A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not, -'Z'

Z - Zimbabwe House

Zimbabwe House, London

This Grade II Listed Building on the Strand is now occupied by the Zimbabwean Embassy.

It was designed by Charles Hoden in 1907-1908 as the Headquarters of the British Medical Association. It featured naked statues by Joseph Epstein.

For the startled Edwardian public the full-frontal nudity, not to mention the wrinkled flesh of a grand maternal woman holding a baby, proved too much. A campaign against the statues began, with protests from a group called the National Vigilance Society and a raging debate in the press. The Evening Standard declared that ‘no careful father’ would let his daughter see such depravity,

The statues remain today in a mutilated state following the removal in the 1930s of projecting features after pieces, some say of a phallus, fell off on to a gentleman passerby.

What a way to end A-Z this year.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real,some not - 'X'

X - EXmoor House

I hope you will agree that this is one way to deal with the troublesome letter 'X'.

Exmoor House, Dulverton, Somerset
(20 July 2010, by Nilfanion - CC BY-SA 3.0)

Exmoor House was built as the Dulverton Workhouse. The golden lettering above the door declares that date to have been  -

The west half of the 'T' shaped layout was the men's and boys' accommodation with the women and girls in the east.

After 1930 only vagrants' casual wards remained; later it was used as the Exmoor training centre for girls.

It then became the Rural District Offices. Today it is the Headquarters of the Exmoor National Park Authority.

Dulverton lies in the valley of the River Barle; river and valley are a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The river passes under a pre-historic clapper bridge. The name clapper derives from the medieval Latin "claperius" - a pile of stones. The bridge appeared in a commemorative series of Great Britain's postage stamps in 2015.

Tarr Steps

It's now a scheduled ancient monument and dates from c1000BC.

The stone slabs making up the bridge weigh up to 5 tons each and according to local legend were placed there by the devil to win a bet.

Now doesn't 'X' have associations with the devil??

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'W'

W - Top Withens

This is another house I had never heard of.

Top Withens, Haworth circa 1900
(Source: Law, Alice 1923; p149 "Patrick Bramwell Bronte." - Public Domain)

I suppose the Haworth name should have given me a clue.

The house is now a roofless ruin but it does have an explanatory plaque.

Top Withens - Bronte Society Plaque
(18 May 2005 - by Dave Dunsford - Public domain)

It's a long time since I read 'Wuthering Heights' but early in Chapter 1 Mr Lockwood finds out that -

"Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff's dwelling. "Wuthering" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones."

You have to read on to find out more as I shall also have to.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'V'

V - The Vyne

I first I heard about this 16th century country house at Sherborne St John, near Basingstoke was on a very recent 'Flog It' TV show on the BBC.

The Vyne
(30 June 2015 - By Martinv - CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Vyne was built originally for Henry VIII's Lord Chamberlain.The portico on the north front was added in 1854.

Sir Charles Chute bequeathed it to the National Trust in 1956 and each year it now hosts concerts, plays and family events.

It houses The Vyne Ring or Ring of Silvianus, a gold ring probably dating from the 4th century found in a ploughed field in 1785. The property of the Roman Silvianus, it was stolen by a person named Senicianus.

Decades later, and miles away at Lydney in Gloucestershire, a tablet was found at the Roman site known as Dwarf's Hill. This contains an inscribed curse. Silvianus tells the god Nodens that his ring has been stolen and he knows who by; he wants Nodens to sort him out, "Among those who bear the name of Senicianus to none grant health until he bring back the ring to the temple of Nodens."

In 1929, archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler called in J R R Tolkien to advise on the name of the God. Days later Tolkien apparently  began writing "Lord of the Rings".

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'U'

U - Uncle Tom's Cabin and ?

From Uncle Tom’s humble cabin to Brideshead Castle, fictional dwellings have often played a vital role in a novel’s success..

During the American Civil War, President Lincoln is reported to have said to an author, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!”

