a paint inspired by the house (Sudbury Yellow, as you ask LINK: https://www.farrow-ball.com/paint/sudbury-yellow).

These days institutions such as The Trust seem to be quite resistant to the idea that a visitor might find joy in a space for aesthetic reason allow. That scent, sound and display might stimulate the mind as powerfully as an information board.

It seems the idea that a historic interior could encourage conversation or debate about design as well as history has been removed as a possibility.

For now, I will return to the quiet calm of Rollitt’s invigorating display.
From my metaphorical wingback, I’ll hope for a world where curators of historic spaces might see the merit of involving educated creatives in their interiors as well as academics.

If you have the good fortune to take the London Rd through the west side of Essex, you will be struck by the sight of arguably the grandest house in the county.

This golden vision of symmetry in stone that Audley End presents is made all the more startling due to the sense that it shouldn’t exist here at all.

After all, what is house built of stone doing in the county of timber?

For Essex is the land of exposed oak, decorated plasterwork and rosy red brick. A visit to nearby Saffron Walden is the perfect education in the true vernacular architecture of the area. Though Audley’s building material is the first hint in understanding the audacious character of the man who created it.

Subscribe now

Staring at a portrait of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk and the creator of Audley End, it is not hard to understand why the amorous King James was so fond of him.

A strong Jaw, a firm gaze and a sturdy pair of legs are the first things which leap out at the viewer. This is not to overlook his less aesthetically obvious charms, and it’s clear he was an ambitious and intelligent, if flawed, individual.

Thomas was in his early forties by the time James came to the throne, so not an athletic youth but more an experienced and charismatic man of the world. His ten children highlight a certain red-blooded virility which might have appealed to a King with a strong preference for his own sex.

Speculation aside, once crowned, the King promptly promoted him to a number of key positions in the royal household. It was in 1603 that he was elevated to the title of Earl of Suffolk, becoming Lord Chamberlain soon after, as well as a member of the privy council.

The rebuilding of Audley End followed hot on the heels of these promotions. This biographical detail is the key to understanding the bold architectural vision for the house. Put simply, this is the Jacobean equivalent of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur creating a sprawling compound in Palo Alto the moment they sell their first start up.

No depiction exists of the manor house that Thomas inherited from his father but we can imagine it as a rather humble late medieval style structure with exposed timbers and friendly gables.

The building Thomas replaced it with would be far more comparable to a royal palace than a home and we can get a sense of the scale of the project when we analyse the costs involved.
It’s recorded that Howard informed the King the house cost £200,000 to erect.
Let’s compare that with the not inconspicuous Hatfield House, Herts. which reportedly cost under £40,000.

The reason for this expense lies in three areas: It’s size, materials and the quality and extent of the decoration.

Sadly any modern visitor to Audley can only understand the first of these factors with a little preliminary research and a good dollop of imagination. This is because the current day house is approximately a third of the size of its original structure.

To help us better understand this I want you to indulge in some architectural time travel and imagine you are approaching the house from the west front. (see image below).

As you stand in front of the main entrance hall with its two porches flanking either side, turn yourself around so your back is facing the house. Today a great open vista of lawn stretches to the River Cam, but I want you to imagine you are on the same spot four hundred years ago.

It is a warm summer’s afternoon and the sun hits your face and reflects off the honey coloured stone facades of a grand outer courtyard.
A delightful entrance porch faces you from the opposite side of the courtyard. It’s four towers topped with pepper pot orbs. Perhaps the lawns of this tranquil outdoor space have just been cut releasing the delicious scent of freshly cut grass.

This is the scene that would have met any visitor even before they stepped in through the front door. The exact uses of the wings which enclosed this courtyard are unknown but it’s likely they were created for effect rather than strictly functional usage.
Certainly the greatly reduced floorplan of the present-day house is enough to tire out even the most energetic visitor.

Turning to the second of these factors let us reflect on the use of Ketton Stone to clad the exterior. This was quarried need Stamford and required transporting over 60 miles to Audley. Just imagine the logistical challenge of getting enough stone to build a large village across that distance in an era before lorries, rails or even canals.
Thomas would’ve known that just by using this material anyone who came within a few miles of the house would be awed by the sight of so much stone.

Finally, the sheer profusion of Jacobean decoration across both the exterior and interior of the building is still a joy to behold. Though here again the modern-day visitor needs to do quite a lot of guesswork deciphering what elements are actually original amidst so many ‘improvements’.

Take the route from Great Hall to Saloon. The Hall retains its early 17^th century proportions and glorious wooden screen created by Italian craftsmen (pictured). Though the room is riddled with 19^th century alterations. To exit the space you ascend Inigo Jones’s stone staircase (early 18^th century) to end up in the first floor Saloon. Here we have an original (glorious) plaster ceiling but everything below that was reimagined in the 18^th century using repurposed oil portraits and panelling salvaged from the demolished long gallery.

The overall effect is similar to the visual effect of the great interior sets created for Golden-era Hollywood. Think of the vast architectural spaces created for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) which blend numerous styles to create something that is undeniably impressive but slightly uncanny.

Many of England’s 16^th and 17^th century houses received this sort of improvement, though much of the time the renovations either sought to wipe out all trace of what existed prior (Syon) or were actioned at one point in time making comparison between old and new much simpler (Charlecote Park). Audley’s renovations were relatively consistent and often in a ‘mock Jacobean’ style, hence the challenge to modern visitors.

What is clear is just how dazzling the impression must have been to any visitor to Thomas’s Court, and what a useful tool he imagined it could be.
A perfect stage set to enhance his political ascendance.
Sadly for Thomas, he did not get to use the house quite as he imagined.

A combination of factors would lead to his downfall. The first came when the Kings head was turned by the handsome George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (thirty years Thomas’s junior). Thomas had no influence over Villers and tried to usurp him by backing a rival to the Kings affections, the son of Admiral William Monson. This rather obvious plan failed and marked him out as someone for George to remove from the court.

The second factor arose from the Earls extravagant spending. It seems both he and his wife had been using the royal treasury as their own household purse, as well as taking bribes for favours at court. Thomas was dismissed from his position overnight

At the subsequent trial in 1619, the pair were found guilty of embezzling funds from the Royal Household and fined £30,000 (reduced to £7,000).

Thomas would spend the rest of his life in his gilded palace ostracised from Jacobean society.

Later generations found his palatial Audley too unmanageable and by the 19^th century it had been reduced to its current day footprint.

It stands as a picturesque monument to one man’s ambition and a cautionary tale of the dangers of flying too close to the sun.

Audley End is owned by English Heritage and is open regularly to the public.

Subscribe now

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a deeper look at homes that bear the mark of phenomenal English craftsmanship. This week’s focus is a place I stumbled across whilst travelling through the county of Shropshire. My expectations were low, but boy did I have a treat in store!

For the modern day visitor, approaching the 16^th century Benthall Hall, Shropshire is a remarkably tranquil experience.

