"It was the first movie I saw — a long time ago,"
says "Mary Poppins Returns" costume designer Sandy Powell, about the
original 1964 classic children's film starring Julie Andrews in the titular
role. "I do remember Mary Poppins's dress, and that's always stayed with
me. Also, the fact that, you realize now, you know all the words to the songs
still."
It's all come full circle as the three-time Oscar-winner
(and nine-time — so far — nominee) excitedly took on the momentous job of
bringing everyone's favorite flying nanny, the Banks siblings and co. forward
two decades via costume. Grown-up Jane (Emily Mortimer) and Michael (Ben
Whishaw) are raising the latter's three children after his wife's death a year
ago. Money management hasn't ever been his thing, either, so the family home is
in jeopardy of repossession. Yeah, dark. Hence the urgent need for a visit from
Mary (Golden Globe and SAG Award nominee Emily Blunt), who hasn't aged at all,
as Michael incredulously comments (only to be met with a scolding from his
former nanny). But she has received an ultra-chic — but authentic to the
original character — outfit update from Powell.
"Her silhouette is ingrained on everyone's memory,
isn't it? We know it. It's an iconic image and I knew I had to reference that,
but didn't want it the same. We didn't want to put Mary Poppins in 1934 in
something that would have been worn in 1910," explains Powell, who also
designed another awards season, erm, favorite, "The Favourite." But
in a moment of sartorial kismet, 1930s fashion actually nods back to Edwardian
style, with mid-calf hemlines and nipped-waist silhouettes.
"I designed a 1930s version of the belle-tiered,
elegant longline coat, with the edition of a double-cape at shoulders,"
adds the costume designer. "Just to make it more modern and fashionable
for the 1930s and also to create a bit of movement." (Also perfect for a jaw-dropping
landing via aeronautic umbrella.) In a nod to the traditional nanny's uniforms
in navy, Powell stayed within the blue family for Mary's iconic coat. But she
"bumped up" the shade to a brilliant cobalt to stand out in the more
dimly-lit interiors of the Banks household.
Powell also integrated cheerful geometric prints and
textures — authentic to post-Art Deco, 1930s fashion — that just jump off the
screen: hypnotizing chevron weaves on Mary's jackets and skirts, whimsical
polka dots on her bow-tie and gloves and delightful orange contrasting stripes
on shirting. "I didn't think she was remotely floral," laughs the
costume designer. "There's something nice about graphic images and shapes
that appeal to children. I didn't want it to be remotely messy; I wanted it to be
clean-cut and clear." Also, look closely to catch the diagonally-shaped
buttons that Powell and her team also specially created for the jackets.
True to her legendary M.O., Mary also takes Michael's
children Georgie (Joel Dawson), Anabel (Pixie Davies) and John (Nathanael
Saleh) on fantastical journeys via everyday household items, like the bathtub.
Obviously, they need appropriately magical outfits. For a dive into the evening
bath-turned-nautical journey, the kids and Mary change into brighter, beach-y
hued and Edwardian-inspired swimwear based off their usual stripes and polka
dots prints. "Mary Poppins is wearing blue, a much brighter blue than she
would have worn normally in real life, and with the exaggerated chevrons; her
hat has a flying fish on it, instead of a bird, on her daytime hat," says
Powell.
Mary, Georgie (Joel Dawson), Anabel (Pixie Davies), Jack
(Lin-Manuel Miranda) and John (Nathanael Saleh). Photo Courtesy of Disney
Mary, Georgie (Joel Dawson), Anabel (Pixie Davies), Jack
(Lin-Manuel Miranda) and John (Nathanael Saleh). Photo Courtesy of Disney
The four — along with singing, dancing and rapping
lamplighter Jack, played by (Emmy-, Grammy-, Tony- and Pulitzer-winning
Lin-Manuel Miranda of "Hamilton" fame) — also jump into a
19th-century art-covered Royal Doulton bowl to join an animated song and dance
sequence — in the vein of the beloved
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." To help make the live-action
actors blend in seamlessly with the animation, Powell pitched an ingenious
idea: "Why don't we try painting the costumes to look as if they've been
painted by the animators?"
Of course, the answer was a "yes." Powell and her
painting team went through a painstaking "trial-and-error" process of
different painting techniques on cotton and canvas. The final result:
Museum-worthy, "watercolor-y" 2D-painted bows, ruffles, pleats and
buttons decorate the 19th-century silhouettes, which fit into the era of the
artwork on the bowl. Mary and Jack also change into pink-and-purple striped and
polka-dotted stage looks for a spectacular song and dance number, backed by
similarly clad cartoon circus and farm animals. And, yes, Powell kind of
designed the animated outfits, too.
"The costumes that [the actors] are wearing came first
and then the animators started building their world. They would pop images of
my costumes in to see how it would all work together," she explains.
Powell also sent the animation artists reference images for 1800s clothing, so
they could draw matching outfits for the pig, elephant, hippo and all.
"They would send me little sketches of the animals in their ideas of
costumes and then I'd do adjustments," continues Powell. "'I think it
would look a bit better if it was like this.' Then we went back and forth for a
little bit." Because the dancing animation worked best with
straightforward patterns, the stripes and dots consistently carried over into
the cartoon world, but in heightened, exuberant colors.
Along with costume designing the cartoon extras, Powell
influenced the ultimate look of Meryl Streep's eclectic artist and restorer
character, Topsy, who's dressed in deco prints and Boho fringe, and
accessorized with paint brushes and pencils. The costume designer's inspiration
ranged from the flapper-style of 1920s actress Louise Brooks to the eccentric,
turban-sporting Edith Sitwell to heiress Nancy Cunard and her signature stacks
of Bakelite bracelets up each arm. But when the two Oscar winners met for their
first fitting, Streep suggested a slight tweak, inspired by Powell herself.
Topsy (Meryl Streep) chats with Mary and the kids. Photo:
Jay Maidment/Courtesy of Disney
Topsy (Meryl Streep) chats with Mary and the kids. Photo:
Jay Maidment/Courtesy of Disney
"I really wanted Topsy to have a turban and not see her
hair — just have the turban and big jewelry," says Powell. "And then
Meryl came into the room and said she would like a bit of hair. 'But I want it
that color,' she said, and pointed at my hair," laughs Powell, about the
origins of Topsy's bright-red tousled bob.
As for the Banks family, Jane carries on her suffragette
mother's legacy as a workers union organizer in beautiful high-waisted wool
trousers, tweedy plaids and a collection of berets (that I need). "I
wanted her to be an emancipated woman, and, of course, the really iconic way of
doing that is to put her in trousers, so she could be active," explains Powell.
"She's always running somewhere, rushing around, and she couldn't be doing
that in a skirt and heels. I wanted her to be free to move and be strong."