The author was Harriet Beecher Stowe; the book, once advertised on a poster as “The Greatest Book of the Age”, was Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Stowe in an angry reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

 Full page illustration by Hammatt Billings for Uncle Tom's Cabin [First Edition: Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1852]. Shows characters of Eliza, Harry, Chloe, Tom, and Old Bruno.

George Orwell described Uncle Tom’s Cabin as “the supreme example of the ‘good bad’ book…..also deeply moving and essentially true.” 

Like the book multiple film versions have told the story of the fleeing slaves, the death of little Eva, and eventually the death of Uncle Tom at the hands of the evil Simon Legree. It is more difficult to visualise the cabin of the title as it only features in an early chapter of the book entitled “An Evening in Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. 

The description of it and its contents shows how sparse it was: “The cabin was a small log building, adjoining the master's house. The front, covered by a large scarlet bignonia and a multiflora rose, left hardly any of the rough logs visible. Inside, a bed in one corner was covered with a snowy spread; and by its side was a piece of carpeting; that corner was the drawing-room.

“In the other corner was a humbler bed, designed for use. Some brilliant scriptural prints and a drawn, coloured portrait of General Washington adorned the wall over the fireplace. A rough bench was situated in the corner. A table with rheumatic limbs, covered with a cloth, and brilliantly patterned cups and saucers, was drawn out in front of the fire.”

[The above text is taken from my article, 'Houses in Fiction', published in The Lady magazine in October 2008.]

And now to the ? I could have written about another house for U. Can you recognise it from this extract?

"Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me."

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'T'

T - Tolethorpe Hall

Tolethorpe Hall, Little Casterton, Rutland
(By Dave Crosby - 22 June 2013 - CC BY-SA 3.0)

This is the venue of the Rutland Open Air Theatre, the 'home' of the Stamford Shakespeare Company.

This June they will be performing 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' and 'Much Ado About Nothing'.

The first manor house on the site was built by the Norman de Tolethorpe family in the 11th century The setting of the hall overlooks parkland with the River Gwash running near by.

I cannot say that I have ever visited the hall, but before we left the area in the early 1960s I had helped to clean out the Gwash further upstream. I also played cricket against the Tolethorpe Park team.

The Stamford Shakespeare Company acquired the then near derelict hall in 1977. I'll confess that we have also never been fortunate enough to attend any of their performances.

For more details of this year's programme visit http://stamfordshakespeare.co.uk/ and don't forget to book dinner in Tolethorpe Hall itself.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'S'

S - Saddlers Cottage

Saddlers Cottage, High Street, Ketton

This is the house in the Rutland village of Ketton in which I was born, eighty years ago next month.

The house of grey Portland stone and roof of Collyweston slate still retains its old character. I remember it in the 1940s and 1950s when the front had a grey wooden fence, a garden gate and a double gate across the drive at the left. It was fun to swing over them from one side to the other.

On either side of a concrete path to the front door were lawns each with diamond-shaped flower beds in their centre. At nine or ten, I had to cut the edges and woe betide me if I snipped off any flowers. They were in more danger from flailing sticks used to swat bumble bees attracted by the asters.

A rambling rose covered the head-high, wire fence between the lawn and drive. A small gate from the drive near the house opened onto a stone path crossing the front to the lawns and flower beds. Right of the house was a short path from the pavement into the garden of the landlord; he kept a beady eye on us especially as our Airedale, Punch, had killed his cat when it trespassed on ‘his’ lawn.

The drive up the left continued to the back boundary fence and contained a gate through which you could enter a stonemason’s yard – but only if he wasn’t there; he wasn’t keen on kids pinching his apples and plums from trees which were covered in the dust from the monuments and gravestones he made.

Those houses you can see in the background on the left are where that stonemason's yard used to be, The tree on the left is the apple tree I used to climb.

As you can see the wooden fences have gone, replaced by those stone walls. There are no gates. It had no name.

