Rempstone Hall, Leicestershire (Image: Country Life)
In the early part of the 20th-century one option for a country house to avoid demolition was to be converted to institutional use. In this way, many houses became schools, hospitals or offices, but also some became religious institutions – for example, in the 1940s and 50s, Gloucestershire lost seven houses but twenty-two were converted to institutional use. Now with property prices rising but membership of convents falling, houses used for holy purposes are now being sold – and could once again be homes. Rempstone Hall in Leicestershire, currently the Holy Cross Convent, is on the market for £2.5m, as the nuns move to a purpose-built home nearby.
Rempstone Hall is a classically beautiful Georgian red-brick house, originally built in 1792 for William Gregory Williams, a major local landowner. Various families passed though the house usually keeping it as a secondary house to much grander seats elsewhere. By the beginning of the 20th-century it was unoccupied as probably, as with many other houses, at risk of demolition as the houses became surplus to requirements and a drain on finances already under pressure. Rempstone Hall was saved in 1909 when P.W. Carr moved in and made significant additions including a new north wing and a fine stable block before selling it in 1920 to the Derbyshire family from whom the Convent bought it in 1979 for just £110,000.
During their time at Rempstone, the nuns have removed the exterior stucco to expose the warm red-bricks giving the house a bold appearance, the two red blocks framing an elegant loggia which faces the gently sloping lawn. At 21,000sqft this is undeniably a large house with 20 bedrooms, a large entrance hall with possibly Jacobean staircase, a sizable chapel and many other rooms. One downside of institutional use is the rather functional decor and Rempstone is no exception, with lino, acres of red carpet and various partitions which the new owner would need to remove; total renovation costs are estimated to be in the region of £500,000.
This fine and beautiful house, well-located in the Midlands, with 60-acres and several estate buildings, cries out for someone with taste to restore this house back to being a family home – which is helpfully the outcome favoured by the local planners.
To secure the future of what is considered to be one of the finest Georgian houses in Lancashire, the owners of Lytham Hall have unveiled an ambitious £5m restoration plan.
The house was built for Thomas Clifton by the famous architect John Carr of York between 1752-64 and incorporated elements of the existing Jacobean house. It remained the Clifton family home until the 1960s when it was finally sold to Guardian Royal Exchange Insurance who owned it until 1997, and is now run by Heritage Trust for the North West on a 99-year lease on behealf of the owners, Lytham Town Trust.
The £5m plans are the first part of an eventual £10m plan to upgrade every aspect of the house and estate to provide holiday accomodation, a tea room and conference facilities. Although a shame that the house is no longer a home, it’s encouraging to find plans which respect the history and architectural importance of the house as they seek ways to ensure a secure future.
Often the course of the country estate over the last 100 years has been for the land to be gradually sold off, starting with the outlying areas, and moving closer until just the house and it’s immediate gardens remain intact. At Leonardslee in Sussex the process was eventually taken one step further with the house being sold off. This, however, may about to be reversed.
Sir Edmund Loder bought the manor house and 225-acre gardens from his inlaws in 1889 and soon opened them to the public. Over the next five generations, the Loder family added to the planting and landscaping to create what is now one of the only 163 grade-I listed gardens in the country. Despite the family still owning the gardens the grade-II listed Italianate manor house, built in 1853 and featuring a 900 sq ft central hall decorated with Ionic columns, was sold off separately in the 1980s and became offices. The gardens grew in reputation so it was something of a shock when in April 2008 it was announced that they were being put up for sale by Robin Loder for £5m through the estate agency Savills. Cleverly, the company who owned the house also announced they were open to offers at around £3.25m for the house.
The Times is now reporting that after nearly two years on the market, the gardens have been sold to a private businessman and are likely to close to the public. They are also reporting that the house may also be under offer at £2.75m to the same businessman giving him a perfect opportunity to once again recreate a stunning small estate which, with the addition of the house, could be worth in the region of £10m. Though a sad day for the many garden-lovers who have made many a pilgrimage to wander among the wallabies, it’s an encouraging reversal of the trend for houses to lose the control of the landscape which so often perfectly frames them.
Although Britain is a relatively small island it still has the capacity to hide some spectacular buildings which, unless opened to the public, can remain a secret. One such house, featured this week in Country Life magazine (February 17) is Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, thought to be the largest private residence in Europe and for Marcus Binney “unquestionably the finest Georgian house in England”.
Built over a 25 year period from 1724 for Thomas Watson-Wentworth, Marquess of Rockingham, it is twice as wide as Buckingham Palace and boasts over a 1,000 windows, 365 rooms and five miles of underground passageways. The stable block appears to be a large country house but is merely the lodging for up to 100 horses. Inside the main house, the Earls FitzWilliam enjoyed a priceless art collection which included works by Titian, Van Dyck, Guido, and Raphael.
Yet this was a house to be blighted by the bitter class-war hatred of the post-war Labour government and questions of inheritance. In April 1946, heavy machinery moved into Wentworth Park to pointlessly mine low-grade coal right up to the back door of the house on the express instruction of Manny Shinwell, the minister of fuel and power. A old-school left-winger, Shinwell was given options to save the parkland and gardens but was determined to press on despite representations from the local miners who had been very well treated by successive generations of FitzWilliams.