The weathered stone facade displays five gables of varying sizes; gloriously devoid of symmetry. Two double-height bays stand on either side of the entrance porch, their leaded windows glinting in the sun.
Over this noble façade stretches a weathered vine which provides wisteria blossoms in the spring.

On the west side is a charming, tiered garden complete with benches which afford splendid views of the house. From this approach another turret-like bay stands to attention surveying the scene like a weary soldier.

A scene more gentle and sleepy could hardly be imagined.

So it comes as a slightly jarring note to learn this house was the scene of a dramatic conflict in one of Britain’s most tumultuous historic episodes. But we’ll come on to that later.

For the moment, let’s go back to the start of Benthall’s story. Just four miles from the Hall stands the ruins of the 12^th century Wenlock Priory. Records show there were monastic manors at both Benthall and Broseley but the precise location of these buildings has yet to be found.

The first house on this site was erected around 1535, with substantial changes to the building carried out fifty years later. This gap of half a century might explain the lack of symmetry in the overall design despite consistency in materials and method.
It goes without saying that we are far from the order and geometry of Smythson’s great prodigy houses of Hardwick and Wollaton Hall.

A better architectural comparison can be found in the much-mythologised childhood home of the Mitfords’ at Asthall Manor. As with that Oxfordshire home, a small church sits within the shadow of the Hall and both houses feel beautifully cushioned within their surrounding landscapes.

At Benthall each room feeds gently into the other. Room after room of light-filled spaces. Many of which grant stupendous views of the surrounding landscape.

Richard Benthall was Lord of the Manor when the structure was built but we have his great grandson, Lawrence, to thank for the magnificent Jacobean interiors.

Lawrence wed Katherine Cassy in the early 1600s and this match of two prominent families was obviously a cause for much celebration.

This is demonstrated by multiple depictions of the union across the interiors. In the drawing room the mantelpiece displays the Benthall coat of arms proudly astride the Cassys and in The Library the crests have been merged to form a new design.

Though these heraldic decorations could easily be missed in the orgy of Jacobean decorative delight on show. Every space has something of interest though the aforementioned Library is the real showstopper for me.

This space really is a feast of 17^th century craftsmanship. From ornately carved wainscoting to shield-like plasterwork decoration stretching across the ceiling.

The plaster frieze which runs around the room deserves a special mention. Here regularly spaced roundels display prancing deer, lions, unicorns and gryphons.

Anyone who might doubt the skill of 17^th century English craftsmanship should come to this house to see how wrong they are! This is pure Folk Art of the highest invention.

We know very little about the Lawrence who oversaw much of this work, though we do know he was present for the most climactic moment in the building’s history.

Let’s travel back to the time of the Civil War.

The country is divided on harsh lines, crown versus state, and the area of Shropshire is under strong Royalist control.
The House sits within easy reach of the town of Shrewsbury which forms a pivotal stronghold for the King. From here supply lines are controlled from Royalist Wales.
A Royalist garrison is set up at Benthall supplying coal to neighbouring settlements.

In February 1645, Shrewsbury was captured and the Roundheads set their sights on Benthall.
In a weekly missive from December of that year we have a colourful account of the Parliamentarian attack on the house.

From the description, we know that the opposing forces had already arrived at Benthall. Perhaps Lawrence and his men had surrendered quickly due to lack of support.


The account records that at “about break of day” Royalist forces summoned by the king arrived from Worcester, Ludlow and Bridgnorth. Sadly, the fighters were no match for their opponents.
The missive records that the Roundheads “slew divers of them” and notes they will not be “hasty to come again”.

Did those fine interiors witness carnage? Was the plasterwork flecked with blood by the time the garrison was captured? We will never know, though in the drawing room scars to the decoration give a hint to what might have occurred.

One can imagine Lawrence surveying these fine interiors that he had planned in happier times, fearing for both the lives of him and his family as well as the future of this structure.
Happily it would seem the building was more use to them as a garrison than a ruin, though the site didn’t survive intact.

In addition to scars from fighting in the drawing room, the church was so badly damaged it had to be entirely rebuilt.

Today this simple ecclesiastic structure provides a glimpse at Restoration-era architectural design and contains some very fine woodcarvings.

So what of the last three hundred years?

Less than sixty years after the war ended, an ironmaster based four miles away would pioneer a process that some claim to be the beginning of the industrial revolution.

With Abraham Darby’s experiment at Coalbrookdale, he demonstrated it was possible to smelt iron with coke instead of charcoal vastly reducing the cost of the process.

Thankfully the charming town of Ironbridge couldn’t compete with other emerging industrial cities (such as Birmingham & Coventry) or Benthall might today be stranded on an industrial site with tarmac enclosing its stone walls. The industrial revolution continued elsewhere and Benthall was left practically unspoilt.

Oh, how fortunate it was!
Sitting in the tiered garden and looking on the finely aged façade of the house, time genuinely seems to have stopped still. The birds tweet and for a thankful moment, the modern world seems to melt away.

Benthall is owned by the National Trust. Check their site for details on when to visit.

The architectural output left to us by the Edwardians is genuinely startling.

If we take London as an example, a vast amount of the capital’s great set-piece buildings were either built or dramatically remodelled in this thirteen-year span. Think Buckingham Palace, Admiralty Arch, Selfridges & The Ritz to name a few.

Were it not for the outbreak of war I would be able to add the redevelopment of Nash’s Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus to this list (though Edwardian in ethos, the scheme wasn’t completed until the 20s).

At this point I can hear you thinking that none of these, except arguably the Palace, are domestic buildings.

So what was the output of English houses in this time? In a word: varied.

Engineering and manufacturing had improved to such a degree that large structures could be completed quickly, while a surfeit of skilled craftsmen were still on hand to produce fireplaces, plasterwork, and exterior carvings of exceptional quality.

Though this was paired with a growing distaste for the heavy opulence of the High Victorian era—think of the exuberant ‘Jacobethan’ stylings of Harlaxton Manor (completed 1851).

Instead, a new generation of architects—Lutyens, Voysey, and Dawber among them—promoted a simpler set of design principles. You will note the Arts and Crafts influence is strong in all but one of my five choices.

So, let’s dive in.

1. Eyford, Upper Slaughter, Glos.

Named in 2011 as ‘England’s Favourite House’ by Country Life this simplified baroque beauty was designed in 1911 by Guy Dawber.

Dawber achieved a masterstroke by creating a home that feels both grand and deeply welcoming. The key to his success was an understanding of how to utilise local materials—ashlar and Cotswold stone—while combining them with a design that borrows from the Baroque tradition.

Sir Cyril Kleinwort purchased the house in the early 1970s and improved the estate, commissioning the celebrated gardener and plantsman Graham Stuart Thomas to redesign much of the grounds.

The building’s interiors are praised by anyone lucky enough to step inside them.
Sadly, it is not open to the public, though the gardens are occasionally available to visit as part of the National Garden Scheme.

