Month: July 2024

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Architecture

Calais Lighthouse + Lavender’s Blue

This Matrix of Being

In her 2018 collection of writings What Are We Doing Here? the American essayist Marilynne Robinson declares, “There is something irreducibly thrilling about the universe.” The Port; the Beach; the Basin; and the clarity, preciseness and joy of Calais’ 20th century architecture interspersed with just the odd remnant of prewar life. A climb up 271 steps of the 55 metre high 1848 lighthouse to take in the 360 degree panorama is a must. Calais has many zany moments and an inland lighthouse is just one of them. It is built on a mound where the old city bastions once stood, at least three urban blocks away from the nearest wave.

A sturdy pitched roof two storey over basement house is attached to the seven storey slender tower surmounted by a lantern. The top floor of the tower is painted black; the rest of the lighthouse is pale grey brick with stone dressings a tone darker. The lighthouse is riddled with ghosts. Two skeletons were discovered when the foundations were being laid. Dominique Darré, President of the Association for the Enhancement of the Architectural Heritage of Calais, says, “The lighthouse was built on the fortifications of Calais, on a defence site, where the presence of bodies could be explained.” There is something irreducibly thrilling about Calais.

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Architects Architecture Design Developers People Town Houses

Calais + 20th Century Architecture

Within the Pale

Northern France did not get off lightly in World War II and Calais was among the worst casualties. Notre Dame Church is one of the few built environment survivors and even it was badly damaged. The city became more void than place. The Ministry of Reconstruction and Town Planning was established in November 1944 by President Charles de Gaulle. Under the direction of its Minister Raoul Dautry who held the post from 1944 to 1946, Government architects, planners and engineers who had been in office since 1940 and survived the war formed the backbone of this new department.

Ruins were cleared and construction got underway in Calais in 1948. The original overseeing architect, Jean Gondolo, promoted low rise buildings varying in style between White City flat roofed boxiness and red brick pitched and hipped roof domesticity. Flemish details, especially curvy gables, add a surprisingly retro charm to his Rue Royale. But a visit by Eugène Claudius-Petit, the Minister from 1948 to 1952, resulted in the local architect being sidelined. The Minister dismissed Jean Gondolo’s work as not sufficiently Modern or high rise and he took over the role of city architect. Place d’Armes opening off Rue Royale is more closely aligned with the Modernism and scale of Eugène’s friend Le Corbusier’s oeuvre. Seven decades later, Calais is viewed as a place to pass through rather than visit. A midpoint, not endpoint. Its richness of postwar reconstruction architecture bypassed or unseen. But there is much to behold for the trained and trainable eye.

Categories
Design Fashion People

Misty Bailey +

And Then Came Paradise 

Some people suit blonde hair. Not many suit brown, blue or blonde hair. There was only one Misty Bailey. The Jamaican British beauty packed a lot into her three decades. She started modelling aged 15 and soon was the face of campaigns for Adidas, Balmain, Bottega Veneta, Ellesse, L’Oréal, Louis Vuitton, Revlon, the list goes on. Misty also modelled for London’s leading fashion designer Mary Martin London. A British Vogue regular, her wider achievements were recognised when she was appointed Ambassador for the UK Parliamentary Society for Arts, Fashion and Sports. It was always a thrill to chat to Misty backstage at Africa Fashion Week London before she took the catwalk by storm. Some people light up a room. Not many light up a show.

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Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

The Gunton Arms Thorpe Market + West Runton Beach Norfolk

Why Bee Aye Ate Al

It’s so exclusive there’s a two month waiting list for a weekend meal and a six month wait for a bedroom. There’s a no vehicle policy – a green path crosses 400 hectares of rolling parkland to the front porch (the car park is hidden behind a copse). It has one of the finest private collections of contemporary art in Britain. The ground floor rooms are decorated by England’s best known restaurant designer. The owner is married to an American supermodel. Welcome to The Gunton Arms. Cheers!

The story starts in 1982 when property developer Kit Martin, businessman Charles Harbord-Hamond and art dealer Ivor Braka purchased the Gunton Park Estate and restored the buildings and land. The main house, Charles’s family home, was carved into several properties. Kit’s father Sir Leslie Martin ran the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge along with Sir Colin St John “Sandy” Wilson in the Modernist mid 20th century.

The Gunton Arms, a long low two storey building faced with grey stone and decorated with fretwork gables, was originally Steward’s Farm, a shooting lodge attached to Gunton Hall. In 2011, Ivor launched The Gunton Arms, a pub with 16 bedrooms, in the Victorian building and the rest is history. Or at least a new chapter of history.