Michael struggles with raising the kids without his wife and
working a soul-less office job. "He's in a cozy, artistic dad look. At
home, he's a little bit disheveled, a little bit worn-out," says Powell,
about his forest-green, chevron-weave cardigan. "Then he wears the suit to
work, which I feel he's never that comfortable in, because he doesn't really
want to be working at a bank anyway. By the end, when everything is made good,
he's looking dapper and handsome in the boater and the blazer."
The Banks kids are, of course, adorable in their pocket-size
pea coats, Fair Isle knits, mini-hats and little high-waisted herringbone
shorts. "It's quite difficult to get kids of today to wear knitted things
made of real wool because everybody is used to very, very soft things, and
synthetics are all comfortable and stretchy," she says. "But they
were all very professional kids." Powell also intentionally made their
clothes "a bit small" to depict a year's worth of rapid growth and a
distracted dad not picking up new clothes for them. "I didn't want them to
look too perfect," she says, which, in itself — and with her design acumen
— incredibly perfect.
"It's very exciting," says Powell, about designing
for the beloved characters in the first film she ever saw. "There was no
question of a doubt when I was offered the job that I was going to say no. I
was absolutely, 'Yes, I want to do this. It's important."
Follow Sandy Powell on Instagram at @thesandypowell.
"Mary Poppins Returns" opens in theaters on Wednesday, Dec. 19.
“The rights to be consulted, to encourage and to warn”
Walter Bagehot famously wrote in The English Constitution
(1867) that the British monarch has three rights: the rights to be consulted,
to encourage and to warn.
“As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one
prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and
respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common
ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture,” the queen said.
"In as far as they developed talents, it was to
misapply them; in as far as they were aware of their own deficiencies, it was
to ignore them.” Thus does Marcus Scriven introduce his cast of four scapegrace
aristocrats, whose lives coincided with a wider decline of aristocratic power
in the 20th century. These are Edward FitzGerald, 7th Duke of Leinster, an
inveterate gambler known as the “bedsit duke” after the ignominious accommodations
to which he was ultimately reduced; Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol, who
was sent to prison as a jewellery thief in his youth and subsequently struggled
to overcome this stigma; Angus Montagu, 12th Duke of Manchester, who was dubbed
the “Crook of Manchester” by the News of the World after being jailed for fraud
in his mid-fifties; and Hervey’s estranged son John Jermyn, 7th Marquess of
Bristol, a cocaine and heroin addict who was twice jailed for drugs offences
and impelled to raid his own tomb to pay for his hedonistic habits, before
dying prematurely.
FitzGerald arguably made one of the worst bargains in
history when he mortgaged the entire future income from his family estates
during his lifetime (once he had inherited his title from his mentally
incapacitated brother) to the financier Sir Henry Mallaby-Deeley. In return,
Sir Henry agreed to pay off FitzGerald’s gambling debts of £67,500 and to give him
a lifetime annual allowance of £1,000. Predicated on the assumption that
Edward’s brother would live for a long time, the bargain came into operation a
mere 17 months later, though were it not for this agreement Edward would almost
certainly have dissipated his family fortune in some other way. He may not have
been vicious, but he was “driven by an incendiary wilfulness” and careless in
causing pain to others. “His wives, and other women,” Scriven notes, “usually
died unhappily – variously overdosed, drowned or demented.”
Hervey seems to have been the most monstrous of all these
characters. At Eton, he assaulted a fellow schoolboy with a knuckle-duster and
was expelled for keeping a book. His annual allowance while at school was
£1,000 (a staggering £269,000 in today’s money). He had been abandoned by an
unloving mother early in his childhood and inherited his title from his distant
father at the age of 19. He sought to compensate for this lack of parental
affection with a “lifelong shriek for attention”, even inventing stories about
heroic exploits during the Spanish Civil War. His conviction for jewellery
theft in 1939 became confused in the minds of others with a more notorious
hotel robbery involving violence that had taken place at around the same time.
Thus he “came to be remembered for a crime he did not commit – an oddly
appropriate fate for this most delusional of men”. His business enterprises
were disappointing rather than disastrous, but his treatment of his eldest son
was shameful.
Angus Montagu’s “hunger for companionship, for cosseting,
never diminished”. His father and older brother kept him at a distance. Like
Hervey, he was a fantasist. His desperate craving for affection rendered him
vulnerable to unscrupulous business colleagues, who implicated him in a
fraudulent transaction. He was likeable and generous, but a hopeless figure
when it came to earning a living.
Jermyn was more gifted than the other three black sheep in
this book. He had business acumen and a core of decency, but was ravaged by
drug addiction. Scriven includes a chilling description from a friend of how
Jermyn would “chase the dragon” (smoke heroin) and drink Vodka Collins while in
command of a helicopter, then switch on the autopilot while he took a brief
snooze, only waking just before he reached his destination. Like the others,
though, he liked to cast himself as the “perpetual victim” of his upbringing.
There is no particular lesson to be drawn from this quartet
of misspent lives. Instead, their capacities for self-destruction and
self-delusion are to be wondered at. Scriven guides us through each catalogue
of errors with relish and wit, but at the same time invites us to pity his
subjects for the horrible failings of their parents. When Jermyn, who was
bisexual, decided to marry, his father, Victor Hervey, by now a tax exile in
Monaco, decided not to attend the ceremony. He rubbed salt in the wound, taking
out an advertisement in The Times to say that he would not be attending his
son’s wedding because of a prior engagement in London.
Splendour & Squalor: the Disgrace and Disintegration of
Three Aristocratic Dynasties by Marcus Scriven
Scandalous tales of excess, self-indulgence and sleaze among
British aristocrats
Splendour Squalor By Marcus Scriven Atlantic, 397pp, £25
SCHADENFREUDE IS a German word with no one-word English
equivalent. But the neurotic kink it denotes, the delight derived from another
person’s misfortune, is universal. Never before have I read a book that so
relentlessly exemplifies this human foible as Marcus Scriven’s collection of
case histories of British aristocrats staggering down the primrose path to
perdition.
The stomachs of many otherwise normal readers have long been
inured to any amount of garbage, with appetites whetted for scandal, no matter
how loathsome, especially if it discredits members of families once rich and
powerful and considered to be socially superior.
Scriven writes in the manner of an indignant moralist as he
doles out the sleaze. Though he has chosen four extreme examples of
aristocratic squalor, he evidently abominates the whole House of Lords and all
its unearned privileges. His book’s epigraph is a quotation from Denis Healey,
one of the Labour Party’s most acerbic veterans of the class war: “The upper
classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent.”
Scriven read history at Oxford University. There are
fleeting passages in this book, his first, indicating that he is still
seriously interested in the subject. The decline of the English landed gentry
began in the 19th century, he relates, when the great landowners’ income from
their land shrank from colossal to merely enormous.