2. Goddards, Abinger Common, Surrey

Lutyens excelled himself in the creation of this near-perfect Arts and Crafts home. Strictly speaking, it was built one year before the Edwardian era began, but it helped set the tone for some of the period’s finest domestic architecture.

Here, Lutyens cast his eye back to the building traditions of 16th-century England.

Strong chimneys rise from gabled roofs, mullioned windows abound, and cheeky dormers peek out at random. The overall effect is warm, domestic, and unpretentious.

The house was originally conceived as a philanthropic venture from Sir Frederick Mirrielees, who envisioned the building as a rest home for ‘ladies of small means’. Think the elderly Misses Alan from Forster’s A Room with a View (1908).

After being used as a hospital during the Second Boer War, the building was later converted into a private home for Mrs D. Mirrielees.

The gardens were created by the great Arts and Crafts designer Gertrude Jekyll, who lived locally and collaborated with Lutyens on numerous projects.

Today, Goddards is leased by the Landmark Trust and can be rented as a holiday let.

3. The Homestead, Frinton-on-Sea, Essex

Our next home was designed by C. F. A. Voysey for Sidney Clarence Turner, a bachelor and London-based insurance manager.

Turner enjoyed golf and wanted a comfortable seaside retreat in what was fast becoming a fashionable coastal town. Voysey responded with a house designed on an L-shaped plan, protecting the garden from the harsh coastal climate.

The interior is charm personified: porthole windows, an inglenook fireplace lined with white glazed tiles, and exposed timber ceiling joists give the house a distinctive sense of warmth and character.

The home remains privately owned.

4. Mr Straw’s House, Worksop, Nottinghamshire

This is the only house on the list which gives a sense of what many middle-class homes of the period would have looked like.

Built in 1905 in the prosperous market town of Worksop, it was purchased in 1923 by William Straw (senior), a successful grocer with premises in the Market Square.

The atmosphere of the house perfectly reflects suburban life in pre-war England. The rooms are slightly fussy, with dado rails and patterned wallpapers aplenty.

The house was inherited by bachelor brothers William (junior) and Walter Straw, who left it virtually unchanged after 1932. In 1990 it was gifted to the National Trust, who took great pains to preserve it almost exactly as it had been found.

The house is open regularly, though pre-booking is advised.

5. Folly Farm, Sulhamstead, Berkshire

I’m not ashamed to admit that I first saw this stunning Lutyens house in an episode of ITV’s Sunday night crime caper Rosemary & Thyme when I was about 18.

The house shows Lutyens flexing slightly different muscles to those on display at Goddards. Here he took inspiration from late 17th-century domestic architecture, particularly the restrained classical traditions associated with the reign of William and Mary.

At first glance, the house seems to be almost entirely roof. Lutyens designed it in two phases. The first section, completed in 1906, is symmetrical with large long windows. The later 1912 extension is more playful and vernacular, with a roofline that descends dramatically across two storeys.

With the latter phase it is easy to see how suburban housebuilders of the 1920s and 1930s drew direct inspiration from Lutyens, replicating elements of his style en masse for the expanding lower middle classes. Take a drive through the well-heeled suburbs of Solihull and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

These five buildings are certainly not meant to be representative of all domestic architecture in Britain in this period, though I think they demonstrate the breadth of output at this time.

Moreover I would argue they illustrate well that this was possibly the last time when historic styles could be used without fear of being called out as pastiche.

Eyford, for instance, is a great example of a building which confidently signals to earlier historic styles but couldn’t have been made at any other point in time.

As mentioned previously, the legacy of this period can be seen in any 20^th century suburb across the country, though I would argue the impact of the Edwardian age on domestic architecture goes beyond this.

Take a look through the pages of any issue of House and Garden and you can see the spirit of Luytens and Voysey in many of the featured interiors (see below).
Embrace of natural materials, subtle patterns, quirky details and unexpected shapes all pay a debt to the great designers of the Edwardian age.

It’s a sad truth that the quality of building techniques seen in structures of the era is far from matched by many modern developments. I feel strongly that any prospective developer or architect could learn much from studying the homes of this time.

I hope you have enjoyed this list and it improved your Easter morning.
If you have any suggestions for houses I should explore please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Have you ever been in a room and spotted a bewitching face amongst a crowded throng?

Perhaps in that instance you tried to work your way through the jostling partygoers.
Desperately trying to catch another sight of the person only to find you have lost them.

Well the house I am discussing today offers a similar experience for those who have caught sight of its shimmering Portland stone exterior.

Passing through Green Park the perfectly symmetrical South-West façade is impossible to miss, yet without a map you might be hard-pressed to actually find the entrance into this great building.

Subscribe now

I recently had the experience of frantically running from the park-facing façade through the streets of St James’s trying to find my way to the house for an appointment.
At every turning, I was met with yet more back alleys (The house is only accessible from one side due to a private garden separating it from the park. On a side note, this land is still leased from the Crown Estate)

In addition to the issue of physical accessibility, the house is also open just one day a week so the casual visitor is unlikely to just wander in.

Though if you should happen to find yourself inside its walls. Oh the joy that awaits you.

From the Baroque splendour of the Palm Room to the delicate neoclassical stylings of The Painted Room, the house unfolds its wonders one by one.

Though amazingly, just 50 years ago this house was a neglected and scarred shell, emptied of its contents and marred by 20^th century accretions. Its return to glory is not only remarkable but also unlikely. Though first let’s take a step back to the building’s conception.

The house was built in the 1760s by John Spencer, 1^st Earl Spencer and his wife Margaret Georgiana Poyntz who were then the toast of fashionable society.

The young couple were rich (thanks to John’s great grandmother Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough leaving him much of her wealth) and unlike many society marriages theirs was a love match.

The first architect of the house was one John Vardy who created the exterior and much of the ground floor before being given the boot in favour of the hot young thing in 18^th century design circles; James ‘Athenian’ Stuart.

Vardy’s best work is possibly The Palm Room, located on the ground floor.
The scheme was lifted by Vardy from a design by John Web for the planned bedroom of Charles II in Greenwich Palace. Webb’s project was never realised so here it was reimagined as the final flourish in a series of ground floor entertaining rooms.

Though we have Stuart to thank for some of the most impressive rooms of any private house in London. From the muscular roman stylings of the Great Room to the neoclassical elegance of The Painted Room, his work is inventive and unexpected.

Though as interesting as the home’s interior is the story of its fall from grace and 20^th century renaissance.

If we could go back to the bleak post-war years and be given a key into this great house we would hardly recognise it from the treasure house we see today.

From the late 19^th century the Spencer’s had let the house to successive tenants as the family grappled with higher taxes on their estates.
By the 20s it was home to the Ladies Army and Navy Club. The club proprietors modernised the interiors with whitewash and semi-industrial lighting though ultimately we must thank them for stewarding this delicate lady through this period. The pre-war era were some of the hardest years for London’s Grand homes with the sale and demolition of Devonshire, Dorchester and Chesterfield house to name a few.