Jonathan Meades writes in The Plagiarist in the Kitchen (2017), “Nothing needs reinterpreting. Nothing needs a ‘twist’. The wheel has already been invented. The best a cook can do is improve on what’s there – that usually means stripping out redundant ingredients. It means going back to the very foundations, of starting from zero in order to reach a point that has been reached many times before.” The menu at this pub takes a leaf out of Jonathan’s book. There may be dishes like Portwood asparagus and feta salad with shallot dressing on the menu but traditional pub grub like cod fishfingers with chips and mushy peas also makes an appearance.

Knightsbridge based Ivor explains, “I’m closely involved but not every day. Luckily I took the advice of Mark Hix, former Head Chef of Le Caprice, J Sheekey and The Ivy among others. Mark effectively gave me his Head Chef Stuart Tattersall and Simone, Stuart’s partner, to take on my first pub. They’d wanted to start their own pub in the country but decided under Mark’s encouragement to join me.” Steaks are cooked on an open fire. St Véran burgundy tops the wine list.

Who better to do an impromptu tour of the pub artwork than the owner himself? His story. “What is common to all of the pieces is that they are made by people who have a passionate commitment to what they create. They are not for decoration only to just be easy on the eye; they are to stimulate, to provoke thought and to evoke emotion.” The list of artists reads like a guide to 20th and 21st century art from figuration to abstraction: Frank Auerbach, David Bailey, Tom of Finland, Lucian Freud, Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst.

But Ivor doesn’t neglect local and historic connections either: “At high level over the wood panelling in the entrance hall there are photographs relating to the history of Gunton, Gunton Hall and especially the Suffield family and its connection with the Royal Family and Lillie Langtry, the actress and mistress of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Langtry was the most celebrated beauty of her day. Whilst the Prince of Wales was staying at Gunton Hall she stayed at the shooting lodge to be close to him.” The current Prince of Wales frequents the pub. History repeating itself. “To one side of the front door is a work by Hans Peter Feldmann, an artist who specialises in adding the unexpected to old paintings he has found in antique shops. Here, he has given a formally posed 19th century lady a black eye, a clear reference to domestic violence. It’s a picture that’s comic but with obvious serious intent.” History, updated.

The Elk Room is the main bar and restaurant. Ivor says, “This room is dominated by the massive fossilised skull of a Giant Irish Elk, the largest deer that ever lived. It was found in a peat bog in Ireland and is over 10,000 years old. I bought it at an auction in Ireland and it was formerly in Adare Manor, a Gothic house designed by Pugin for the Earl of Dunraven.” Like several major Irish country houses, such as Carton in County Kildare, Adare Manor in County Limerick is now a five star hotel resort.

“In the corner of the room are a series of lithographs depicting alcoholic women and their children by Paula Rego. Born in Portugal but working all her life in England, Rego is regarded as one of Britain’s most distinguished artists. Her work has a dark humour and complexity of purpose redolent of the tragicomic vision of Goya or Cervantes. These lithographs are the result of a request from a wine producer to design memorable labels for their product. Rego responded by letting her imagination run riot with this series focusing on lonely women with babies desperately turning to drink.” The company never did use them. Too memorable.

The Elk Room flows into The Emin Room. “Addiction is again a running theme in this interior: the addiction to love and emotional need which comes over strongly in Tracey Emin’s three neon works Trust Me, I Said Don’t Practice On Me, and Everything for Love,” Ivor relates. “All these works directly convey a need for sincerity, for total emotional commitment and a huge fear of the possibility of the lack of it. The neons are executed in the artist’s elegantly distinctive forward sloping handwriting. To me, Tracey Emin, with her total dedication to her work and her directness, is one of the most impressive artists working today.” Martin Brudnizki designed the downstairs rooms; Robert Kime, the upstairs.

Racy humour is all around. Falling Leaves by Jonathan Yeo, famous for his red portrait of Charles III, is actually a collage of cutouts from porn magazines. Ivor jokes it’s “clitorati”. As a male appendage counterpart, a metal doorknob drops the K. There’s a chromatically vivid image by British photographer Miles Aldridge of the Buffalo New York born supermodel Kristen McMenamy. She rose to success in the 1990s with her ethereal alternate beauty. Kristen is a Donatella Versace favourite and friend of Linda Evangelista.

Yet there’s also serious commentary. He finishes, “Kitaj constantly involves his Jewishness in his art and this small portrait derives from a famous photograph of Hitler’s admirer and Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Kitaj is deliberately implicating the English upper classes with antisemitism and an admiration for the German fascist regime.” History must not repeat itself.

“I will defend the fashion world to the end because I know it personally,” opines Kristen, who is Ivor’s wife. “From the outside it might look like a vanity project of marketing and capitalism. But from the inside it’s a lot of great people. I don’t think I was specially phenomenal looking – because I wasn’t. I had to work a little bit harder than the others. You look at some girls and they’re just so incredibly beautiful. But some of those beautiful girls don’t last because they don’t have something, that magic. I would say with the top girls you gotta have something more than just the way you look.”