Once mining finished the FitzWilliams leased the house as a training college and retreated to 40-rooms but even then lived mostly elsewhere. Questions about the legitimacy of the inheritance led the last Earl to order a vast bonfire in 1972 of 16 tons of family papers, some dating back to medieval times, which burnt for three weeks.
Yet, despite its size the house escaped the fate of so many large houses in England and merely languished in obscurity. Sold with just 30-acres in 1988 by the daughter of the last Earl it was bought by Wensley Haydon-Baillie who promised investment but in 1998 it was repossessed. It was then sold for the unbelievably low price of £1.5m (equivalent to just £7 per sq ft) to the architect Clifford Newbold whose careful restoration work has been praised and beautifully photographed in this weeks Country Life.
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*Update* May 2011 – I have written a more extensive write-up on the architectural history of the house in response to the episode of ‘The Country House Revealed‘
There is always a temptation when any country house and estate comes to the market for the land to be built over with residential developments which provide a quick and relatively easy profit – even if it does ruin forever the setting of the house. Usually the houses are snuck through under the cover of ‘enabling development’ with a promise that this will secure the long-term future of the house. Grade-II* listed Sandhill Park in Somerset is an interesting example of where this fails if the development is build in an inappropriate location and a council who apparently haven’t ensured that at least some of the profits are invested in the house.
The main house at Sandhill Park was built around 1720, for the John Perriam, the MP for Minehead and inherited in 1767 by his grandson John Lethbridge (who was knighted in 1804) and remained in the Lethbridge family until 1913. On inheriting Sandhill Park in 1815, Sir Thomas Buckler Lethbridge, the 2nd Baronet (b. 1778 – d.1849) added a grand portico to the main house and large wings to the rear. The main house was substanially rebuilt in the 19th century giving it the distinctive and elegant sandstone ashlar look it retains today. These changes were funded through debt which burdened the family for years but ensured that no further major changes were made. However, following the death in 1902 of Sir Wroth Acland Lethbridge, the 4th Baronet, the family moved out and the house was let until it was sold, along with 4,000 acres, in 1913. It was subsequently bought in 1929 by Somerset County Council for use as a hospital and was requisitioned as a military hospital during WWII. After the war, it became a psychiatric hospital until it closed in 1992 since which the house has remained unused.
The assumption appears to have been that the house could not be returned to being a family home which appears to have given the green light to the estate being built on and the conversion of the house with further building works to the rear, again turning a wonderful country house into a mere afterthought in a large development. Planning permission was initially refused for what is now known as the Lethbridge Park housing estate which has been built to the east of the main house with the nearest property being just 100-metres away. The only access for this estate is a small road to the north – the opposite direction to the town – which forces all traffic through a country lane before joining the main road back to Bishops Lydeard. It’s not possible to walk to the town so even to get a paper the residents must use their car. Surely it would have been better to site the estate away from the house and use the parkland nearest the town? The isolated residents gain no benefit from being so close to the house and the council’s decision has merely ensured more traffic on the local roads whilst compromising the setting of the main house.
This development has made it harder to sell the house as a home as the roofs of the new houses are visible from the main house. But perhaps this was part of the plan as the Knight Frank sales particulars explain that planning permission has been granted for the conversion of the main house into apartments with many more houses being built to the rear of the house. However, as the house and 145-acres are now for sale for £2.75m it appears that after completing the residential development, the owners have decided to pocket the profits, sell the ‘difficult’ part and run. This is apparently a prime example of a fine, though misused house being failed by the local council who are supposed to protect it. How did they get planning permission for such an inappropriately sited development? Why did the council not insist that the house be restored? Why are the old derelict hospital buildings still standing – surely they should have been removed as a minimum? The council seem to have decided that it’s better to have two inappropriately sited developments rather than looking after an important part of their local architectural heritage.
Update – 22 November – Sandhill Park seriously damaged by fire
Fire at Sandhill Park - 22 Nov 2011 (Image: Lucy Robert Shaw / This is Somerset)
Sadly, as so often happens with uninhabited country houses, Sandhill Park has suffered a serious fire which has affected large parts of the house. The mysterious blaze started on the first floor (and considering there are no services to the house, this has to be suspicious) and quickly spread through the rest of the first and upper floors. The huge quantities of water the fire brigade would have had to have used have almost certainly brought down the ceilings in the rooms below and the now serious damp house will be extremely vulnerable to wet rot. If it is proved that the fire was arson, it’s a terrible indictment of the NHS for abandoning the property and the local council for approving such a ridiculous housing scheme which has made it harder to sell the house – compounded by their ineffectiveness in getting the old hospital buildings removed and the house restored in the first place.
I can only hope the owner was insured and is able to take protective measures to mitigate the fire and water damage and to somehow get ownership of this fine house into the hands of someone who can care for and restore it. Anything less would be an architectural tragedy and would reflect badly on those involved. However, if history is any guide, I suspect we will shortly see an application to demolish, claiming that it is ‘dangerous’ (usually this is not remotely true and just a developers excuse) and more bland housing will march across this once fine parkland, a poor memorial to the heritage of the town.
The Country Seat 