On a side note, for lovers of Muriel Spark I can just imagine the cast of The Girls of Slender Means spending a night in the shabby genteel confines of the club.

The building’s interiors were further reduced during WWII when the Spencer’s removed many interior architectural features for safekeeping to Althorp House in Northamptonshire.

Though sensible (the house was impacted by a bomb to nearby Bridgewater house) this did mean that many of the building’s best rooms were left as scarred shells robbed of doorframes and chimneypieces.

After the war the house was let as offices. The fine state rooms were subdivided and turned into typists’ pools and the courtyard was built over with lift shafts and toilet blocks.

It was in this state that Jacob Rothschild discovered the house. His offices were on the same street and he was moved to see one of London’s treasures in such a forlorn state.

He masterminded a plan which involved negotiating a long lease with the trustees of the building in tandem with convincing Westminster Council to give him planning permission in perpetuity for office use. The ‘planning gain’ could then be used to raise capital to restore the state rooms of the house.

His scheme came off exactly as planned and by the mid 1980s he was ready to embark on his ambitious plans for restoration. To do so he called in the talents of visionary interior design David Mlinaric who worked in tandem with master carver Dick Reid.

The former returned the splendour to the house, overseeing the reinstatement of 18^th century colour schemes and appropriate furniture whilst the latter worked away on recreating marble fireplaces and wooden doorframes. These could have been faked with painted plaster though the craftsmanship is a thing to behold.

The final result is a thing very rare in restored historic spaces.
An issue one finds time and time again with houses that have been ‘saved’ at great expense is that the result is ever so slightly lacking.
Rooms which have been subject to thousands of pounds of research and decoration but feel contrived. Like an attractive face that has been subject to countless procedures and yet feels unnatural.

Yet here we have that rare thing, a house restored with great amounts of research and care which *also* manages to feel both warm and authentic.

This is due in part to the collection within its walls. Showing a dexterity few could utilise, Rothschild called on museums, galleries and trusts around the country to fill the home with genuine 18^th century wonders.

Sometimes the pieces are the exact ones designed for the room (as with Stuart’s Winged Lion sofas in the Painted Room) and in other cases as close to as possible.

The effectiveness of the restoration is also reflective of having an interior designer set the mood and tone of each space, rather than a historian.

To my mind some of Mlinaric’s best work can be seen in some of the least showy spaces.

In the Library he matched a wide striped wallpaper with portrait prints and framed intaglios. Two antique bookcases are set with a newly commissioned piece which mirrors their lines and perfectly fits one wall.
Bronze busts and Greek urns sit atop the bookshelves amidst small armchairs and side tables. This is not a recreation of the room at any other time, but it is a perfectly elegant and inviting space.

To return to my analogy of that crowded room, when you have (finally) tracked down that stunning creature and spent time in its company its likely you will forever be enchanted by its spell. Thankfully this stunner is going nowhere.

The house is open on Sundays for tours.

This week I’m diverting from my usual format by bringing you a quick(ish) read in the form of this bitesize guide to some of the best Arts & Crafts homes.
The style originated in the British Isles and although most of the best examples are here, it did spread across the world (see the Gamble House). Each house on my list was originally built as a country residence through two have subsequently been subsumed by urban conurbations.

These houses are all open to the public in some form and I’ll list a little of this info if my description piques your interest to visit them.

On a personal note, I will admit I feel most at home with this style of architecture.
I grew up in an architecturally rich Birmingham suburb within walking distance of many listed examples of the style (after all the newly wealthy middle classes were the group who most embraced the movement).

The Arts & Crafts style sits at the juncture between traditional architectural styles and the advent of modernism. It therefore has a large fanbase and is a great starting point for conversations about how we can build better today.

So without any further preamble lets dive in…

Standen, East Grinstead, West Sussex,

If an architectural style can be called ‘Jolly’ then Standen is the perfect candidate.
Designed by Philip Webb for the prosperous solicitor James Beale, Standen remains the best preserved of Webb’s homes.

To commission Webb could be highly frustrating, and he once proclaimed he would never ‘please his client at the expense of his conscience’.

Though with Beale, Webb was fortunate to find a patient and openminded patron.
Webb responded by pouring his all into the project, designing not just the building but the interiors and even light fittings.

Though traditional in appearance Webb created a modern house complete with central heating and electricity. He even experimented with concrete; the first floor corridors are made of the material combined with iron joists for strength.

The home is owned by the National Trust and is open regularly.

Red House, Bexhill

I should begin my description of our next house with a small confession: I’ve never felt a great personal affection for it.

Though, much like struggling with a dense passage of prose by Dickens, I do ultimately think it rewards further inspection.

It deserves mention because it was one of the earliest important building in the development of the style and combines some of the biggest names of the A&C movement. It was built as the home of William Morris, designed by the aforementioned Webb and decorated with murals by Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Completed in 1860, the result is a building that, from the exterior, looks slightly like a collection of barns had a child with a Kentish Oast House. As a modern day visitor the interior strikes one as rather dark and almost austere in its lack of ornament.
What cannot be understated is just how original it was in its simplicity and use of materials (Compare it stylistically with St Pancras Station, designed five years later).

The interior’s stark quality may be due to the fact that the house was only lived in by Morris for five years, after which it passed through a variety of owners before being donated to the National Trust in the early noughties.

In addition to its originality, by examining its interiors you gain a sense of a collective group developing a visual language. In 2013 a hidden mural was discovered which is believed to be a collaborative work created by Morris, Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal.

It is this feeling of the house being a collaborative experimental project that makes it a ‘must see’ for devotees of the style.

The house is open regularly and sits within easy (ish) reach of central London.

Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Situated in the heart of the Midlands, Wightwick Manor is not only a beautiful house but gives a clear understanding of late 19^th century taste and culture.

This Mock Tudor Manor looks to the untrained eye as if it has stood in the landscape since Shakespeare’s time. Built by the Manders family (manufacturers of paint) who employed thousands in their local factories and chose to live within five miles of the centre of Wolverhampton. Later generations would become prominent Liberal MP’s and this socially progressive approach to life can be felt in the home.

It is not a foreboding Victorian abode where staff are banished to a cold wing. In fact, the servants quarters feel as beautifully designed as the home!

Today the house is a real delight for visitors. Unlike Red House, the interior feels inviting and luxurious as if the owners have just left. Thanks to the last occupants of the home, Geoffrey Mander (1882 - 1962) and his wife Rosalie (1905 - 1988), Wightwick now boasts one of the finest collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the country.

The house is owned by the National Trust and is open regularly. Leave time for both the house and gallery (located in an adjacent building).