The following morning, a stroll along the windswept West Runton Beach, which as the crow flies is about as close to Amsterdam as London, waves splashing “barely suggestive of the violence of the deep” (James Baldwin, Another Country, 1963), is like being immersed in an Edward Seago watercolour. Now that’s another artist whose work should be hung at The Gunton Arms. Just saying.

Categories
Architects Architecture

Holkham Hall + Estate Wells-next-the-Sea Norfolk

Notes on a House

The treasure houses of England are slick tourist operations. On a midweek day, 300 visitors have descended on Holkham Hall, one of Norfolk’s great estates. Even a house of these vast dimensions (all three million bricks) with no fewer than four wings feels busy. A one way system is in operation. There’s a café and shop in the stableyard of course. Otherwise no gimmickry is required (children’s playgrounds etc): build good architecture and design great gardens and they will come. Not in Ireland though where chances are it will be you and two nuns (Castle Leslie, County Monaghan, before it opened as a hotel) or four locals and an Audrey Hepburn lookalike guide (Russborough, County Wicklow).

A plaque in the Marble Hall of Holkham states: “This seat, on an open barren estate, was planned, planted, built, decorated, and inhabited the middle of the XVIIIth century by Thomas Coke Earl of Leicester.” Mid 20th century architectural historian John Cornforth advised removing the large pane windows with elegant brass frames and mechanics that were installed in the piano nobile portico rooms of the main block to frame uninterrupted views of the Victorian gardens. This reflected the fad for returning houses to a moment frozen in time, in this case 1750. Taste moves on and it’s impossible to not appreciate plate glass windows at houses like Curraghmore in County Wateford (just us and the butler). Baths in former bedrooms are all the rage in country houses. The Cokes (pronounced “Cooks”) inserted one into the middle of a former corner bedroom of Holkham in the 1980s. Four decades later, before they sold Wolterton Hall just down the road Keith Day and Peter Sheppard turned a bedroom into the State Bathroom for the adjoining State Bedroom. Something that hasn’t quite caught on is dressing your staff to match your interior. In 1910, the manservants of Holkham got frock coats and waistcoats to coordinate with the silk brocade wallcovering in the redecorated North State Bedroom.

“I studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art but did everything – welding, painting, jewellery and so on. I enjoyed casting in fibreglass. I remember meeting Henry Moore,” explains the artist and art restorer Denise Cook. “You build up a visual memory in life. You are your own personal library.” Her mother’s family came from Lowestoft in Suffolk, 100 kilometres southeast of Holkham. “My great grandfather was a sailmaker.”

“The 7th Earl of Leicester died in 2015. He was known as ‘Grumps’ by his grandchildren. The funeral was amazing. It was all handled by the estate. His son drove the old Earl’s favourite Fergie tractor attached to a trailer which carried the coffin made by the estate’s joiners from Holkham oak.” Denise continues, “The route to the church was lined by over 200 employees and the cortege was followed by family and friends. The estate cooks prepared the funeral tea and children of estate employees served the food for everyone.”

Categories
Architecture Country Houses

Stiffkey Old Hall + St John the Baptist Church Stiffkey Norfolk

Millennia Trump

It’s a bucolic English scene: a church and a manor house sharing a lawn split by a brick wall sloping down to a river. The Norfolk coast may be a mere kilometre away, but Stiffkey (locals pronounce it “Stooky”) is an inland world of its own. Stiffkey Old Hall was started by Sir Nicholas Bacon in 1576. Later, when it was subsumed into the Raynham Hall Estate, half the house was demolished and it was downgraded to a tenant farm.

The current building rises from the remains of a sprawling three storey U plan house with six slim cylindrical towers: the three towers closest to the church are ruinous, the other three are still integrated into the house. The north and west ranges survive as an L shaped building. Single storey blocks stand to the south. Windows dating from the 16th to the 20th century reflect the house’s complex architectural history. Brick and flint walls with stone dressings and a pantile roof contribute to a variety of textures and colours. Stiffkey Old Hall is a beautiful patchwork quilt.

The church guide states, “Approaching from the north side through the gate one is confronted by a fine church, much of it built in the Perpendicular style. Looking downhill, one has a good view of the attractive mixture of flint work, dressed stone and red brick. In the porch and parapet, there has been liberal use of the white knapped flints which are so much a feature of churches in this part of Norfolk.” Its architecture has been altered from Doomsday till practically the present day. St John the Baptist Church is a beautiful chequerboard.

Just as we are about to publish,  Denise Cook calls. We discuss our recent visit to Norfolk. The eminent artist and art restorer used to live on the Suffolk border with Norfolk. “I hope you’re going to mention the Rector of Stiffkey. Look him up.” What a shocker! Harold Davidson, all 1.6 metres of him, started working life on the stage and there the drama was only beginning. He swapped vaudeville for the cloth. While he was appointed Rector of Stiffkey, a post which came with a large rectory for the Davidson family, Harold spent midweeks in London ministering to showgirls.

