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Squerryes Court + Winery Westerham Kent

The Summer Garden of England

Apart from the parkland surrounding the house, the rest of the 1,000 hectare estate until the beginning of this century was used for agriculture. Now 21 hectares are under vine. Our joyful vintner explains the vineyard uses the double fermentation Champagne method for the sparkling wine it produces. She says, “We blend Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier to create our balanced and complex final signature wines. Chardonnay brings elegance and finesse; Pinot Noir delivers structure and depth; and Pinot Meunier adds a fruity profile.” Located high on the North Downs in Kent, the vintage wines of the Squerryes Estate are a distinct expression of the terroir – such a great French word – and winemaking methods.

But first we spin by Squerryes Court to get a glimpse of the house and lake and parkland. The house is at the top of a gentle rise to the south of Westerham (the Winery is to the east). The two most famous sons of this historic town are General James Wolfe and Sir Winston Churchill. Both gentlemen were friends with the owners of Squerryes Court. John Warde and Anne Warde signed the interwar visitors’ book at Chartwell, the Churchills’ nearby residence. Squerryes Court is the quintessential English country house. The Pevsner guide to Kent: West and the Weald by John Newman (1980), states, “The epitome of the hipped roof house, as popularised by Sir Roger Pratt’s Clarendon House, Piccadilly, handsome in its proportions and unusually craftsmanly in its warm red brickwork.” Sir Nicholas Crisp bought the estate in 1681 and completed the house five years later. In 1731, John Warde bought the house and estate.

We head off to the Squerryes Winery Restaurant in time for the last of the summer sparkling wine. Our ebullient vintner tells us the Head Chef is from the west of Ireland. Seamus McDonagh trained at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology. “A lot of my food is based around the French cooking classics,” he shares. “I just like to add a bit of a modern twist.” We’re fine wining and dining and reclining on the terrace on a sunkissed evening watching shadows creep across the vines. Marmite butter, smoked cod roe, Scottish King Scallops, barbequed aubergine marinated in chimichurri, chocolate sponge cake … everything we love.

Vintage Rosé 2021 is the perfect accompaniment to our meal. This vegan wine disgorged in August last year is 75 percent Pinot Noir and 25 percent Pinot Meunier. Laura Evans, Squerryes Master of Wine, describes its tasting notes, “Delicate pink. On the nose crunchy red fruits, redcurrant, sun ripened strawberries and raspberries. On the palate, notes of strawberries and cream pink grapefruit and minerality.” The warm climate and chalk soil of Kent are ideal for such high quality sparkling winemaking.

Henry Warde is the eighth generation of the family to live in Squerryes Court. He relates, “‘Licet Esse Beatis’ is our family motto, meaning ‘permitted to be joyful’, so we like to say that we’re in the business of creating joy! Treasured letters tell how my ancestor Sir Patience Warde traded wool from the Estate with the French for red wine which he then sold to the hardworking people of London bringing some pleasure to their days.”

He continues, “It felt like the tides were changing when centuries later a very well known French Champagne house came to Squerryes looking to buy some of our land on which to grow their vines. My father John and I decided to walk away from those negotiations and instead set about planting 36 acres of vines ourselves back in 2006. The ‘long thirsty wait’ that my father spoke of when the first vines were planted has been well worth it. We are already enjoying recognition for the quality of our vintage wines.” Our jubilant vintner tells us the Winery now sells 100,000 bottles a year.

Wine GB’s 2025 Industry Report states that there are now 1,104 vineyards (totalling 4,489 hectares under vine in England and 91 hectares in Wales) which together produce 9.1 million bottles a year (6.2 million of sparkling and 2.9 million of still). Plantings are up 510 percent since 2005. The most planted grape varieties in descending order of dominance are Chardonnay (31 percent of the total hectarage), Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Bacchus, Seyval Blanc, Solaris, Pinot Gris, Reichensteiner, Rondo and Pinot Blanc (one percent of the total hectarage). Actually there are now 99 grape varieties in England and Wales including just three hectares of Merlot and a lonely two hectares of Riesling.