Subscribe now

Perrycroft, Malvern

Considered the best of C. F. A. Voysey’s domestic buildings, Perrycroft is genuinely very original. If trying to understand the ‘Voysey style’ it is also arguably the best of his structures to examine.

The house was built for John William Wilson, a chemical manufacturer and Liberal MP who thought Malvern an appropriate place for a country gent.

From the exterior the visitor is met with a low white rendered exterior with a variety of pleasing window shapes. The entrance is surmounted by a cheerful little tower complete with glazed upper storeys and weather vane. Climbing plants have been grown across the façade to soften its geometry and the overall effect is both homely and unostentatious.

One of Voysey’s traits was to exaggerate the chimneys of his houses. He was raised in a deeply religious household (his father was an Anglican priest) and the hearth and it’s implications of family life were central to his designs. At Perrycroft there seem to be more chimneys than a medium sized house could ever possibly need!

Today the house is privately owned though the present owners do allow for semi regular tours. Head to their website for more info.

Norney Grange, Surrey

Cinema lovers will no doubt recognize my next home.

Also built by Voysey (1897), it has featured in countless films including Shadowlands (1993), Darkest Hour (2017) and most recently The Dig (2021).

The exterior is picturesque in the extreme with a fabulous entrance porch created from honey coloured stone complete with an oversize roundel window. The effect is somewhere between Hobbiton and an Edwardian public library.

The house currently seems to be under the ownership of a New Zealand based company called Barnes & Lockhart who seemingly do offer tours. The intrepid architecture lover might wish to contact them directly.

So concludes my brief summary of this much loved architectural style.

Thank you for reading and do let me know if you wish me to create similar ‘list style’ articles in future.

The Gallery at Strawberry Hill

In my last post I discussed the initial inspiration for Strawberry Hill & the early social scene of its creator Horace Walpole.

Let’s pick up the narrative again with a middle-aged Walpole in 1747. By this point he was in his early 40s and had spent much of his life between his father’s home at 5 Arlington Street (See fig 1) and the grand classical pile of Houghton Hall, Norfolk.

Portrait of Horace Walpole by Joshua Reynolds, 1756 (around ten years after he buys the plot of Strawberry Hill)

He had followed his father’s lead, drifting into a career in government but one gets the impression that politics was never passion for Horace.
Not for him the lively, and often aggressive, debates of parliament. He was far better when poised with a quill at a suitable distance from his target.

It was at this point that Walpole began seeking a home of his own. His father had died some years before leaving him with fewer familial obligations. He set his sights on the fashionable outer London environs of Twickenham, Middlesex finding an unassuming house called Chopp’d Straw Hall.

Horace’s first home, 5 Arlington Street in St James’s.

Horace would later claim he found some original title deeds for the house where the land was named after the fruits grown there. Whatever the truth of this statement, the house was rechristened Strawberry Hill and its owner set about his ambitious plans for renovation.

To make aesthetic decisions at the house he called on two like-minded aesthetes.
The first in his “committee of taste” was gentleman architect John Chute who Walpole would call ‘his oracle of taste’. Chute never married and resided for some years in Florence with a handsome younger cousin named Francis Whithed.
Despite Chute’s unconceived plans to transform his own home into a gothic pile (The Vyne in Hampshire, now owned by the National Trust) it would seem his best ideas were poured into Strawberry Hill.

John Chute, a core member of Walpole’s committee of taste

The third member of this committee was the writer and artist Richard Bentley, who would go on to illustrate the poems of Thomas Gray (Horace’s Grand Tour pal and possible lover from ‘Part One’).

Two out of three of the committee were “confirmed bachelors”, so it’s perhaps unsurprising they would create a house where style reigns supreme over practicality.
Where swirling staircases give way to painted ceilings and bookcases of lacy intricacy. The Gothic style had not been glimpsed in domestic architecture for centuries, yet here it was applied with gusto.

The Library at Strawberry Hill

It is important to note there was no strategic plan for the eventual appearance of the home. No grand wooden machete or ambitious drawings. Instead Horace built the house in sections, adding a wing or turret on where he thought it was needed. Final construction ceased in 1776, around thirty years after Horace had first bought the plot.

This lack of a clear scheme is made evident when looking at the floorplan (see below) of the house. The earliest part of the structure is at the bottom of this image, where the visitor enters today. From this small structure Walpole added wings and turrets in a piecemeal fashion. One wonders what he would make of the planning authorities in Richmond Council today.

Floor plan of the first floor of the house. The gallery is the long room marked D.

Though for a moment I want to set aside academic classifications to make one point abundantly clear. As a visitor to this house you are constantly enchanted.

On a recent visit to the house on a peaceful sunny morning I felt like a giant kid in a medieval architectural sweetshop. ‘Look at those library shelves!” “What stunning banisters!” “Wait…Is that a Rococo shell bench?”

The Rococo shell bench in the grounds

The largest and most spectacular of the spaces is the crimson “Gallery” which takes up most of the south facing façade of the building.

With a ceiling inspired by the Henry VII chapel at Westminster and one wall lined with alcoves surmounted by canopies it leaves a distinct impression.

The space was designed to house Walpole’s significant art collection which, though sold after his death, has been recreated today with facsimile paintings. It strikes me as a wonderful and very intimate way to display art.
Strip away the gothic embellishment and you have a perfectly proportioned space to display works from any movement or style.

The Gallery

Horace did in fact design this home to be seen and delighted in welcoming visitors to the house to marvel at both the architecture and his collection.

He even created a vividly illustrated guidebook (see below) in 1784 titled ‘A description of the villa of Mr. Horace Walpole at Strawberry-Hill near Twickenham, Middlesex’.

Walpole’s self published guide to the house from 1784

Strawberry Hill’s fame spread far and wide, and its influence can be felt from the early 19th century “improvements” to Windsor Castle to the Victorian behemoths of St Pancras Station and the Houses of Parliament.

St Pancras Station: Part of the Gothic Revival movement begun by Horace a century before

After Horace’s death the home was left to his goddaughter Anne Seymour Damer.
Damer was a singular woman who defied Georgian expectation of feminine behaviour.
She drew criticism for her fashion choices of men’s jackets and shoes and pursued many passionate female friendships. Her work as a sculptor saw her lampooned by satirists who depicted her as a stout figure hammering away at her lithe subject’s testicles. (See illustration).

William Holland (publisher) (1757–1815), The Damerian Apollo. Etching, partly hand-coloured, 1789.

Horace’s Will saw her take up the position as chatelaine of Strawberry Hill.
Her long-time female friend Mary Berry (no, not that one) was also left a cottage on the estate. A thoughtful gesture from Horace that hints at an understanding of the importance of their relationship.

There survives a touching drawing of the female pair in the collection of Harvard which depicts the pair gazing affectionately at each other as they set aside their books. A scene I can easily imagine in the gilded library of their one-time home.

I would argue that the legacy of this wonderful building should not limited to bricks and mortar. By digging into its creation we glimpse a whole cast of Georgian figures who lived outside usual social norms, playing out live of “Queer” independence and creativity.