Reverend Davidson was accused of immorality by Bertram Pollock, Bishop of Norwich. Despite a farcical court case and support from his parishioners, he was found guilty and defrocked. To raise funds for his reinstatement campaign the diminutive ex clergyman joined a fairground in Blackpool. He appeared in an open coffin packed with ice and later in a glass cage where he was prodded in the posterior by a mechanical imp holding a giant toasting fork.

Debts caught up with him and after shinning down a drainpipe with bailiffs in hot pursuit, he served nine days in the hospital wing of Liverpool’s Walton Jail. His final fairground stunt sharing a cage with a pair of lions in Skegness didn’t finish well. The former Reverend Harold Davidson accidentally stepped on the tail of the lioness Toto, and Freddie her mate wasn’t too impressed. And that is how the story ends. Farrow and Ball have a paint named Stiffkey Blue.

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design People Restaurants

Houghton Hall + Gardens King’s Lynn Norfolk

Big Boots To Fill

You know you’ve landed on your (gentrified) feet when you measure your parkland in square kilometres not old fashioned hectares. Better still when your toffish turnip patch is in Norfolk, with postcodes so posh there’s currently a chronic shortage of cleaning ladies (or gentlemen). Listing is like degrees: it’s best having a Grade I and getting a 1st or being unlisted and getting a 3rd. Throw in a (mostly) James Gibbs exterior and (mainly) William Kent interior and – bravo! – you’ve arrived at Houghton Hall. But first the yellow Snatterscham stone Kentish stables. For non Cholmondeley family members and guests, lunch served on monogrammed china in the courtyard is still pretty swanky. Venturing up to the silvery Aislaby sandstone house, much of the piano nobile is open to the public. Upper floors and wings attached to the main block (with its domed square corner towers) by colonnades in true Palladian fashion are not. Who’s the family? Who are the guests? Who’s Who?

Lady Rose Hanbury and David Cholmondeley (the 7th Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley to you) are famously great chums with Wills and Catherine (the Prince and Princess of Wales, again to you). And neighbours: Sandringham is so close there’s simply nobody else in between who matters. Built for de facto first British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, his collection of 400 Old Masters may have dwindled when his grandson flogged most of them to Catherine the Great of Russia, but David Cholmondeley is forever hosting exhibitions of contemporary artists. That’s when he’s not acting as Lord-in-Waiting for King Charles. Back when he was David Rocksavage (so many surnames) he directed a film version of Truman Capote’s semiautobiographical first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms. David has revived the Walled Garden in honour of his grandmother Sybil Sassoon. Six full time, two part time and 12 volunteer gardeners look after these heavenly two hectares.

A rustic floor (fully exposed basement) handily elevates the piano nobile to max out views of the 18th century rolling (thanks to a haha) parkland by Charles Bridgeman. Pride of place in the centre of the garden elevation is the double height Stone Hall, a 12 metre cube. The State Bedchambers are especially sumptuous. Most atmospheric of all is the top lit Great Staircase, a tower of ghostly shadows. On the dining table in the Marble Parlour is a contemporary Jasperware piece by Magdalene Odundo inspired by Josiah Wedgwood’s correspondence with a slave turned abolitionist Olaudah Equiano discovered in Houghton’s archives. Just one of Antony Gormley’s 100 sculptures (positioned at the same height to create a single horizontal plane) makes it into the interior: the body is half submerged in the rustic floor Arcade.

Lady Rocksavage’s polished boots are set out. Anyone for riding?

Categories
Architecture Restaurants

East Langdon + The Lantern Inn Martin Kent

Beaver Moon Under Water

Sliding doors. It’s the Pimlico of Kent. Nobody boards. Nobody departs. Until we do. Martin Mill Railway Station. It’s an energetic hour and a half’s walk along deserted rural laneways from Deal. So we don’t board at Martin Mill but later we will depart for London from that eerily silent platform.

That was November 2021. Our return jaunt is in July 2024. We’ve migrated from the cosy interior to the alfresco seating in the rear garden, surrounded by novel accommodation: a caravan here, a hut there. After lunch we will walk the 1.4 kilometres to East Langdon to admire the Norman to Victorian St Augustine’s Church on the rise above the village green.

In 1946 George Orwell famously stipulated 11 criteria for his perfect London pub in The Evening Standard. He called it the Moon Under Water. The writer admits, “The qualities one expects of a country pub are slightly different.” We’ve filled the lacuna, stepped into the breach, updated the mission, and come up with 11 of our own criteria for the perfect country pub. The difference is we’ve found our ideal destination. The Lantern Inn. Marty rocks.