Now a nameplate (not visible in the photo) proclaims it to be 'Saddlers Cottage'. My father's family were saddlers before the motorcar came along.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'R'

R - Ragley Hall

Ragley Hall, the ancestral seat of the Marquess of Hertford, is located in Warwickshire, eight miles west of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Ragley Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire
(18 August 2007, ex geograph.org.uk - by David Fiddes - CC BY-SA 2.0

Designed by Robert Hooke in Palladian style, it was built in 1680 for Edward Conway, 1st Earl of Conway.

Later its parkland was laid out by Capability Brown.

During WWI and WWII the hall was used as a military hospital.

!982 saw it used a location in the TV series of 'The Scarlet Pimpernel.' 

It 'became' the Palace of Versailles in the BBC Doctor Who TV series of 2006.

Ragley was also one of the earliest stately homes to be open to the public.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'Q'

Q - Quarry Bank House

The Irish born industrial entrepreneur Samuel Greg built this house for his family in 1800.

Quarry Bank House
(Styal, Cheshire - 8 August 2013, ex geograph.org.uk, by David Dixon - CC BY-SA 2.0)

This year will be the first time the public will be able to explore the house.

In 1783 Samuel Greg had built a cotton mill, Quarry Bank Mill, on the River Bollin in Cheshire.

Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire
(18 April 2015 by Francis Franklin - CC BY-SA 4.)

Quarry Bank Mill is one of Britain's greatest industrial heritage sites which shows how a complete industrial community lived.

A recent Channel 4 TV series entitled 'The Mill' was inspired by the Gregs and Quarry Bank.

The estate, Quarry Bank House and the Mill are now National Trust properties and open to the public.

A-Z Challenge - Houses, some real, some not - 'P'

P - Preston Hall

Preston Hall and Park overlooks the River Tees at Eaglescliffe. The Preston Hall Museum and its surroundings in 100 acres of beautiful park land which has undergone a make-over as the result of a Heritage Lottery Grant.

In addition to the winter gardens at the right, the museum houses displays of art, which normally includes Georges de la Tour’s famous Dice Players, armour and social history. 

Exhibitions show visitors what life was like in the 1800s with craft workers in a typical local street of the1890s. The street includes the shop of John Walker from Stockton; Walker was the inventor of the safety match.

Permanent attractions include an aviary, riverside and woodland paths. The Butterfly World  contains hundreds of butterflies from around the world and even some meerkats.

You may ride on the Teesside Small Gauge Railway or take a trip on the river to Yarm and Stockton aboard the pleasure boat, the Teesside Princess.

The park is an ideal place to walk a dog. Other facilities include safe surface play area for children, crazy golf and a café.

The walks by the river and the Quarry Wood Nature reserve are havens for wild life. 

Grassy areas are perfect for picnics and if you have a piscatorial bent the banks of the Tees provide pleasant spots for plumbing its depths.

[This is an edited post from the first A-Z Challenge I entered in 2011]

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'O'

O - Osborne House

"It's impossible to imagine a prettier spot."

That's what Queen Victoria said of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

North face of Osborne House, IOW
(CC BY-SA 3.0) 

The Osborne estate was in the hands of the Blachford family from 1705. Robert Pope Blachford  adapted an existing house there in the period 1774 to 1781.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert initially leased that house from the Blachford family before buying it in 1845. As it was too small for them Albert commissioned the master builder and developer, Thomas Cubitt to advise him.

Work on a new house began in 1846, the old house was demolished in 1848 and the new Osborne House's main wing was completed in 1851.

Prince Albert died of typhoid in 1861 and Victoria never really recovered from his death. She was to die at Osborne in 1901.

Neither Edward VII nor any other royal family member wanted the upkeep of the house and estate so , in 1902, he gave Osborne to the nation.

The house and Victoria and Albert's private rooms were sealed on Edward's orders but have been open to the public, with Queen Elizabeth's permission, since 1954.

English Heritage became responsible for management of Osborne in 1986. Since then other parts have accessible to the public as well, including the beach where Victoria used to bathe.

{ The majority of this post has been sourced from English Heritage's Osborne site.}

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - N

N - Normanby Hall

This is a house that provides a link, for me, with Lincolnshire hockey, a steelworks, Buckingham Palace and a Prime Minister's wife.