One factor he cites is the importation of grain in refrigerator
ships. The industrial revolution created rival new wealth in the cities. In
spite of increased taxation, hereditary peerages maintained potent though
diminished influence in the 20th century, but the aristocratic mystique was
irreparably corrupted by the sale of titles during the Lloyd George
premiership, a practice that has continued to the present day.
“At the end of the 17th century,” Scriven writes, “there had
been only 19 dukes, three marquesses, and a total of 152 earls, viscounts and
barons.” By the end of the 20th century there were more than 1,000 of them.
Scriven presents five genealogical pages of “simplified and
selective lineages” of his four principal scapegoats, diagrams of complex
family interrelationships between Fitzgeralds, Duncombes, Grahams, Herveys,
Montagus and others.
Then he gets down to spilling the beans. He concentrates on
men who were recreationally obsessed not so much with hunting, shooting and
fishing as with drink, drugs, gambling and bisexual promiscuity.
“Adultery,” Scriven writes, “was invariably a useful
antidote to the inexpressible boredom of so much aristocratic life.”
Edward Fitzgerald, the seventh duke of Leinster, ran through
£400 million, suffered a series of bankruptcies and took his own life; Victor
Hervey, the sixth marquess of Bristol, was sentenced to three years’ penal
servitude for a jewel robbery; Angus Montagu, the “absurdly stupid” and grossly
overweight 12th duke of Manchester, spent time in a prison in Virginia and
ended up broke; John Hervey, the drug-addicted, homosexual seventh marquess of
Bristol, had a New York entourage of “le tout Eurotrash”, collected luxurious
cars, of which the most ostentatious was “an eight-seater, six-door Mercedes
previously owned by pope Paul VI and rock star Rod Stewart”, and is believed to
have shot a peacock.
According to Scriven, it has often been said that the
Herveys were “genetically destined for damnation: programmed for lives of
cruelty, self-indulgence, untamed lust and ultimate self-destruction”.
By the end of my wade through all this, I turned with relief
from Burke’s peerage to the relative purity of the pigs in Animal Farm.
Through the Keyhole: Sex, Scandal and the Secret Life of the
Country House
by Susan C. Law
Scandal existed long before celebrity gossip columns, often
hidden behind the closed doors of the Georgian aristocracy. But secrets were
impossible to keep in a household of servants who listened at walls and spied
through keyholes. The early mass media pounced on these juicy tales of
adultery, eager to cash in on the public appetite for sensation and expose the
shocking moral corruption of the establishment. Drawing on a rich collection of
original and often outrageous sources, this book brings vividly to life stories
of infidelity in high places – passionate, scandalous, poignant and tragic. It
reveals how the flood of print detailing sordid sexual intrigues created a
national outcry and made people question whether the nobility was fit to rule.
Susan C. Law is a journalist and historian. Her work has
been published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including The Times
Higher Education Supplement, BBC History Magazine and London Evening Standard.
Dr Law completed her PhD in History at Warwick University, and has spent many
years researching the 18th and 19th century aristocracy, servants, family life
and country houses.
A deft analysis of sex, power, and the media in the Regency
era describes how the scandalous private lives of the Georgian aristocracy were
used to undermine hereditary power
The potent allure of sex, money, and power has always
created a public appetite for juicy tales of scandal in the hidden private
lives of the English aristocracy. Millions of viewers are captivated by the
television series Downton Abbey and screen versions of Jane Austen novels,
while visitor numbers to National Trust stately homes have never been higher.
The real and fictional dramas being enacted inside country houses were just as
compelling for audiences in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the cultural
media of the day exploited stories of aristocratic adultery for commercial and
political motives in newspapers, novels, and satirical prints. But such attacks
on the aristocracy’s moral fitness to rule ultimately undermined traditional
hereditary power and marked the first steps towards its decline. This book
draws on a rich collection of original sources, bringing vividly to life a cast
of engaging characters and their stories of infidelity—passionate, scandalous,
poignant, and tragic.
Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper
Class After the First World War by Pamela Horn
When the cataclysm of the First World War impacted on
British society, it particularly affected the landed classes, with their long
military tradition. Country houses, as in a variety of popular TV dramas, were
turned into military hospitals and convalescent homes, while many of the
menfolk were killed or badly injured in the hostilities. When the war ended
efforts were made to return to the pre-war world. Pleasure seeking in
night-clubs, sporting events and country-house weekends became the order of the
day. Many of the old former rituals such as presentation at Court for
debutantes and royal garden parties were revived. Yet, overshadowing all were
the economic pressures of the decade as increased taxation, death duties and
declining farm rentals reduced landed incomes. Some owners sold their mansions
or some land to newly enriched businessmen who had prospered as a result of the
war. Others turned to city directorships to make ends meet or, in the case of
the women, ran dress shops and other small businesses. The 1920s proved a
decade of flux for High Society, with the light-hearted dances, treasure hunts
and sexual permissiveness of the 'Bright Young People' contrasting with the
financial anxieties and problems faced by their parents' generation. Pamela
Horn draws on the letters and diaries of iconic figures of the period, such as
Nancy Mitford and Barbara Cartland, to give an insight into this new post-war
era.
REVIEW: Country House Society: The Private Lives of
England’s Upper Class After the First World War by Pamela Horn
Country House Society: The Private Lives of England's Upper
Class After the First World War by Pamela Horn
The late social historian Pamela Horn is in top form with
her final release, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper
Class After the First World War. I own a number of Dr. Horn’s books, and prize
them for her thoroughness, her compulsively readable prose, and her unerring
ability to let primary sources (letters, diaries, memoirs, articles) speak
through her writing. Country House Society is no different–in six lengthy
chapters, Horn takes us through the swift changes to English high society in
the wake of the Great War.
Though many hoped to turn the clock backwards to 1914, the
carnage and destruction of the war proved to be a point of no return for both
aristocrats and the people who served them. I winced a bit while reading about
the crippling costs of the great landed estates:
In July 1921…in a leading article headed ‘Landowners Bled
White’, Country Life examined a number of ‘typical’ estates selected from
different parts of Scotland. In one case the figures showed that whereas parish
and borough rates, land tax, heritor’s assessment, and other public and
parochial burdens had amounted to £2,320 in 1911–12, by 1920–21 they had
climbed to £4,838. The costs of management had similarly grown from £1,210 in
1911–12 to £1,677 in 1920–21, while renewals, repairs and improvements had
risen from £3,069 at the earlier date to £4,983. Income tax had nearly
quadrupled, from £636 in 1911–12 to £2,342 in 1920–21. No personal expenses,
according to Country Life, were included in these figures.