  • The building should be around half a millennium old.
  • There should be lots of historic features like a smugglers’ tunnel running under the feet of unsuspecting customers.
  • It should be in a tiny village opposite a country house surrounded by lush countryside with just a hint of sea salt in the air.
  • There should be lit fires: “in winter there is generally a good fire burning”, low beamed ceilings, dark panelling, darker snugs, oil portraits of long forgotten gentry and, unlike the Moon Under Water, a piano.
  • Customers should be able to retire to an upstairs apartment or garden structure for an overnight stay.
  • “The great surprise of the Moon Under Water is its garden. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and you find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are little green tables with iron chairs round them.” We would repeat this more or less verbatim.
  • The staff should be friendly, efficient in an unobtrusive way, and decoratively easy on the eye.
  • Food should be great in a relaxed sort of way with Sunday roasts of every ilk including vegetarian.
  • Lunch should be able to last all afternoon with nobody rushing you off your table.
  • A cat, preferably monochromatically furred and called Boris, should roam freely between bar stools and dining chairs.
  • The pub should ooze Orwellian “atmosphere”.

What on earth happened to the dame who decided to up her game and wear a ship on her head to a party a century or two ago? There’s a print of her in the dining room of The Lantern Inn. No doubt she was thinking, well, let’s go all out patriotic and celebrate the latest naval victory in style. So she stepped out in her powdered bouffant hopefully deloused and demoused wig with its nautical accessory. Maybe it was Buck Moon. But it turns out somebody has to wear something epoch ending. She singlehandedly ushered in the strict Puritanical Victorian times quicker than you could chant, “Yankee doodle went to town …”

Categories
Architecture Art Country Houses Fashion People

English Heritage Georgian Makeup + Kenwood House Hampstead London

Big Wigs Going Viral

“Hello! I’m Fashion Historian Amber Butchart and welcome to Kenwood House which is cared for by English Heritage. We’re standing inside an incredible Georgian house in north London that was once home to William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his high society companions in the 18th century. Today we’re looking at the late 18th century and we’re going to show you how to recreate an authentic Georgian look inspired by one of the people whose portraits hang here at Kenwood. We’ll be exploring not only what the cosmetics can reveal about England during this period, but we’ll be investigating why bigger was better when it came to hairstyles of the Georgian aristocracy. Plus we’ve got an extra special treat for you. We’re going to be recreating two Georgian looks and talking about how women and men used makeup to make an impression on Georgian society.”

Cosmetics reached a zany zenith in the closing decades of the 18th century. Powdered wigs piled high with miniature ships celebrating naval victories, mouse fur eye brows, zinc and arsenic makeup: this is beauty to die for. Breeches and crinolines donned, the new Lord and Lady Mansfield are ready for a busy day’s strolling and lolling around while the cameras are rolling. So many cantilevered staircases and hard landings! Then it’s time for The Reveal in Kenwood’s Library, the hall of a myriad mirrors. Oh yeah, always the talent. The cast and crew:

  • Director Producer Hannah Silverman
  • Producer Katie Kennedy
  • Camera Director Joel Bates
  • Camera Thomas Buttery
  • Camera Liam Southall
  • Sound Zander Mavor
  • Photographer Abi Bansal
  • Fashion Historian Amber Butchart
  • Makeup Artist Rebecca Butterworth
  • English Heritage Curator Esmé Whittaker
  • Male Model Stuart Blakley
  • Female Model Ashleigh Murray

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Luxury Town Houses

Wimereux + Lavender’s Blue

L’Été le Plus Merveilleux

“Yes, next summer will be wonderful.” Monsters by Emerald Fennell, 2015

The Opal Coast is yet again where all the big hitters are headed as the mercury rises and if it was good enough for Napoléon III … Wimereux has glamour in spadefuls.

Frédéric Debussche et al write in Le Guide Boulogne-Sur-Mer, 2013, “To the north of Boulogne, beyond Pointe de la Crèche, extends the pretty seaside resort of Wimereux, established as a commune in 1899. Until then, the site constituted the maritime fringe of Wimille, where the nobility of Boulogne built opulent castles including Lozembrune. Established in an indentation of the coast, Wimereux was until the middle of the 19th century both the outpost and the extension of the Boulogne defence. Napoléon I built a point there and stationed 8,000 men as part of the Boulogne Development Camp. It was on the beach that his nephew Louis Napoléon Bonaparte ran aground in 1840 during his attempted coup d’état. After the Second Camp of Boulogne, led by the latter who became Napoléon III, Wimereux became a popular vacation spot. A casino and sumptuous hotels stand on the seafront and contribute to the emergence of the seaside resort whose appeal has never waned and in which the numerous Belle Époque villas were spared by the bombings of the last war.”