In 1960 I started work at Richard Thomas & Baldwins Redbourn Works in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire; other works in the town were run by Appleby Frodingham and Lysaghts. The Lysaghts plant was called the Normanby Park steelworks.

I played hockey for Redbourn against App-Frod and the team from Normanby Park whose pitch was located in the estate surrounding Normanby Hall.

Normanby Hall
(12 August 2006 - by E Asterion u talking to me - CC BY-SA 2.5)

This classic English mansion is 5 miles north of Scunthorpe and was built between 1825 and 1830 for Sir Robert Sheffield whose family titles include the Duke of Buckingham.

John Sheffield who had become Duke of Buckingham and Normanby in 1703 built the fine Buckingham House in London - Buckingham Palace as we know it today.

Samantha, the daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield the 8th Baronet is the wife of the recent ex-Prime Minister, David Cameron.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'M'

M - Menabilly

Menabilly, The Seat of Rashleigh, Esq. Cornwall
(Antique print - in public domain)

I first went to Fowey in Cornwall in 2007. By chance our visit coincided with the Daphne du Maurier Festival celebrating her centenary.

The opening of Rebecca, possibly Daphne's most famous novel begins - 

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited."

That opening introduced Manderley, a forbidding house with an equally forbidding, black-clad Mrs Danvers as its housekeeper. The fictional Manderley was modelled on Milton House, near Peterborough the ancestral home of the Fitzwilliam family and the house and gardens of the Cornish Menabilly. 

Menabilly House, Fowey, Cornwall
(Created Jan 1, 1920 - in public domain)

Belonging to the Rashleigh family, Menabilly, became the home for Daphne and her husband from 1943 to 1969, its history and grounds also provided input to novels later than Rebecca.

The first novel she wrote at Menabilly was The King's General. Set during the English Civil war, it was prompted by the discovery, during alterations to Menabilly in the 1820s, of a walled-up skeleton thought to have been a Cavalier. It tells the story of the love between Richard Grenville, The King's General and Royalist Honor Harris, one of du Maurier's strongest heroines.

in 1969 the year she was made a DBE, the Rashleighs wanted to return to Menabilly; despite all the money she had spent on its restoration Daphne was forced to accept a move to its dower house, Kilmarth, where she was to live until her death.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'L'

L - Lyme Hall

South face of Lyme Park House
(By Julie Anne Workman, 29 September 2013 - CC BY_SA

Lyme Hall in Cheshire was originally a hunting lodge. A house was built there in Tudor time which was turned into an Italiante palace in the early 18th Century.

Once the home of the Legh family it has become 'Pemberley' in the BBC's production of Pride and Prejudice'.

It is now managed by the National Trust,

In this 200th anniversary year of the death of Jane Austen, Lyme turns back the clock to the Regency era, where you can uncover the fascinating story of Thomas Legh, Lyme's very own Regency Indiana Jones.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'K'

K - Ketton Hall

This is a location with which I was once very familiar.

Gateway to Ketton Hall

( © Copyright Alan Murray-Rust , licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

As a boy in the Rutland village of Ketton I walked alongside the wall many times and with other lads threw sticks to knock down conkers from the horse chestnut trees that grew along its length. I'll even admit to being given a 'bunk-up' to climb over it. 

Later I walked to the gate at the far right end of the wall, then the entrance to Ketton Cricket Club. More recently it became the way in to a green burial site.

During WWII the Hall was the home of Air Marshal Sir John Baldwin, Acting Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command (1942) and Air Officer Commanding Tactical Air Force (Burma), (1943-1944).

Lady Baldwin, a member of the York Terry's confectionery family, would stop and talk to me (as a five year old) when she passed the wooden gate to my home. I never lived down telling her that my oldest brother had gone to war to stick a bayonet up Hitler's arse!

As for Ketton Hall, it was recently on the market for £2.5 million.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'I'

I - Ickworth House

For a while I thought that I would have to resort to an igloo to cool down after the usual hectic start to the Challenge.