England now has 10 wine growing counties. Again, in descending order of scale is Kent (almost one third of the total hectarage), West Sussex, Essex, East Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Devon and Suffolk (below two percent). Squerryes Winery is in line with the regional breakdown: the top Southeast varieties are Chardonnay followed by Pinot Noir and finally Pinot Meunier. Champagne watch out!

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Architecture Country Houses People

The Landmark Trust + Obriss Farm The Weald Kent

A Gentle Revisitation of Days That Are No More

An article in the May 1990 edition of the now defunct Traditional Homes magazine marked The Landmark Trust’s silver jubilee. Julia Abel Smith records in History for Hire, “The organisation was founded in 1965 to save minor but important buildings, and to give them a new life by letting them out to holidaymakers. In co founder Sir John’s words, ‘The Landmark Trust was set up ‘to tackle projects too troublesome or unfashionable for anyone else.’” So there might be a midnight dash across a roof terrace to the bathroom or the need to duck under low ceiling beams. Julia notes that generally the Trust does not take on buildings that could be restored as permanent homes.

Some are urban oases such as Marshal Wade’s House in the centre of Bath. Others are coastal retreats like St Augustine’s Grange and St Edward’s Presbytery on the edge of Ramsgate. And at least one has a kilometre long drive and a view unbroken by any other buildings stretching across fields towards infinity or at least the far side of The Weald. That will be Obriss Farm betwixt pretty Edenbridge and even prettier Westerham. Except for the occasional plane streaking the sky en route to Gatwick, it’s hard to imagine the property is a mere 61 kilometres from The Ritz (London not Paris). A copse and an orchard and fields form a green and pleasant apron round this red house and attendant barns. The Trust lets out the 65 hectare farm for pasture.

Obriss Farm was bequeathed by Helena Cooper in 1990. It was formerly part of the Chartwell Estate which was bought by Sir Winston Churchill in 1922 and is now a major National Trust tourist attraction. The oldest part of the complex is the late 16th century dark stained weatherboarded bakehouse immediately behind the farmhouse – a standalone kitchen. The front half of the house also dates from Tudor times. It was doubled in size down the centuries. Later stables and a cowhouse to the west of the house and a wool store to the east have similar dark stained weatherboarding. A 17th century threshing barn is set back from the end of the lawn. The two storey plus attic house has tile hung upper floors on the side and rear elevations matching the roof tiles. Brick is used elsewhere.

The rectangular floor plan is simply laid out to accommodate five guests. Leaded casement windows, exposed timber frame walls and terracotta tiled floors provide a robust backdrop to antique pieces and comfortable furniture. Everything is so beautiful and simple. “The countryside was still in its summer green,” rhapsodises the poet Siegfried Sassoon in his 1940 autobiography The Weald of Youth, “and the afternoon roads hot and dusty.” That’s just one of many local interest books in the sitting room. On a warm summer weekend little has changed. Rabbits and pheasants and buzzards appear and disappear. Apples and blackberries and damson plums are ripe for picking. Local placenames are quintessentially English: Bardogs; Pootings; Puddledock.

Richard Harwood OBE KC, Joint Head of Chambers of 39 Essex Chambers, and Clarissa Levi, Art and Heritage Counsel of Wedlake Bell, host a podcast series Art and Heritage Law. The Landmark Trust at 60 episode is an interview with the historian and charity’s Director, Dr Anna Keay OBE. “We were established to do two things,” Anna explains. “Firstly, to rescue historic buildings in jeopardy in the UK, principally, and to repair and rejuvenate them. Secondly, and really importantly, to make them into places people can really enjoy and specifically through making them available for people to stay in for breaks – for holidays. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last 60 years.”

Anna expands on the origins of the Trust. “We were founded by two individuals, John and Christian Smith, both sadly now dead. They were quite involved in the conservation movement in the Sixties and of course this was a postwar time of unparalleled destruction and damage to historic fabric – partly the impact of war and partly a process of what was seen then as national renewal. The rate of Listed Building demolition in the mid 1960s – I always find this amazing – was 400 a year in England.” While the big institutions, notably The National Trust and the Ministry of Works, concentrated on saving stately homes, smaller properties were being overlooked.