A very interesting section of the book deals with the
General Strike of 1926, where young men arrived from Oxford and Cambridge and
debutantes set aside their ballgowns to became “scabs” when 1.7 million workers
in the transport and heavy industries set down their tools. The irony of how
willing the aristocrats were to pitch in to keep the country running is that
this very action further marginalized the working classes once the strike
ended. Furthermore, beneath the “froth” of the chapters devoted to the London
Season and other social pursuits, there lurked the frenetic melancholy and
unease of both the Edwardians and their Bright Young Thing offspring that
lingered from WWI. Horn does not fail to present a biting, yet balanced
portrait of the hedonistic coterie of upper class men and women who took their
fun a bit too far. Though Country House Society does discuss life in the 1930s,
the focus is mostly on the 1920s, before the Wall Street Crash and the rise of
Hitler made frivolity and selfishness appear in poor taste. Accompanying the
text are 16 pages of fantastic photographs and period illustrations.
Beech trees are bullies and willows are loners, says
forester Peter Wohlleben, author of a new book claiming that trees have
personalities and communicate via a below-ground ‘woodwide web’
Tim Lusher
Mon 12 Sep 2016 16.46 BST Last modified on Sat 25 Nov 2017
04.28 GMT
Trees have friends, feel loneliness, scream with pain and
communicate underground via the “woodwide web”. Some act as parents and good
neighbours. Others do more than just throw shade – they’re brutal bullies to
rival species. The young ones take risks with their drinking and leaf-dropping
then remember the hard lessons from their mistakes. It’s a hard-knock life.
A book called The Hidden Life of Trees is not an obvious
bestseller but it’s easy to see the popular appeal of German forester Peter
Wohlleben’s claims – they are so anthropomorphic. Certainly, a walk in the park
feels different when you imagine the network of roots crackling with sappy chat
beneath your feet. We don’t know the half of what’s going on underground and
beneath the bark, he says: “We have been looking at nature for the last 100
years like [it is] a machine.”
There’s a touchy-feely warmth to the book – an “ouch!” when
he describes trees having branches hacked, roots cut or being gnawed by insects
– and he talks about “brainlike things” going on in trees that enable them to
learn over their long lifetimes. He points to scientific research – by Aachen
University, the University of British Columbia and the Max Planck Society –
that he claims underpins all his vivid descriptions, but he writes as a
conservationist and admits that much is still unknown. “It’s very hard to find
out what trees are communicating when they feel well,” he says.
Wohlleben – it translates as “Livewell” – has developed his
thinking over the past decade while watching the powerful but self-interested
survival system of the ancient beech forest he manages in the Eifel mountains
of western Germany. “The thing that surprised me most is how social trees are.
I stumbled over an old stump one day and saw that it was still living although
it was 400 or 500 years old, without any green leaf. Every living being needs
nutrition. The only explanation was that it was supported by the neighbour
trees via the roots with a sugar solution. As a forester, I learned that trees
are competitors that struggle against each other, for light, for space, and
there I saw that it’s just vice versa. Trees are very interested in keeping
every member of this community alive.”
The key to it, he says, is the so-called woodwide web –
trees message their distress in electrical signals via their roots and across
fungi networks (“like our nerve system”) to others nearby when they are under
attack. By the same means, they feed stricken trees, nurture some saplings
(their “most beloved child”) and restrict others to keep the community strong.
“Trees may recognise with their roots who are their friends,
who are their families, where their kids are. Then they may also recognise
trees that are not so welcome. There are some stumps in these old beech reservations
that are alive, and there are some that are rotten, which obviously have had no
contact with the roots of supporting neighbours. So perhaps they are like
hermits.” It sounds like living in a small village – as he does, in Hümmel,
near the Belgian border.
He writes about the unforgiving woodland etiquette – no one
likes a showoff who crowds everyone out and hogs the resources. When trees
break the rules, you end up with a “drunken forest”. He describes “upright
members of ancient forests … This is what a mature, well-behaved deciduous tree
looks like. It has a ramrod-straight trunk with a regular, orderly arrangement
of wood fibres.”
In Wohlleben’s analysis, it’s almost as if trees have
feelings and character. “We think about plants being robotic, following a
genetic code. Plants and trees always have a choice about what to do. Trees are
able to decide, have memories and even different characters. There are perhaps
nicer guys and bad guys.”
So which are good, bad and sad? Beeches and oaks form
forests that last for thousands of years because they act like families, he
says. Trees are tribal (“They are genetically as far away from each other as
you and a goldfish”) and ruthlessly protect their own kind: “Beeches harass new
species such as oak to such an extent that they weaken.” Douglas fir and spruce
also bond within their species.
Willows are loners. “The seeds fly far away from other
trees, many kilometres. The trees grow fast and don’t live very long. They are
like Usain Bolt – always the first, then they can’t breathe any more after 100
years and then they are gone.” Poplars aren’t social either and “a birch will
wipe other trees away so it has more space for its crown. That doesn’t sound
very nice but I think birch has no other choice because that’s what it’s grown
like because of its genes.” City trees are like street kids – isolated and
struggling against the odds without strong roots.
Wohlleben, 52, used to work as a state forester, viewing
trees as lumber, then began running survival training courses and log-cabin
tours. Since 2006, he has managed the forest on behalf of the community,
banning machinery and selling burial plots with trees as living gravestones.
His book became a bestseller in Germany last year, charting higher than memoirs
by the pope and former chancellor Helmut Schmidt. His accessible, chatty style
made him a hit on TV chatshows but he doesn’t want to be seen as a tree
whisperer, telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine: “I don’t hug trees and I don’t
talk to them.”
He talks about wood as “tree bones” and burns it for fuel at
the forest home he shares with his wife, Miriam, where they grow their own
vegetables and corn, and keep horses and goats. Every 15 minutes as we talk
over Skype, we break off as an old German oak clock chimes loudly. (“I bought
it on eBay. It had been in an English country house for over 100 years.”)
He talks about the natural world admiringly, wondrously
even, but unsentimentally. “The question for me is not should we use any living
being but just how to deal with them.” He wants us to cut down our wood
consumption and enjoy trees more – he describes them as “plant elephants”. Have
we lost our connection with the natural world? “No, I don’t think so. Perhaps
we have a little distance because scientists over the last 200 years have
taught us that nature works without soul.”
The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They
Communicate by Peter Wohlleben is published by Greystone Books. To order it for
£13.93 (RRP £16.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free
UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
Audiobook also available.
nous avons le plaisir de publier ce jour la version en
langue française denotre épisode
consacré à la désormais célèbre « Sprezzatura ». Dans cet épisode je tente de
clarifier le sens exact du mot en repartant de son origine (le Livre du
Courtisan de Baldassare Castiglione, 1528) et en expliquant comment son sens
initial a glissé petit à petit pour finir par être utilisé de nos jours
quasiment à contre-sens.
