We will analyse the expression ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’ in nine domains whose owners exercised their eclectic tastes in the architecture, gardens and interiors. Elizabethan England sets the scene with Kenilworth Castle, gifted by the Queen to Robert Dudley, where he designed a symbolic setting in which to woo her, unsuccessfully on the last count. Bess, Countess of Shrewsbury, shrewd courtier of the Queen, built her prodigy house ‘more glass than wall’ - Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. William Cecil was Elizabeth’s great statesman and spymaster, his reward being a baronetcy and his prodigy house, Burghley.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s Osborne House encapsulates industry and technology - their expression of Victorian family values - with a taste for Italian architecture. A horror of 19th-century industrialisation inspired William Morris to advise: ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. An exemplar of the English Arts and Crafts movement, the Red House, was designed by Philip Webb to illustrate all Morris’s ideals. These principles inspired the prolific garden writer, William Robinson, when restoring Gravetye Manor and designing its extensive gardens.
Winston Churchill’s artistic abilities were expressed at Chartwell, in his studio where he painted and, more unexpectedly, when he rolled up his sleeves and undertook bricklaying garden walls and a play house for his daughters, Marycot. Historic and contemporary expressions are contrasted at Alnwick Castle and Houghton Hall. Alnwick Castle was transformed from an18th-century ruin by Robert Adam into a ducal Gothic castle set in a ‘Capability’ Brown landscape. The contemporary revival by the current Duke and Duchess of Northumberland includes the use of Alnwick as a setting for the Harry Potter films.
The South Sea Company made fortunes for many until its ‘Bubble’ burst in 1720. Robert Walpole was one such winner, and he built Houghton Hall, commissioning William Kent and collecting fabulous works of art. The Hall was locked after his death and the collections sold, but 150 years later his heir married Sybil Sassoon and the estate rose like a phoenix from the ashes and remains spectacularly successful.
There will be a field trip to study a selection of treasured possessions in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Learning outcomes
- To examine and appreciate the diversity of individual tastes and their expression, whether eccentric and individual or part of a larger trend;
- To identify several properties that are iconic in defining English cultural inspirations;
- To gain an insight into key English characters when visiting historic properties.