Clarissa mentions how she likes Sir John Smith’s quote about rescuing troublesome and unfashionable buildings. Anna responds, “That’s us!” John Smith was an MP for a short time and was one of the people responsible for introducing the Planning Act 1965 which created Conservation Areas. “They started small,” Anna confirms. “The first two buildings they took on were quite modest vernacular buildings: Church Cottage and Paxton’s Tower Lodge, both in south Wales. They placed an advert in The Sunday Times in 1967 saying holiday cottages from The Landmark Trust available to rent and they went from there to completing three or four buildings every year.”

When you enter a Landmark Trust property, after being bowled over by the architecture, there’s a distinct interior look to admire. Anna says, “Essentially it’s an old English country house vibe slightly merged with a sort of Arts and Crafts quite spare approach which is totally born of personal taste. It’s timelessly lovely.” Old Turkish rugs, oak furniture, comfy sofas and pictures of local scenery or historical characters create a formula that works along with branded details like clothes hangers and soap. Richard remarks, “It comes over in the fabulous book for the 50th anniversary by Anna and Caroline Stanford that the Trust was a personal mission of the Smiths but also how they would pull their friends and contacts into how things were designed and how things were thought through.”

She observes, “The irony is that such is the strange world for demand of different types of furniture and paintings and stuff from the past that if you were to go into John Lewis to buy a new dining room table it would cost way more that if you were to go to an antiques fair and get one from a bloke in a field.” Old pieces are more sustainable, often better made and look more at home in period properties. What Anna calls “a whole cycle of positives”.

There are three core criteria for choosing to take on a new building. It must be of really special historical or architectural significance. It must be at genuine risk and not saveable by the market. And it must be financially viable under the Trust’s model. “Our work not only involves the physicality of trying to save somewhere but also trying to untangle complicated tenure or freeing a building from the status that may in part be why it’s got into such a bad state.” Clarissa comments, “I love the reimagining of buildings for places to have a lovely holiday in that were never intended to actually be stayed in. I am thinking of when I was a child I went to stay with family one time in the Landmark Trust’s Pineapple. It blew my mind – it still does really!”

The charity also plays a wider role. Over to Anna again, “The Trust has shown how adaptable buildings can be ever since it was converting old industrial buildings to domestic use in the Seventies. Now of course we’re all used to the idea of an old mill becoming flats but in the Sixties that was unthinkable. As well as being a lovely thing for people to stay in them it can be a way of showing how changes can be made sympathetically that will hopefully inspire other adaptations.” A philosophy of care guides each restoration (and often a conversion is involved) from the outset. The Trust considers what are the special characteristics to enhance and preserve. This founding principle is referred to when practical decisions need to be made. The volumes of the original space and its former use are respected and celebrated.

Anna says, “Projects take a long time so we always have some we are just about to finish on and hang up the curtains and others right at the beginning and we’re trying to do the land acquisition. One we are working on at the moment which is a really exciting is a World War II project: what was RAF Ibsley down in the New Forest. It was what was known as a ‘watch office’. The building is derelict and in a really bad way.”

“Another big one that we’re right at the beginning of and we’re so excited about has been a cause célèbre of heritage at risk for actually 50 years is a house called Mavisbank. It’s just outside Edinburgh – it’s not a remote building. The house was designed by William Adam, father of Robert Adam, the progenitor of that amazing dynasty of architects. His client was John Clarke who was one of the people who signed the Act of Union between England and Scotland. Mavisbank is really the first great neo Palladian house in Scotland and has been derelict, roofless and in the most dangerous state for decades now. It was nearly demolished in the Eighties. The compulsory purchase order is under way and all being well by the end of the year we will be the proud owners of a totally derelict 1720s house!”

Anna concludes, “We’re thrilled to be part of the rescue of these buildings but we’re only a part of the journey. Those people who come to stay in our buildings or financially support our campaigns or write letters of support – they are travelling with us. It’s a real mass movement activity. We haven’t got a shares portfolio; we don’t have a mega investor. We are literally a charity that survives on the support people give us because they choose to and the fact that people can stay in our buildings. The pioneering spirit of the Edwardian philanthropists is in our DNA.” Richard ends the podcast, “What you’ve set out is not only the philosophy of heritage but also the way you go about it, the way you think about buildings and how they should be rescued and brought back into use.”