Benoît Diéval of the Pas-de-Calais Tourist Office doesn’t hold back: “Wimereux is timeless and utterly ravishing! It might be the oldest of our seaside resorts, but what panache! Wimereux was officially established by a decree issued by Napoléon I ordering the foundation of a town along the River Wimereux. It really came into its own during the Second Empire with the extension of the Boulogne to Calais railway line and the popularity of sea bathing. Wimereux continues to seduce visitors.” In 1867, Wimereux became a stop on the Paris to Calais line.

It’s a tiny town of vibrant villas and blue and white beach huts. At the end of the 19th century, exuberant Anglo Norman terraces, Art Deco villas, Gothic compressions of châteaux and actual châteaux were built along the seawall and accompanying grid of streets. Houses representing the tastes and foibles of some residents navigating their ascent up the social hierarchy, others plateauing. The architecture is more colourful than its English counterparts – late Victorian and Edwardian – with gaily painted half timbered gables and ceramic tiled walls. Balconies and bow windows and towers and turrets spring up and out in all directions.

In 1900 the beach huts were erected in a long row, sometimes two deep, along the promenade La Digue. Their names on a central stretch are Anne Florence; Le haut Courtil; Manou; La Flambée; Les Sternes; Bon Accueil; Antoinette; Horizon; Le Plessis; Lalot; Régina; Notre Dame des Dunes; Les Perles; Mickey; Graziella; Rud Vent; Madame Claude; Bonne Maman; L’Arche; Avant la Tempête; Charlotte; Sabine; Kerida; La Marmaille. A door sign on one hut states: “C’est pas Versailles ici!”

QR Codes on the pillars of some of the villas link to Valorisons Wimereux. This heritage society provides details of the architectural history of the town, emphasising its stylistic variety. A petite two storey gabled rendered house with single storey wings: “Napoléonette is one of the oldest villas in Wimereux. It was built in 1867 for Jean Lartigue, a senior civil servant.” A three storey over raised basement rendered house with a corner tower: “La Malouine is named after the first owner’s mother who was from St Malo. This magnificent Art Deco villa of 1910 has survived the wars.”  A squarish two storey house with a semicircular pediment: “Sans Adieu was built in 1913 by the architect Emile Vandenbeusch as a second home for Paul Vermelle of Lille. It is a resolutely modern house for its time, made of local stone.” A substantial two and a half storey red brick and stone house: “Villa Le Clos Flamand was built in 1922 by the architect Charles Bourgeois for the Lesay family of Lille.”

Rue Carnot is the classy shopping street which bisects the town roughly north to south. Purveyors of fine food include the charcuterie La Belle Viande and the chocolaterie Chocolat de Beussent Lachelle. Wimereux is blessed with four glorious Channel beaches. The sandy Plage de Wimereux is the most central. Plage Nord is separated from Plage de Wimereux by the River Wimereux. Plage du Club Nautique, a mix of sand and pebbles, is for water sports. Sandy and pebbly Plage Dunes Slack is close to the cliffs. Benoît Diéval is right. Wimereux is timeless and utterly ravishing!

Yes, this summer in Hauts-du-France is monstrously wonderful.

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Hôtel Atlantic + La Liégeoise Restaurant Wimereux

Toto Le Chien

Daniel Lehmann is President of Jeunes Restaurateurs which brings together 390 high end restaurants and 160 hotels across the Continent. The organisation has 25 French members. He relates, “Facing the sea is the pretty town of Wimereux. La Liégeoise is the gastronomic restaurant of a luxurious hotel, Atlantic. This family establishment is run by the great Chef Benjamin Delpierre and his wife Aurélie. Here, Chef Benjamin offers delicious seafood dishes and innovative cuisine awarded a star in the Michelin Guide. You can dine in the dining room, on the terrace or opt for the hotel’s brasserie, L’Aloze.” Or you can sip at the bar of L’Aloze: cocktails and mocktails; boissons fraîches and boissons chaudes.

Aurélie adds, “Our gourmet restaurant La Liégeoise will leave you with unforgettable memoires. The room impresses with its decoration and panorama of the sea. The food is a perfect mastery of preparation and cooking.” The couple met at the Paris Ritz while working for the two Michelin starred Michel Roth. Benjamin was a graduate of the Lycée Hôtelier du Touquet, a leading hotel school in Paris. They took over the running of the hotel and restaurant in 2019. Benjamin’s parents had bought the hotel in 1995. Alain and Beatrice Delpierre relocated their 13 year old restaurant La Liégeoise from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Wimereux.

Arther Eperon, a Kent resident, reviewed the hotel for The New York Times in 1972, before the Delpierres took over: “If you take the old coast road from Calais, over the cliffs from which Napoléon and Hitler both looked across the Channel and dreamed frustratedly of invading England … Just down the coast is Wimereux, a little resort that resembles a faded print of around 1913; you expect the children shrimping among the rocks to wear sailor suits. The old Atlantic Hotel fits the setting – it has only 10 bedrooms, and there are umbrellas and tables on the pathway promenade where you take aperitifs. But the Atlantic is known to gourmets for its fish menu. The turbot and sole are magnificent, the chausson de crabe (local crabmeat in a flaky pastry) has earned the little hotel high rankings with international guides, and there is an unusual pâte of sea bass in pastry that is delicious.”