A sketch of Damer and Berry from the Lewis Walpole Library

The house is open regularly and sits within easy distance of central London.
(regular trains from Waterloo).

Fig 1. Exterior south facade of Strawberry Hill, Twickenham

I’ll begin this article by acknowledging that my subject is hardly untrodden ground.

To lovers of historic architecture Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill is a subject as dissected and analysed as the instagram behaviour of The Beckhams in January 2026.

If you don’t know the name you’ll know the visual. A striking lacy white cake of a house. A gothic confection, sited in affluent outer southwest London.
The last time I visited this bijou castle I was lucky enough to arrive just as sunshine was breaking through the clouds on a crisp winter morning. A scene as enchanting now as it would have been two and a half centuries ago.

Though slightly less has been written on the sexual identity of the owner and the circle of creative figures who fed into its creation and those who would later take inspiration from it.

The astounding thing is that this house has so many links to those whose identities can be seen in a modern day Queer context. The more you look, the more connections you discover creating a web as intricate as the lacy details of its cathedral-like ceilings.

Subscribe now

The term queer comes in quite handy when discussing figures from this period as the later more binary terms such as gay or lesbian are often not quite appropriate.
Therefore the term queer is used in this context for those whose sexualities existed outside heterosexual norms. There are many writers who have done great work on this subject and I’ll acknowledge a few of them in my ‘further reading’ notes.

Fig 2. 18th century satirical illustration by John Dixon of 'The Old Beau in an Extasy', published by Carington Bowles in 1773. Clearly a mocking representation of a ‘Walpole style’ effeminate man.

Before analysing the story of the house, let’s take our lens out a little further and get a sense of the social timeline in England at around the time the house was designed.

Analysing queer identities in 18th century England presents a subject of stark contrasts.

On one hand there was an evident active subculture which encompassed both sexual activity and social networks. Firstly there are the numerous ‘molly houses’ present in London at this time. These venues were a cross between a members club and a brothel. Sex was definitely part of the allure of these ‘houses’ but they also provided a safe environment where men who had sex with men could socialise and relax. In the same district the south side of Moorfields became so associated with homosexual activity that it was christened ‘Sodomites' Walk’.

Though the reason we know so much about queer subcultures is due to the efforts made to stamp out what was seen as an epidemic of sin. The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in 1691 with the intention of policing debauchery in the capital.

Their most high profile raid came in 1726 on an establishment in Field Lane, Holborn run by the wonderfully named Mother Clap. Three men were hanged and the proprietor was fined and sentenced to stand in the pillory in Smithfield.

Horace and his circle would have been aware of these high profile cases, though the threat to queer men’s lives was illustrated far closer to home. In 1751 Horace’s brother Edward was accused of sodomy by an 18 year old former servant. He was subsequently acquitted and his blackmailers punished though modern scholars have surmised it is likely he was guilty.

Fig 3. Portrait of Horace Walpole, 1741, by Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757). Executed when Horace was on his Grant Tour.

All of this must have left an indelible mark on the effeminate Horace who was in his early 30s.

Would it be unusual for the youngest son to be scarred by seeing his brother’s near brush with infamy? Perhaps telling himself he must stamp out any trace of sex to embrace a life of cultivated artfulness. Whatever the motivation, this is certainly what he did. It might also explain why Horace was relatively guarded in his letters (of which there are many).

He began his cultural training with the standard rite of passage for all upper class men; a Grand Tour. He was accompanied by Thomas Gray, a younger and much poorer school friend.
Gray would remain a bachelor throughout his life forming numerous attachments to beautiful young men.

It’s possible to surmise the two were lovers at the time of their trip. They certainly seem to have had a lovers tiff half way through as they abruptly parted ways with Gray bolting for Venice. Happily they would patch things up in later years with Horace publishing Grey’s most famous poem, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’. As is still the case, it pays well to have wealthy ex-boyfriends.

It was whilst on their trip that Walpole would spend time with an older man who would leave a lasting mark on the impressionable 23 year old.

Sir Horace Mann served as a British diplomat (and possible spy) for the Dukes of Tuscany and kept an English court of some style at his home in Florence. Mann was never subject to any scandal but was frequently teased for his effeminate manners.

Fig 4. Palazzo Manetti, Florence. Home to Sir Horace Mann and a coterie of queer exiles

We can gain an insight into this ‘queer court’ of exiled aristos and handsome creatives thanks to a painting from 1763 painted by Thomas Patch. (see Fig X)

Patch had left Rome after a homosexual scandal and here depicts Mann’s salon in the 15th century Palazzo Manetti. Before us we have a cast of bewigged and brocaded gentlemen. The tone is one of fond caricature, with Mann depicted in a striking blue ensemble.

Alongside the host we glimpse another (!) English aristocrat lying low after a gay sex scandal.
This is John Tylney, 2nd Earl Tylney (seated fourth from left) and owner of the fabulous Wanstead House; at one time the most beautiful home in England.

Tylney had inherited the baroque pile some 13 years before. Though this irresponsible earl was a profligate and reckless bachelor who found himself in hot water after being discovered with not one but two male servants.

He promptly fled to Italy eventually settling in Naples where he would eventually die. As a slightly gothic side note the ‘bachelor earls’ heart was shipped back after his death.
It now sits in a murano glass receptacle at St Mary the Virgin in Wanstead, forever exiled from the adjacent family tomb.

Fig 5. British Gentlemen at Sir Horace Mann's Home in Florence (circa 1765), including John Tylney, 2nd Earl Tylney; currently at the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Walpole would spend much time at Palazzo Manetti and whilst the imposing renaissance facade sits aesthetically at odds with the delicate Strawberry Hill it undoubtedly left a mark on Walpole as a blueprint for how to live.

Here was a well regarded aristocrat who had shaken off the role of English ‘Lord of the manor’ but was still respected and indeed venerated by English society (Mann was crucial in providing information to the British government on the exiled Stuart court in Rome).

It was perhaps whilst staying at the Palazzo that an idea would form in the mind of this young aesthete. Could he create a beautiful and fashionable home which could both be toasted by polite society *and* provide a safe space for a Queer coterie?

Join me next week for Part Two as we see how Horace would make this dream a reality.

Some further reading

Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies by Laura Thompson

Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers by Anthony Delaney

The Angel and the Cad: Love, Loss and Scandal in Regency England by Geraldine Roberts

The exterior of 13 Clarendon Road, taken in early 2026.

April 1919. At the Old Bailey a trial is being conducted that has scandalised England.

The accused stands in the dock. He is a handsome well built man in his late thirties with a clipped moustache. A decorated Lieutenant Colonel and before this a medical academic at the London University.