Scandals and feuds that cost family a home bigger than the
Queen's
BRITAIN'S most impressive stately home's future will be
decided in a court dispute that will drag up a past of scandal, family rifts
and class war. Wentworth Woodhouse, with a fascade wider than Buckingham Palace
and a room for every day of the year, is the subject of a £100million legal
action that last week attracted the attention of Prince Charles.
In the grimmest of ironies, the current owners are suing the
Coal Authority for compensation for subsidence caused by the honeycomb of mines
running under its land, yet it was coal that made its original owners among the
wealthiest families in the land.
The Fitzwilliams, who owned the south Yorkshire property
from 1720 until 1979, were a dysfunctional dynasty who make events at ITV's
Downton Abbey seem as scandalous as a misplayed card at whist.
The Fitzbillies, as they were known to 385 staff and the
115,000 miners employed in their 120 pits, favoured imploding on a grand scale.
Their tainted history features an epileptic Earl banished to Canada who
returned a national hero after charting a land route between the Atlantic and
Pacific and surviving disease to become one of the first non-natives to cross
the Rockies.
He died aged 37 and his buccaneering, womaniser son became
embroiled in a protracted feud with aunts and uncles who accused him of being a
changeling, a child switched at birth for a baby girl, to rob them of their
inheritance.
A cousin was disowned for marrying the grand-daughter of a
draper and another scion of the family caused controversy by becoming engaged
to Kathleen Kennedy, the vivacious sister of JFK, Bobby and Teddy from another
torn and tormented clan from the other side of the Atlantic.
They both died in a plane crash over France in 1948, three
years before a court case erupted over whether heir Toby Fitzwilliam had been
born illegitimate.
Throw in Wentworth Woodhouse losing 183 staff during the
Great War while the estate's pits made the family £12million, and rumours of
illegitimate children created by a droit du seigneur, and there is enough raw
material to keep Downton Abbey scriptwriters busy for a decade.
Grade I-listed Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, took 15
years to build but was almost sent tumbling into the abyss when the Labour
Minister of Power, Manny Shinwell, insisted that open cast pits and mines were
pursued up "to its back door", despoiling the house's formal gardens
and obliterating its pink shale driveway.
The coal was low grade but the statement was high-class war
politics: "Downton has nothing on Wentworth Woodhouse. The story of the
family is as epic as the house," says Catherine Bailey, whose book Black
Diamonds charts the dynasty.
"In 1900, they were one of the richest and most
powerful families in Britain, yet within 50 years they were stripped of power.
"Their ancestors had lived on that site since the 14th
century. The 6th Earl had eight sons, all named William after him and you would
think they were as solid as the house foundations. Yet they lost their mines,
were hounded from their house and this once great dynasty was in danger of
dying."
Prince Charles has visited the house and contacted ministers
about the need to preserve it as part of the national heritage.
The high watermark of the family's influence was marked at
the death of the 6th Earl, in 1902, who left a fortune equivalent to £3billion.
His eldest son, the epileptic William, became the source of high intrigue when
he insisted that his third child, Billy, was born in a Canadian frontier town
wooden house on the shores of Lake Superior where he had made his reputation.
Suspicion clouded the remote birth and reached fever pitch when William died
aged 37 and Billy became the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam. Relatives denounced him as a
changeling with no right to family riches.
Billy employed a private detective to trace the birth
doctor, midwife and nurse to discredit the claim. He became a hero after
winning a DSO in the Boer War, and became a Conservative MP and Mayor of
Sheffield. All the time, £6million a year profits from coal rolled in. He had
80 racehorses, land in Ireland and Yorkshire, and a London property that is now
the Italian Embassy.
Billy ruled with a gentle touch ensuring the Fitzwilliam
collieries were the safest and his workers received help during economic
blights including the 1926 General Strike, when he taught miners on pit ponies
how to play polo on his front lawn and fed them during their eight months with
no pay.
Scandal was never far away and his son Peter, who had made
at least three pit village girls pregnant before his 21st birthday, pursued the
life of a hard-drinking, gambling, womanising aristocrat. Billy, despite his
enlightened approach to his workers, had incurred the wrath of firebrand
Labour's Manny Shinwell for buying a racehorse for 8,000 guineas during the
war. His revenge was to order open cast mining on the estate, even though loyal
miners threatened to go on strike.
Peter inherited the title in 1943, aged 32, after his
father's death from cancer but it didn't stop him joining the Special
Operations Executive and volunteering for a vital mission to smuggle ball
bearings from Sweden past the Nazis. He made eight trips in motorboats and won
a DSO.
His private life became engulfed in more scandal when,
despite being married, he fell in love with Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy
at the end of the Second World War after meeting the 28-year-old widower at the
Dorchester.
Kennedy patriarch Joe had been persuaded to consider them
marrying, but tragedy struck as they took a premeeting holiday and their jet
crashed in France during a storm. The title passed to a cousin, Eric, who died
childless two years later, and then to Toby who was forced into court to prove
he was not illegitimate, following his mother's outrage that he wed below his
class. His parents had married after his birth and arcane legislation on
aristocratic inheritance ruled him out.
His younger brother Tom inherited the earldom but the
estate, stripped of its coal income, was drained by its upkeep. As the dynasty
crumbled, he ordered 16 tons of family records on to a bonfire that reputedly
burned for three weeks.
On Tom's death in 1979 Wentworth Woodhouse, which had become
a teacher training college, was sold. It continued to disintegrate, allegedly
blighted by Shinwell's mining, but current owners Clifford Newbold and his
sons, who bought it for £1.5million, have a £200million plan for a museum,
hotel and business centre.
Prince Charles has visited the house and contacted ministers
about the need to preserve it as part of the national heritage.
As the battle for Wentworth Woodhouse's future rages,
Catherine Bailey says: "You have the story of Britain wrapped up in that house
as well as the extraordinary story of a family. It is wonderful that there is a
chance it might be saved and have a happy ending after so many tragedies."
King coal
Roy Hattersley sifts through the romance to find the reality
of a miner's life between the wars in Catherine Bailey's Black Diamonds
Roy Hattersley
Sat 14 Apr 2007 23.45 BST First published on Sat 14 Apr 2007
23.45 BST
If books had human characteristics, Black Diamonds would
suffer from a severe identity crisis. It begins with the mystery - written in
the high romantic style of Baroness Orczy - of the seventh Earl Fitzwilliam's
origins and the allegation that he was a changeling, smuggled into a Canadian
log cabin to provide the heir that Lavinia, Lady Middleton, could not produce.
It ends with the tragedy - written in the breathless prose of Elinor Glyn - of
Katherine "Kick" Kennedy (JFK's sister), who married the Marquis of
Hartington and, after his death in the war, became entangled with the
disreputable eighth Earl Fitzwilliam and died with him in an air crash.