Hôtel Atlantic opened in the 1920s and its distinctive Art Deco façade with a central arched frame soon became a focal point of the promenade. In 1938 Chef Patron Michel Hamiot launched a popular rotisserie restaurant in the hotel, a forerunner to La Liégeoise. The back of the hotel was damaged in World War II and the front in the 1980s by a coastal storm. In 2003, the original 10 bedrooms were supplemented by another eight in a new top storey and adjoining terraced house. Most of the bedrooms have a balcony or terrace.

The joy of having a first floor restaurant is the uninterrupted view across the Strait of Dover. Dining one day after the summer solstice only enhances the experience. Just as all 18 bedrooms have sea views, so every table has one too in the stepped restaurant. A hush descends under the chapiteau ceiling as everyone watches agog while the amber sun sets on the horizon, at first reflected, then submerged, then disappearing into the opal hued sea. The surprise cheeseboard arrives and dinner continues as darkness falls.

Categories
Art Fashion People

Daphne Guinness + Sleep

Be Careful What You Dream

Racing across London in the heat of a midsummer afternoon, the car windows down, the wind in our hair, causing waves, making waves, waving to passersby, while over the airwaves Solitaire plays. “She prayed for salvation. She wept for their pride. She cried for San Sebastián. And every single arrow in his side.” We’re duetting with our driver. The anticipation crescendos as we arrive at our secret destination. Diana Mitford’s granddaughter and Desmond Guinness’s niece doesn’t disappoint.

Daphne Guinness is even more exquisite, more elegant and more eloquent in real life. And just a little shy although by the end of the afternoon we have her laughing. She has her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones and her uncle’s piercing blue eyes. A model figure is accentuated by a trademark monochromatic outfit. She knows how to pull off a silhouette. Her white blonde pompadour (‘hair’ is for non human art installations) with just a dash of pink is splayed up with the help of kanzashi. Alexander McQueen sculptures to stride on (again, not mere ‘shoes’) and silver clad fingers complete the look.

Sleep is Daphne’s fifth album and is getting justifiably rave reviews. Traces of Beethoven and Pet Shop Boys are discernible but her music style is unsurprisingly unique. “The album has taken from conception till now three and a half years. I’ve released five videos from it so far. I want to be the crossover between sound and vision, the two different disciplines. And because I’ve been working with many photographers over the years, especially David LaChappelle. To me, when I’m writing the songs they’re all quite visual. Some of the tracks are condensed classical form: first act, second act, third act, fourth act, resolve. Others are just pop tracks with none of that narrative. But several are actually building out worlds in verse.”

“My first album was made with visionary photographer and director Nick Knight. And then Paul Fryer for the second one. Two with David. And then this one with Malcolm Doherty and David and so on. The good times always have to start!” We tell Daphne that every track on her album could be a single. “That’s what you try and do as an artist. In writing lyrics I try to cut out every piece of slack, chop every word that isn’t useful. A song can come kind of fully formed but then you need to sculpt it.” We venture how she has taught a generation to pronounce ‘chimera’. Daphne bursts out laughing. Surprisingly loudly, considering how softly she speaks. “Sometimes you just use a word because it’s really fantastic to use and add some nuance round it.”

“I didn’t go to university. I’m an autodidact. I read books all the time. My song Love and Destruction is a condensed reading of Nietzsche. It’s a philosophical text.” But she needed encouragement to take the first steps in her artistic musical career – that shyness. “I was in the studio for my first album, crouched under the desk in a corner and David Bowie came in and dragged me out by the ankles and said, ‘Come on – out! You’ve got to stand up! Stop hiding!’ Anyway, he really was instrumental in that album and was the shadow producer or godfather producer. I was his project – how wonderful to be his project. He was very funny and great.”

Daphne reminisces about her childhood. “I spent my early life in the country nine miles from Nuneaton, on the border of Leicestershire and Warwickshire. When I was growing up there all the mines were being shut down. It’s very grey, it’s very bleak. But it’s brilliant! It’s actually quite nice growing up in a bleak place. You develop an imagination around that. People ignore the Midlands at their peril. I have moved around a lot – Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, France, the US.”

“I went to school in London to begin with and then I was sent away to a really really bad boarding school and I kind of fell apart. I got into Guildhall where I trained as an opera singer, did all the exams. I then went off and got married at 19 and had three children. And again, the autodidact came out and I continued to train in opera.” We just have to bring up Solitaire. That infectious laugh once more. “You know it’s almost worth going through all the terrible things in my life to get a song like Solitaire. It almost sounds like you need to be nearly killed or put into the most terrifying positions to end up with a song like that! I expelled ghosts. I collapsed after I recorded the song – it was like everything was gone.”