His name is Norman Rutherford and at this point he stands trial for committing murder in cold blood. The accused is requested to stand in expectation of the jury’s verdict. The room grows silent as the judge clears his throat; ready to pass his sentence…

Though for us to understand this crime we need to go back to a January evening three months prior and to a street in the fashionable neighbourhood of Holland Park.

13 Clarendon Rd in 1919.

On the west side of Clarendon Road at the corner of Ladbroke Road stands a grand detached villa set back from the street. At first glance no’s 13 and 15 appear to be one home though they are in fact two. Designed as such in the 1840s when the area was still countryside it is likely they were intended for wealthy tenants of distinction.
They form an imposing structure complete with four pilasters topped by decorative orbs which give a “triumphal arch” appearance to the house.

If we were standing across from the house on the evening our story begins we might well see the dignified figure of Sir Malcolm Seton standing in his smoking room on the first floor.
He looks out from the window watching the infrequent passers-by drift down the street below.

The home of a gentleman. Sir Malcolm Cotter Cariston Seton by Walter Stoneman
bromide print, 1933. © National Portrait Gallery, London

It is 9pm and a cold evening so few people are about. His wife sits in the same room reading a novel. The lights are low and the glow from the fire adds a rosy hue to the room.

It is a comforting and delightful scene that contrasts with the international mood of the last few years.

Just two months before this the first world war had ended in a forest in northern France. Here on Ferdinand Foch’s private train the armistice was signed, bringing an end to four years of horrifying bloodshed. Demobilisation was slow with many soldiers not returning to England for months. At a time when psychological introspection was far from encouraged there were stirrings of public conversation about the damage wrought on the minds of returning heroes.
The new term of “shell shock” had been coined in 1915 by British psychologist Captain Charles Myers and was beginning to gain traction in the minds of the nation.

As Sir Malcolm looks out from the window he may catch sight of a tall dark haired man striking a match to light a cigarette on the dark street. If he does, he gives it no serious thought.

Sir Malcolm is disturbed from his reverie by a knock from the door.
Both he and his wife are cheered to see the genial face of Major Miles Seton greeting them. Miles is a cousin of Sir Malcolm and often stays with them when he is in town.
The Major is a likeable fellow bearing more than a passing resemblance to that well known sidekick Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Major Miles Seton.

The three are comfortable in each other’s presence. Enough it seems for Sir Malcolm to attend to some urgent business at his writing table in the corner of the room.

At 10 o’clock there is a ring at the front door and a maid duly informs the master of the house that one Mr Rutherford is downstairs asking to see Major Miles Seton.
The Major at once stands, vanishing to meet his guest downstairs. It is possible he was prepared for a row and did not want his hosts embarrassed.

15 minutes elapses before the house reverberated to the sounds of gunfire. Sir Malcolm and his wife rush downstairs where they discover the crumpled body of Sir Miles.

The scene which next occurs at this point could have been plucked from any detective or crime novel from the period and was recounted in detail at the trial.

Standing above the body of the major was the calm figure of Lieutenant Colonel Norman Rutherford.
Sir Malcolm is reported to have asked “Did you do this?”.
After replying in the affirmative the visitor is said to have muttered “I only wish I had another bullet for myself”.

The tragedy as depicted in The Illustrated News, 1919.

Skip forward to April of that year and Rutherford is standing trial at the Old Bailey.
What emerged painted a picture of wartime marital strain and a psychologically controlling and violent husband.

Norman Rutherford and his wife Alice’s relationship had begun on a bad foot after her father (a wealthy Yorkshire magnate) expressed strong disapproval of his daughter’s chosen beau.

Norman had proceeded to abduct Alice from the family home in Yorkshire, dragging her to Scotland for their clandestine wedding. A spell in South Africa followed, but by the outbreak of WWI they were back on home soil with Norman teaching embryology and comparative anatomy at London University.

Lieutenant Colonel Norman Rutherford.

Once enrolled to serve it seems that Rutherford excelled in this new phase of his life.
Decorated for his work at Ypres in June 1917 he had no doubt experienced first-hand the horrors of the frontline.

A number of letters from Norman’s wife Alice to her husband in France are read out in court which illustrate the fraught state of their marriage.

They begin in July 1918 when the writer notes the strain in their relationship but is hopeful about their ability to patch things up. A particular line states that Alice wants her husband to ‘come back to me to help’ her ‘complete the task’ they ‘undertook together.’

One assumes this is not a desperate plea for Norman to help assemble some garden furniture but more a metaphorical allusion to rebuilding their relationship.

Though come September, divorce is being mentioned and by October things have gone very sour with Alice writing ‘You mean to fight for the children, but you will never get them.’
She notes that Norman has been damaged in the minds of his offspring by his ‘violent temper and frequent ill-usage’ of her. Considering Norman’s later conduct it is not a stretch to imagine a household where mental intimidation and physical violence were common.

The final letter is postmarked November 29th where Alice begs ‘Please help me, for divorce is the only means of my obtaining happiness.’ One imagines it was a less than happy Christmas in the Rutherford home that December.
It was in this context that Norman cross-examined his servants to learn of Major Miles Seton’s numerous visits to their Carshalton home in Surrey. Seton was a friend of both Alice and Norman. Post-Edwardian society took a dim view of a married woman receiving a single gentleman on her own but I see no strong evidence of this being a romantic relationship.
Alice was trapped in a loveless marriage to a controlling brute and it’s no wonder she might have asked a family friend’s advice on how to proceed with pressing for divorce.

A censorious public took another view. In the press Alice was painted as a scarlet woman conducting an amorous liaison with a family friend whilst her gallant husband served his country.

One more witness was called to impart their perspective on the mind of the accused. This was the ‘alienist’ who had been seeing Rutherford as a patient. An ‘alienist’ was the term used for a psychologist and gives a good idea of how mental introspection was viewed in early 20th century England. The specialist was so called because it was understood that when patients were mentally troubled they were experiencing thoughts ‘alien’ to their usual (and therefore sane) self.

Ordnance survey map of the street. No 13 is highlighted in red.

It seems that Norman had confessed to his psychiatrist to having thoughts of murdering the Major many weeks before that fateful January night.
Whilst Norman’s positive attributes before serving seem limited he had undoubtedly been impacted by what he had experienced in France.

Across his time serving Rutherford had been fought on the front line, been “buried alive” and overseen the operation of a dressing station in the third battle of Ypres in 1917.
His role at that specific conflict, for which he earned the Distinguished Service Order, would have placed him at the scene of unimaginable horrors. Men whose limbs had been torn from their bodies or those had been blinded or maimed by the shelling. For context, there were up to 300,000 casualties at this one battle.

As we return to the judge at the Old Bailey we can imagine the thoughts swirling around Norman’s mind. As Major Miles was a member of the establishment and the killing was clearly pre-meditated, Norman could have expected the harshest penalty; execution by hanging.

So when he was announced as insane and sentenced to Broadmoor Hospital ( a high-security psychiatric unit for offenders with mental illness ) the court room would have reverberated with shock.