In between the extracts from the social register, Black
Diamonds contains a great deal of worthwhile information and interesting
analysis about the state of affairs in and about Wentworth House and its
estate. Catherine Bailey contrasts the lavish lifestyle of the
Fitzwilliam-Wentworths with the grinding poverty of the miners whose sweat paid
for the aristocratic extravagance. But not even the worthy meat in the sandwich
is left unblemished by the book's regularly recurring flaw. The language in
which some of the serious passages are written reduces its best parts to the
level of society gossip. It is bad enough that the chapter on the doomed affair
between Kennedy and the eighth Earl Fitzwilliam Wentworth is heralded by the
single sentence, "The affair seemed madness from the start." But the
real offence is the "bogus reporting" which peppers the chapters on
important social questions.
The visit of George V to Wentworth - meant to heal some of
the wounds of the industrial upheavals of 1911 by producing newspaper pictures
of the king with miners - was an important indication of the establishment's
anxiety about the prospects of a general strike or worse. Black Diamonds deals
with it adequately. But it is preceded by a description of the king's arrival
which would be more appropriate to the beginning of a short story in Lady's
Home Journal. "Walking briskly through the corridors, the housekeeper
missed nothing. From time to time she stopped to adjust the arrangements in the
vases of flowers or to knead the bowls of potpourri to release their aroma into
the air."
The irritation caused by such flaws is increased by the way
in which they diminish the chapters of Black Diamonds that have something
sensible, and sometimes important, to say. The verbatim accounts of the miners'
attitude to what south Yorkshire called "graft" - not corruption but
back-breaking labour - has an air of absolute authenticity. Walter Brierley, a
miner from a pit 40 miles from Wentworth who was unemployed for four years,
longed to be back hewing coal. "The dependence on the state for money
without having honestly earned it has made me creep within myself." Arthur
Eaglestone remembered: "The most heinous of accusations lay in the
terrible phrase 'He doesn't like work'." When Bailey stops writing like a
romantic novelist, Black Diamonds admirably reflects both the true nobility of
the inter-war miners and the undoubted degradation of the aristocracy who
exploited them.
Wentworth Woodhouse comprises two joined houses, forming
west and east fronts. The original house, now the west front, with the garden
range facing northwest towards the village, was built of brick with stone
details. The east front of unsurpassed length is credibly said to have been
built as the result of a rivalry with the Stainborough branch of the Wentworth
family, which inherited Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford's minor title
of Baron Raby, but not his estates (including the notable series of Strafford
portraits by Anthony van Dyck and Daniel Mytens), which went to Watson who
added Wentworth to his surname. The Stainborough Wentworths, for whom the
Strafford earldom was revived, lived at nearby Wentworth Castle, which was
purchased in 1708 in a competitive spirit and strenuously rebuilt in a
magnificent manner.
The English Baroque, brick-built, western range of Wentworth
Woodhouse was begun in 1725 by Thomas Watson-Wentworth, (after 1728 Lord
Malton) after he inherited it from his father in 1723. It replaced the Jacobean
structure that was once the home of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford,
whom Charles I sacrificed in 1641 to appease Parliament. The builder to whom
Wentworth's grandson turned for a plan for the grand scheme that he intended
was a local builder and country architect, Ralph Tunnicliffe, who had a
practice in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. Tunnicliffe was pleased enough with
this culmination of his provincial practice to issue an engraving signed
"R. Tunniclif, architectus" which must date before 1734, as it is
dedicated to Baron Malton, Watson-Wentworth's earlier title. However the
Baroque style was disliked by Whigs, and the new house was not admired. In c.
1734, before the West Front was finished, Wentworth's grandson Thomas
Watson-Wentworth commissioned Henry Flitcroft to build the East Front
"extension", in fact a new and much larger house, facing the other
way, southeastward. The model they settled on was Colen Campbell's Wanstead
House, illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus i, 1715.
That same year the rebuilding was already well underway. In
a letter from the amateur architect Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby to his
father-in-law Lord Carlisle of 6 June 1734, Sir Thomas reports that he found
the garden front "finished" and that a start had been made on the
main front: "when finished 'twill be a stupendous fabric, infinitely
superior to anything we have now in England", and he adds "The whole
finishing will be entirely submitted to Lord Burlington, and I know of no
subject's house in Europe will have 7 such magnificent rooms so finely
proportioned as these will be." In the 20th century, Nikolaus Pevsner
would agree, but the mention of the architect-earl Burlington, arbiter of
architectural taste, boded ill for the provincial surveyor-builder,
Tunnicliffe. It is doubtless to Burlington's intervention that about this time,
before the West Front was finished, the Earl of Malton, as he had now become,
commissioned Henry Flitcroft to revise Tunnicliffe's plan there and build the
East Front range. Flitcroft was Burlington's professional architectural
amanuensis— "Burlington Harry" as he was called; he had prepared for
the engravers the designs of Inigo Jones published by Burlington and William
Kent in 1727, and in fact Kent was also called in for confabulation over
Wentworth Woodhouse, mediated by Sir Thomas Robinson, though in the event the
pedestrian Flitcroft was not unseated and continued to provide designs for the
house over the following decade: he revised and enlarged Tunnicliffe's
provincial Baroque West Front and added wings, as well as temples and other structures
in the park. Contemporary engravings of the grand public East Front give
Flitcroft as architect. Flitcroft, right-hand man of the architectural
dilettanti and fully occupied as well at the Royal Board of Works, could not
constantly be on-site, however: Francis Bickerton, surveyor and builder of
York, paid bills in 1738 and 1743.
The grand East Front is the more often illustrated. The West
front, the "garden front" that Sir Thomas Robinson found to be
finished in 1734, is the private front that looked onto a giardino secreto
between the house front and the walled kitchen garden, intended for family
enjoyment rather than social and political ambitions expressed in the East
Front. Most remnants of it were redesigned in the 19th century.
Wentworth Woodhouse was inherited by Charles
Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, briefly Prime Minister in 1765–66
and again in 1782. He received Benjamin Franklin here in 1771. The architect he
employed at the house was John Carr of York, who added an extra storey to parts
of the East Front and provided the porticoes to the matching wings, each the
equivalent of a moderately grand country house. James "Athenian"
Stuart contributed designs for panels in the Pillared Hall.The Whistlejacket
Room was named for George Stubbs' portrait that hung in it of Whistlejacket,
one of the most famous racehorses of all time. The additions were completed in
1772. The second Marquess envisaged a sculpture gallery at the house, which
never came to fruition; four marbles by Joseph Nollekens were carried out to
his commission, in expectation of the gallery; the Diana, signed and dated
1778, is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Juno, Venus and Minerva,
grouped with a Roman antique marble of Paris, are at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Wentworth Woodhouse, with all its contents, subsequently
passed to the family of the Marquess's sister, the Earls Fitzwilliam.