Then I discovered:

Ickworth House, near Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk
(16 June 2004; ex geograph.org.uk - by Chris Downer - CC BY-SA 2.0)

Round the building, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, below its 100 ft high dome is a finely carved frieze of scenes from Homer.

The rotunda and its pavilions for his art treasures was designed by Frederick Hervey, the 4th Earl of Bristol in the late 18th century. Unfortunately for him, while he was in Rome, Napoleon occupied the city and seized his art collection. Frederick died in 1803 before the house was finished.

The layout of the house may be seen in this plan:

Ickworth House - ground floor plan
(Plan drawn by user Giano - in Public Domain)

1 Library 2 Drawing Room 3 Dining Room 4 Entrance & inner Staircase Hall 5 Smoking Room 6 Pompeian Room 7 Orangery & West Wing 8 East Family Wing 9 Portico 10 Topiary Garden

The West wing remained unfinished until early in the 21st century - it is now an hotel and conference centre. The house is owned by the National Trust and  open to the public.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'C'

C - Chatsworth House

Many Jane Austen devotees  believe that Mr Darcy's Pemberley is based on Chatsworth House, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

Looking west across to Chatsworth House with the Peak District as the backdrop.

Even a non-Austen fan visiting Chatsworth might recognize the description as it was observed by Jane’s heroine, Elizabeth Barrett:

“It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place of which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.”

It’s not surprising that Elizabeth “… felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!”

The connection with Chatsworth was to be maintained when Pride and Prejudice was filmed, using the Chatsworth exterior and two important rooms for Mr. Darcy’s mansion. It will be interesting to see whether Derbyshire’s Chatsworth becomes as associated with Pride and Prejudice as Yorkshire’s Castle Howard is with Brideshead Revisited.

(The above text is taken from my article 'Houses in Fiction' issued in The Lady magazine in October 2008)

Photo attribution:

 © Copyright Paul Collins and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not -' B'

B - Burghley House

This is a house that I first saw as a boy at Stamford School. Our annual cross-country run was held in its park.

Burghley House, near Stamford, Lincolnshire

I was to get even closer when playing cricket next to the house against the Burghley estate team. 

However it was in the Burghley Park's cricket team pavilion were my live was changed for ever.

Burghley Park Cricket Club pavilion

Here I volunteered during one match to help the ladies wash up after tea. To cut a 60 year story short let me just say I married one of them.

William Cecil, Lord Burghley was the prime councillor to the Queen - Elizabeth I, that is.

His house built between 1555 and 1587 is one of England's largest mansions and was constructed in an enormous 'E' as a tribute to the Queen.

With the house still lived in by the Cecil family many of you may know that the Burghley Horse Trials, a 3 day event, are held in the each year in the park laid out by Capability Brown.

Photo attribution:

• Burghley House - 4 April 2011 - CC transferred ex ml.wikipedia by Sreejith K - in the public domain

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not.- 'A'

A - Audley End

It seems appropriate somehow that an embezzler should end his life at 

Audley End

Thomas Howard, !st Earl of Suffolk,  King James I's Treasurer helped himself to  royal funds to build the splendid home of Audley End in 1614

However he was removed from there when convicted and sent to the Tower of London. After his release he returned to Audley End and died there in 1626.

The large building was expensive to maintain and the Howard family eventually demolished  more than half of it. What remains is still one of the biggest houses in Britain.

King Charles II bought the house in 1668 for the sum of £5 as somewhere to stay when he went to the races at Newmarket; it was returned to the Suffolks in 1701.

Capability Brown was commissioned to landscape the parkland in 1762.

During WWII Audley End became the base for the special-operations paratroops of the Polish Army in exile. A memorial to the men they lost stands in the drive to the house.

In 1948 the Braybrooke family sold the house to the Ministry of Works, the predecessor of English Heritage under whose stewardship Audley End remains. The house and gardens are open to the public at certain times of the year.

Photo attribution:

• Creative commons - Misterzee, 2008 - CC BY-3.0