At that point my mind is drawn to Alice. She is unlikely to have wanted a death sentence served but a term in a hospital such as Broadmoor is still a light sentence for a crime of his severity.
In the years following the trial she would unsuccessfully pursue for divorce from her husband. Due to his being classed as insane this right was refused. She changed her name by deed poll and lived to be almost 100, eventually remarrying in later years.

Rutherford authored an account on the first world war whilst incarcerated (published in 1928 without a named author) and when released in 1928 worked mainly overseas (Canada, Austria and Persia). Modern readers might be shocked to learn he was never removed from the UK medical register.

So draws to an end to this sorry tale of intrigue and scandal. The house still stands. Its exterior practically unchanged from that dramatic evening in 1919.

Subscribe now

To any practicing architect working in turn of the century London there was one huge problem.

Filth.

I’m not talking about the sort that Mary Whitehouse got so irate about.

We’re discussing dirt. Specifically smoke, smut and smog. Air quality had reached an all time low in the late 19th century and it would play a leading part in the construction of one Holland Park mansion; Debenham House by Halsey Ricardo.

So just why were London skies so filthy? One of the main factors was due to the popularity of coal as a heat source and the slow uptake of gas for domestic purposes.

Interestingly the former factor was partly an aesthetic issue. Smokeless fuel such as coke had been in heavy industrial usage since the 1870s though critics noted the ugliness of the cold white flame in contrast to the yellow cosy fire given off by coal.

After 1891 the situation improved slightly with the introduction of the Public Health Act (which penalised businesses for emissions of excessive amounts of smoke) but the issue was still very much on the minds of the cities architects.

One individual who gave great serious thought to the problem was the Arts and Crafts architect Halsey Ricardo. Establishing his practice in 1878 he worked in partnership with the artist William De Morgan whose highly decorative tiles would become the last word in fashionable aesthetic movement interiors.

Ricardo could see the massive advantage posed by facing buildings in a material which wouldn’t tarnish or degrade with smoke as well as wind or rain. Writing in The Builder in 1894 on the completion of a house at no 57 Melbury Road he noted that by using glazed bricks “one had the satisfaction of knowing that the house is built of durable materials”. He concludes that by “washing the bricks down” the initial effect “can be maintained” for the long term.

It was this house which provided the introduction between Ricardo and the client who would give him one of the most important commissions of his career.

Portrait of Ernest Ridley Debenham, for whom the house was created

Ernest Ridley Debenham was born into a family with one of the most profitable retail enterprises in London. Debenham and Freebody had evolved from a small tailoring business founded in the 18th century to become one of the largest retailers in the garments trade.

When Ernest began renting no 57 he was in his mid 30s and no doubt began to make plans for building a home big enough to fit his burgeoning family (he would eventually have eight children).

No 57 is undoubtedly a more restrained structure than Debenham House but it shares a number of features. Ernest would have noted its striking use of brown glazed brick (which still glints in the sunshine to this day) combined with its blocky Queen Anne silhouette.

An Ilustration of 57 Melbury Rd from The Builder, July 1894

There is a story that when appointing Ricardo as architect Mr Debenham said the words “ I want a palace and I want you to build it for me”. I’ve taken the liberty of imagining how that first conversation might have played out.

Scene: Ernest’s study at No 57, Melbury Road.
The middle aged Halsey Ricardo is shown in to Ernest’s office. He has a noble face with high set cheekbones and sports an impressive beard. Ernest (five years high junior) is the picture of the prosperous but wordly Edwardian man of commerce.

Ernest: Welcome Mr Ricardo! Thank you for coming out of your way this morning. As I mentioned in my letter I have a project that I’d like to talk to you about. You see, I know that you’re a man who understands both style and comfort. The bathrooms here for instance are a joy. Though I wonder if you’d like a project that goes a step further.

Halsey: How so Mr Ricardo?

Ernest: Mr Ricardo, I want you to build me a house the likes of which London has never seen. I’m talking a palace devoted to the arts where every surface is covered in tiles, mosaics and carvings. I’ve just purchased a large plot just five minutes walk from here on Addison Rd.
Goes without saying we’ll need to have plenty of bedrooms. We already have two girls and me and Cecily have always wanted a large family. Moving is such a great expense so ideally we would really be able to settle long term.
Which brings me on to my next thought. I understand you have a partnership with De Morgan right. What about if we have his ceramics covering every important passageway and bathroom in the house?

Halsey: Might I just stop you Mr Debenham. Forgive me but without seeming to be rude.
This sounds wonderful but you do understand the great expense of such an undertaking…

Ernest: Don’t worry. If I’m settling there for the rest of my days you can have your budget.
So what do you say? Are you game?

From that conversation it’s easy to imagine a frenzy of activity. From initial sketches to samples from manufacturers around the UK.

The exterior of Debenham House, Image credit Russell Simpson.

Ricardo envisaged a glazed exterior created in bright colours. Within years of Debenham House being completed it would be affectionately nicknamed ‘Peacock House’. The glimmering green and turquoise bricks would come from the Leeds firm of Burmantoft’s with the cream carrara tiles from Royal Doulton in Stoke-on-Trent.

For the interior the theme of brightly coloured ceramics continues with the designs taking on a thoroughly eastern character.

The Interior mosaiced hall of Debenham House, photographed in the 21st century.

The star attraction here is the central domed hall which must count as one of the most splendid Arts & Crafts spaces in the capital. The interior of the dome was covered in mosaics designed by Ricardo and carried out by one-time Pre-Raphaelite muse and all round stunner Gaetano Meo (see below) who had supplied similar creations for St Paul’s Cathedral.
A personal touch is supplied by portraits of Debenham’s daughters in roundels incorporated into the design.

Simeon Soloman’s portrait of Bachus modelled by mosaicist Gaetano Meo

The initial reception to this colourful addition to the neat villas of Holland Park was positive with a critic in The Builder commenting that the house was “a most interesting architectural experiment” though they do note that the “series of pilasters springing from three arches” is “not quite domestic enough” and gives a “suggestion of a small public building”. This off hand comment oddly foreshadows the future for the house which was given up by the family in 1952 following the death of Ernest.
It would later serves as a school for dance and drama and later as the home of Mental Health charity, The Richmond Fellowship.

Ricardo’s concerns about the longevity of building materials were well placed though ultimately unnecessary. Less than fifty years after Debenham House was completed the capital came to a standstill in the infamous great smog of 1952. This freak weather incident ground the city to a complete standstill for five days and its reported to have responsible for the lives of around 12,000 people. Improvements came after the 1952 incident with clean air acts of 1956 and 68. Slowly but surely the capital’s air quality did improve resulting in reduction in harm to the capitals exteriors.

As Ricardo correctly predicted the passage of over a hundred years has barely aged the exterior of Debenham House by a day. To passers by on the quiet wide street vista of Addison road it presents a joyous and unexpected sight.