The park
Having finished the course of alterations in the hands of
John Carr, Lord Fitzwilliam turned in 1790 to the most prominent landscape
gardener, Humphry Repton, for whom this was the season's most ambitious
project, one that he would describe in detail while the memory was still fresh,
in Some Observations of the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803).
A terrace centred on the main block effected a transition between the house and
the rolling grazing land. Four obelisks stood on the bowling green, dwarfed by
the scale of the house; Repton re-sited them. Though the parkland had
accumulated numerous eye-catcheres and features (see below), Repton found there
were few trees, the house being surrounded by "coarse grass and
boulders" which Repton also removed, before the large-scale earth-moving
operations began, effected by men with shovels and donkey-carts, to reshape the
lumpy ground into smooth swells. Two large pools, visible from the East Front
and the approach drive, were excavated into a serpentine shape. Some of
Flitcroft's outbuildings were demolished, though not Carr's handsome stable
court (1768), entered through a pedimented Tuscan arch. Many trees were
planted.
Follies
The grounds (and surrounding area) contain a number of
follies, many with associations in the arena of 18th-century Whig politics.
They include:
Hoober stand. A tapering pyramid with a hexagonal lantern,
named for the ancient wood in which it was erected. It is 98 feet (30 m) high
and was built to Flitcroft's design in 1747–48 to commemorate the defeat of the
Jacobite rebellion of 1745, in which Lord Malton and his surviving son took
part; his defensive efforts for the Hanoverian Whig establishment were rewarded
with the Lord Lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the title Marquess of Rockingham:
thus the monument indirectly reflects the greater glory of the family. The
tower, which surveys the surrounding landscape like a watchtower, is open to
the public on Sunday afternoons throughout the summer.
Keppel's Column. A 115 ft (35 m) Tuscan column built to
commemorate the acquittal of the court-martialed Admiral Keppel, a close friend
of Rockingham. Its entasis visibly bulges owing to an adjustment in its height,
made when funding problems reduced the height. It was designed by John Carr.
The Rockingham Mausoleum. A three-storey building 90 ft high, situated in woodland, where only the top
level is visible over the treetops. It was commissioned in 1783 by the Earl
Fitzwilliam as a memorial to the late first Marquess of Rockingham; it was
designed by John Carr, whose first design, for an obelisk, was rejected, in
favour of an adaptation of the Roman Cenotaph of the Julii at
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, near Arles.The ground floor is an enclosed hall
containing a statue of the former prime minister by Joseph Nollekens, plus
busts of his eight closest friends. The first floor is an open colonnade with
Corinthian columns surrounding the (empty) sarcophagus. The top storey is a
Roman-style cupola. Like Hoober Stand, the Mausoleum is open on summer Sunday
afternoons.
Needle's Eye. A 46-foot (14 m) high, sandstone block pyramid
with an ornamental urn on the top and a tall Gothic ogee arch through the
middle, which straddles a disused roadway. It was built in the 18th century
allegedly to win a bet after the second Marquess claimed he could drive a coach
and horses through the eye of a needle.
Bear Pit. Accessible if patronising the nearby Garden
centre. Built on two levels with a spiral stair. The outer doorway (about 1630)
is part of the architecture of the original house. At the end of the garden is
a grotto guarded by two life-sized statues of Roman soldiers
Royal visit of 1912
Arms of Watson, Earl of Rockingham: Argent, on a chevron
azure between three martlets sable as many crescents or. Motto: "Mea
Gloria Fides" ("Faith is My Glory")], which is displayed in
large Roman capitals on the frieze of the classical pediment of Wentworth
Woodhouse
King George V and Queen Mary visited South Yorkshire from 8
to 12 July 1912, and stayed at Wentworth Woodhouse for four days. The house
party consisted of a large number of guests, including: Dr Cosmo Gordon Lang,
Archbishop of Canterbury; The 5th Earl of Harewood and The Countess of
Harewood; The Marchioness of Londonderry; The 1st Marquess of Zetland and Lady
Zetland; The 10th Earl of Scarborough and Lady Scarborough; The 5th Earl of
Rosse and Lady Rosse; Admiral Lord Charles Beresford and Lady Mina Beresford;
Mr Walter Long and Lady Doreen Long; and Lord Helmsley and Lady Helmsley.
The visit concluded on the evening of 11 July with a
torchlight tattoo by miners, and a musical programme by members of the
Sheffield Musical Union and the Wentworth Choral Society. A crowd of 25,000
gathered on the lawn to witness the King and Queen in the balcony of the
portico, from which the King gave a speech.
The Intelligence connection in the Second World War
During the Second World War the house acted as a Training
Depot and Headquarters of the Intelligence Corps, although by 1945 conditions
for trainee intelligence soldiers had deteriorated to such a state that
questions were asked in the House of Commons. Some of the training involved
motorcycle dispatch rider skills, as Intelligence Corps personnel often used
motorcycles. The grounds of the house and surrounding road network were used as
motorcycle training areas.
Coal mining on the estate
Opencast mining reaching the back of the house. From The
Sphere, 8 February 1947
In April 1946, on the orders of Manny Shinwell (the then
Labour Party's Minister of Fuel and Power) a "column of lorries and heavy
plant machinery" arrived at Wentworth. The objective was the mining of a
large part of the estate close to the house for coal. This was an area where
the prolific Barnsley seam was within 100 feet (30 m) of the surface and the
area between the house and the Rockingham Mausoleum became the largest open
cast mining site in Britain at that time: 132,000 tons of coal were removed
solely from the gardens. Ostensibly the coal was desperately needed in
Britain's austere post-war economy to fuel the railways, but the decision has
been widely seen as useful cover for an act of class-war spite against the
coal-owning aristocracy. A survey by Sheffield University, commissioned by
Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, the 8th Earl, found the coal to be "very poor
stuff" and "not worth the getting"; this contrasted with
Shinwell's assertion that it was "exceptionally good-quality."
Shinwell, intent on the destruction of the Fitzwilliams and
"the privileged rich", decreed that the mining would continue to the
back door of Wentworth, the family's east front. What followed saw the mining
of 99 acres (400,000 m2) of lawns and woods, the renowned formal gardens and
the show-piece pink shale driveway (a by-product of the family's collieries).
