A new development in the long running saga of Brook House in Tiptree, Essex has opened the possibility for some good news. As had been reported here before, the lovely red-brick house in the heart of Tiptree was subject to an application to demolish from the owner who claimed that it was beyond repair.
However, photos taken recently show that the house is actually in very good condition and pressure from heritage organisations such as SAVE Britain’s Heritage have led to a spotlight being shone on the plans.
It’s now been reported that the application has been withdrawn. It’s the slow, piecemeal loss of fine houses such as this over the last fifty years which has left our towns all the poorer visually. Hopefully there will now be discussions where the starting premise is that the house should be restored as an important part of Tiptree’s architectural heritage.
The Historic Houses Association have highlighted that there is an estimated backlog of repairs totalling £390m. In recognition of local and sometimes national importance of these houses and their role in stimulating local economic activity, Edward Harley, president of the HHA has urged politicians to provide sympathetic tax breaks and also to allow those house with significiant public benefit to be allowed to apply for lottery funds.
When the historic Ranton Abbey was accidentally set alight and gutted in 1942 by the Dutch troops stationed there, it was likely that it would go the way of many other houses and simply be demolished. Yet the Earls of Lichfield, who owned the 300-acre estate, simply left it and focused on turning the land into a first-class shoot, allowing the house to slowly collapse, leaving just the ivy-clad walls visible today.
The death of the 5th Earl, the famous photographer Patrick Lichfield, in 2005, prompted the family to look again at the estate. However, rather than simply sell it they decided to obtain planning permission for the building of a new house and have now put both for sale at £3.5m. Although an obvious course of action, the choices made seem a bit odd. The new house is strongly Palladian in design but the projections produced so far have it sited so close to the red-brick shell of the old house, and the grey stone of the church, that it seems to have almost landed there by accident. It certainly does not seem to appear at home in this location and appears almost arbitrary, resulting in three large architectural elements fighting for prominence in a small area.
As the respected architectural writer Marcus Binney says in the ‘Bricks and Mortar’ supplement of Friday’s Times newspaper, surely the better option would be to restore the original house. This would bring back the balance which existed before and remove at once the obvious difficulties of leaving the old house as a giant garden ornament to compete with the new house. Whoever buys the estate and planning permission will hopefully think again about this scheme and look seriously at restoration.
Strawberry Hill, Middlesex (Image: World Monuments Fund)
Although Horace Walpole’s large and impressive art collection initially remained at Strawberry Hill after his death in 1797, it was later sold off by his heir in a 24-day sale in 1842. With the sale, one of the best collections of it’s time of art, furniture, cermanics, glassware and manuscripts was scattered.
Now the Strawberry Hill Trust who look after the house are trying to find some of the objects in the collection with a view to borrowing or even purchasing some of the items. In particular, if you know the whereabouts of:
Roman funerary urn;
mirror with portrait of Viscount Malpas;
ornate Turkish dagger;
Gothic dining table;
basalt Bust of Vespasian
For more details about each of the items, see the story at The Art Newspaper:
Empty since 1942, Lowther Castle was used during WWII as a weapons research lab and the grounds as a practice ground for tanks who did their best to destroy the ornaments, fountains, paths and gardens. The house was not lived in again and in 1957 was unroofed and abandoned as a shell, leaving it as an ornament in the gardens of the 3,000-acre estate. The castle deteriorated over the passing decades until it was overgrown and the central tower was in danger of collapse and was featured in the 2008 Buildings at Risk register. However, this decay is about to be arrested and ambitious plans are afoot to partially restore the tower and invest in the gardens and park.
An application has been lodged to restore the gardens including the kilometre-long central avenue and create an indoor garden within the shell of the house once this has been stabilised. The work is expected to cost up to £9m but will attract 160,000 vistors a year to the attraction, generating £10m for the local economy.
Although the loss of the castle as a house is lamentable it’s encouraging to see that the shell and estate still have such value which will hopefully secure the future for this elegant building for future generations. Who knows, one day it may be possible for the Lowthers to restore the castle and move back in?
The Country Seat 