“Mishima is the second track on Sleep and is about the Japanese writer. I had a Japanese nanny from I was three to five so I was fluent in Japanese. When Mishima died she was in tears. She taught me how to do reciprocal behaviour – my father found me in tears on the staircase at home and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ I mean, you can see from my hairstyle …” Ah, the origin of the kanzashi. “What’s really interesting is the San Sebastián connection in Solitaire. Mishima famously did these pictures of San Sebastián with the arrows. Our home in Cadaqués was named after San Sebastián. There are so many weird threads that go in and out. You couldn’t make it up!”

“I was going to give up recording after my third album. I thought it was pretty good. It was a monster to mix this album with all the strings and the drums. Normally at this stage of an album I’m ready for hospital … That’s why I started doing videos because I wasn’t sure if I would survive this process. I thought well if I do videos and something happens … Actually I feel alright. I hope people like the album and the words and the atmosphere get through. You have no idea if it’s going to resonate with anybody else but I’d prefer to live and die on a perfect pitch, stanza, iambic pentameter, to get a real message across.”

“We’re living in urgent times. But Sleep has got a very upbeat sound and yet the message is serious but actually there’s optimism in it. All the tracks are my favourites in so many ways. The only person I’m trying to beat is myself really. I don’t even go for a walk without a goal.” We don’t want to leave but our driver has arrived and it’s time to go. He blasts No Joke full volume on the return journey. “You’re flesh and blood. You won’t be here for long. Don’t push your luck … Before your eyes, an enigma lies.” Debo Devonshire’s great niece and Clementine Lady Beit’s cousin twice removed doesn’t disappoint. In Daphne Guinness’s departing words: “It’s a mysterious journey.”

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Royal Hospital Chelsea + Treasure House Fair London 2024

Love Rides Pillion

Only in its second edition, summer in London without Treasure House Fair would be like a cheeseboard without chutney or a cappuccino without chocolate. The fair has grown by almost a third with an international cohort of 70 exhibitors this year. Beverly Hills jeweller Robert Procop continues the tradition of exhibitions first established at Treasure House’s predecessor, Masterpiece, with The Great 100 Carat Gems. One of the priceless pieces is The Majestic Kryptonite, a vibrant blue aquamarine crystal with blue and pink sapphires.

Several vintage JD Classics cars lining the avenue of Royal Hospital Chelsea grounds set the tone. Fine Art Commissions is the first indoor stand beyond the entrance to the fair. Artist Nicky Philipps is at work conjuring up a portrait of a model. She is best known for her 2011 oil on canvas of Queen Elizabeth II wearing the Order of the Garter robes which now hangs in Buckingham Palace. Nicky carries on the enchanting school of portraiture realism favoured by Sir John Lavery, Sir William Orpen and John Singer Sargent.

There’s a mix of familiar and new faces at the fair. Ken Sims of Bernard Goldbery Fine Arts says, “New York is so quiet in the summertime. We have a lot of European clients so it makes perfect sense to have a presence at The Treasure House Fair. It is good to support a new growing fair too.” One of Bernard Goldberg’s standout pieces is The Altneuschul Prague, a richly atmospheric 1913 oil on panel by Oldrich Blazicek. The 13th century Altneuschul is Europe’s oldest synagogue. Another unavoidable eyecatcher is Gustav Klimt’s Dozing Woman, chalk on paper circa 1900.

“This painting of Admiral Sir John Norris dates from about 1735,” explains Martyn Downer, “and I believe is the only portrait which features the rebuilt HMS Britannia.” The ship can be seen in the corner of the oil on canvas. Beside it is the model of Britannia made by the workshop of John Hayward Master Shipwright at Woolwich Dockyard which is two decades older than the painting. Measuring 1.4 metres long, the model is made of yellow pine, box and fruitwoods. He adds, “It’s a contemporary dockyard model, fully decked and equipped and made to separate at the gun deck to reveal the dock beams.” The ship model is sold already – and it’s only Preview Day.

A gentle breeze ripples through the open French doors of Lulu as sea bass is served followed by chocolate mousse. Danny Piers from the Julian Jazz Academy is playing the concert gran Steinway in the brasserie. This being Treasure House, the piano is an artwork: Chromasoul by Argentina born Mària Inès Aguirre, 2019. The instrument is vividly painted incorporating a range of musical references from Claude Debussy to Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Afterwards, everyone from Hampton to The Hamptons will be swapping notes and sipping Pommery Brut Royal at the Red Oyster Bar. Actress Sienna Miller swishes by looking resplendent in a fretwork edged black dress and studded buckled high heel clogs.