Ancient trees were uprooted and the debris of earth and rubble was piled 50 ft
(15 m) high in front of the family's living quarters.[36]
Despite Shinwell's vindictiveness, local opinion supported
the earl - Joe Hall, President of the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of
Mineworkers, said that the "miners in this area will go to almost any
length rather than see Wentworth Woodhouse destroyed. To many mining
communities it is sacred ground" – in an industry known for harsh
treatment of workers, the Fitzwilliams were respected employers known for
treating their employees well. The Yorkshire branch later threatened a strike
over the Labour Government's plans for Wentworth, and Joe Hall wrote personally
to Clement Attlee in a futile attempt to stop the mining. This spontaneous
local activism, founded on the genuine popularity of the Fitzwilliam family
among locals, was dismissed in Whitehall as "intrigue" sponsored by
the earl.
The open-cast mining moved into the fields to the west of
the house and continued into the early 1950s. The mined areas took many years
to return to a natural state; much of the woodland and the formal gardens were
not replaced. The current owners of the property allege that mining operations
near the house caused substantial structural damage to the building due to
subsidence, and lodged a claim in 2012 of £100 million for remedial works
against the Coal Authority. The claim was heard by the Upper Tribunal (Lands
Chamber)in April 2016. In its decision dated 4 October 2016 the Tribunal found that
the damage claimed for was not caused by mining subsidence (2016 UKUT 0432
(LC).
Two sets of death duties in the 1940s, and the
nationalization of their coal mines, greatly reduced the wealth of the
Fitzwilliams, and most of the contents of the house were dispersed, in auction
sales in 1948, 1986 and 1998. In the Christies sale in 1948, Rinaldo conquered
by Love for Armida by Anthony van Dyck raised 4,600 Guineas[40] (equivalent to
£161,180 in 2016).
Many items still remain in the family, with many works lent
to museums by the "Trustees of the Fitzwilliam Estates".
On 23 November 2016, the Conservative Chancellor Philip
Hammond announced that £7.6 million would be invested in reversing the damage
caused by the mining that commenced in 1946, and restoring the house to
conditions suitable for visiting.
Lease to Lady Mabel College
The Ministry of Health attempted to requisition the house as
"housing for homeless industrial families". To prevent this, the Earl
attempted to donate the house to the National Trust, however the Trust declined
to take it. In the end, Lady Mabel Fitzwilliam, sister of the 7th Earl and a
local alderman, brokered a deal whereby the West Riding County Council leased
most of the house for an educational establishment, leaving forty rooms as a
family apartment. Thus, from 1949 to 1979, the house was home to the Lady Mabel
College of Physical Education, which trained female physical education
teachers. The college later merged with Sheffield City Polytechnic (now
Sheffield Hallam University), which eventually gave up the lease in 1988 as a
result of high maintenance costs.
Sheffield City Polytechnic
1979 - 1988 saw students from Sheffield City Polytechnic
(now Sheffield Hallam University) based at Wentworth Woodhouse. Two
departments, Physical Education and B.A. Geography & Environmental Studies
were based on site. The mansion building housed student accommodation
(reputedly haunted, according to student accounts) and a dining room and
kitchens for lunch and dinner for students living on site. Four separate blocks
of modern student accommodation were built in the grounds of the deer park. The
Stable Block became the centre of student life, housing offices, lecture rooms,
laboratories, squash courts, a swimming pool, and a student bar.
Sold by Fitzwilliam family
By 1989, Wentworth Woodhouse was in a poor state of repair.
With the polytechnic no longer a tenant, and with the family no longer
requiring the house, the family trustees decided to sell it and the 70 acres
(280,000 m2) surrounding it, but retained the Wentworth Estate's 15,000 acres
(61 km2) of land. The house was bought by locally born businessman Wensley
Grosvenor Haydon-Baillie, who started a programme of restoration. However a
business failure caused it to be repossessed by a Swiss bank and put back on
the market in 1998. Clifford Newbold (July 1926 – April 2015), an architect
from Highgate, bought it for something over £1.5 million. Newbold progressed
with a defined programme of renovation/restoration as evidenced in Country Life
magazine dated 17 and 24 February 2010. The surrounding parkland is owned by
the Wentworth Estates.
In 2014, the house was informally offered for sale by
Newbold, with no price specified, but a figure of around £7 million was thought
to be sought according to The Times. The house was reported to need works of
around £40 million. Following the death of Mr. Newbold, the house was formally
advertised for sale in May 2015 via Savills with an asking price of £8 million.
In March 2017, the house was sold to the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust
for £7 million after a sale to the Hong Kong-based Lake House Group fell
through.
In the United Kingdom Chancellor's budget statement of
November 2016, it was announced that the Trust was to receive a grant of £7.6
million for restoration work; the Chancellor noted a claim that the property
had been Jane Austen's inspiration for Pemberley in her novel Pride and
Prejudice. It was thought that there might have been a connection to the house
because Austen uses the name Fitzwilliam in her novel, but following the
Chancellor's Autumn Statement the Jane Austen Society dismissed the likelihood
that Austen had had the house in mind, given the absence of any evidence that
she had visited the estate. Austen does, however, name a character Frederick Wentworth
in Persuasion, and the eponymous heroine of Emma has the surname Woodhouse.
Equestrian Life: From Riding Houses to Country Estates
Hardcover – October 2, 2018
Photography by Mark Roskams
Text by Lavinia Branca Snyder
Foreword by Lord Patrick Beresford
Rizzoli, October 2018
A beautiful style book celebrating the equestrian life and
upscale country living in England, Scotland and Ireland that combines high
style elegance with all the signature elements of an equestrian-centered life
such as tack rooms; trophy and portrait rooms; coach houses, stables, and
wood-paneled libraries.
A visual study of the equestrian lifestyle, showcasing
stables and interiors of country houses and estates of the British Isles and
Ireland. Often situated on idyllic grounds these houses boast classical
interiors with a traditional décor, which continues to inspire home and
lifestyle brands worldwide. Centuries-old residences belonging to owners of
polo ponies; magnificent thoroughbreds; hunt horses; and carriage teams are
included in this extensive and lavishly illustration collection. From Royal
Mews and stately homes with stables and barns to polo clubs and stud farms the
photography showcases the best of the British Isle's diverse equine homes and
is a must-have for any equestrian or traditional interiors enthusiast.
About the creators: Australian-born photographer Mark
Roskams started his photography career in the early 1980s when he began to
travel the world and developed an interest shooting architecture and design.
His work led him from New York to Florida, the Caribbean, and Europe, until
finally settling back in New York. Roskams’ photographs have been featured in
numerous publications, including Architectural Digest editions for Germany,
France, Italy, Russia, China, and Elle Decor. During this time, he crafted his
unique style of modifying and working with natural light in order to give
structures an abstract shape, thus providing the intense forms and shapes he is
known for his photographs. His books include Masseria: The Italian Farmhouses
of Puglia and Inson Dubois Wood: Interiors. Lavinia Branca Snyder is a
photographer and author of the Lavinia’s World book series. Lord Patrick
Beresford is an equestrian and former soldier as well as the younger son of the
seventh Marquess of Waterford.