Browsing through more books in the sitting room, Sir William Addison could easily be referring to Obriss Farm in Farmhouses in The English Landscape, 1986, “Eventually the prudent yeomen of The Weald realised how destructive of every local interest reckless felling of timber would be if it continued much longer. So what was called half timbering was introduced, with thinner timbers wider apart built into the structure in square or oblong panels to be filled with wattle and daub in the East Anglia manner. But in Kent, as early as Elizabeth I’s reign, tiles were being used for wall cladding in half timbered buildings as well as for those built up to first floor level in brick. In the later years of the 17th century weatherboarding came into competition with hanging tiles for wall cladding.” Half timbering can best be seen in the south wall of the single bedroom at the rear of the house: it was once an external wall.

And Roger Higham nicely sums up the county in Kent, 1974, “There are at least three good reasons why Kent makes a fit literary and photographic subject: firstly, it is large; secondly, it is diverse; and thirdly, it is accessible. A fourth reason perhaps transcending the first three, could be suggested: its importance.” The last reason could apply to an article and even more so when it focuses on Obriss Farm in The Weald.

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses People

Lytham Hall Lytham St Anne’s Lancashire +

Rhymes With Rhythm

A short car ride though the beautiful Blackpool suburb of Lytham St Anne’s – turn of the 20th century villas between sand dunes – leads from the best hotel in northwest England (obviously Boulevard) to the grandest country house in the region. A few months previously Peter Sheppard and Keith Day had hosted lunch on a rainy afternoon in the library of Wolterton Hall in Norfolk just before they sold up. In contrast, a visit to Lytham Hall is on a sunny morning. What’s the connection? The two buildings were crowned joint winners of the Historic Houses Restoration Award 2022. It is thanks to the combined drive of General Manager Peter Anthony and Deputy Manager Paul Lomax over the last eight years that the revival of Lytham Hall has been such a laudable success.

The main block, wings, most of the outbuildings and the parkland have all been restored beyond any former glory.  Rooms are now brimming with chattels from taxidermy to hosiery, dressed to the nines or at least the 1890s. Intense colours ensure there’s never a dull moment: lemon coloured walls; an emerald hued ceiling; lime panels and peach coving; burgundy flock wallpaper. In contrast, Lytham Hall has a no nonsense Palladian exterior that is unmistakeably by the able hand of Yorkshireman John Carr. Everything is just so about it from sound proportions to sturdy detailing. Exuberance is saved for the interior decoration. Fellow Yorkshireman Francis Johnson would take on the mantle of serious neoclassical architecture two centuries later.

Francis even worked on Everingham Park, a John Carr house outside York. This contemporaneous seven bay three storey house is a smaller plainer version of Lytham Hall. David Neave and John Martin Robinson state in Francis Johnson Architect: A Classical Statement (2001), “Francis’s treatment of Everingham was typical of his scholarly approach to old buildings. He fully researched the history of the house and its place in Carr’s oeuvre before preparing his designs; studying the original drawings as well as the building itself. The Duke of Norfolk wished to reduce the house to its manageable 18th century core, and commissioned Francis to carry out the work. Francis found that the structure of Carr’s building, with its oak joinery, had withstood mid 20th century neglect better than the 19th century wings with their pine joinery; this reinforced the decision to demolish the later parts. The 19th century blocking course was removed and replaced with a half round cast iron gutter and cornice copied from that at Carr’s Lytham Hall in Lancashire.”

Brian Wragg gives the best lowdown on Lytham Hall in John Carr of York (2000), “Thomas Clifton inherited Clifton, which his family had bought in 1606, aged 10, in 1737. 20 years later, although he had no obvious Yorkshire connections, he called in Carr to rebuild the house, which lies on flat pasturelands a mile from the estuary of the River Ribble. Most of the building accounts, bills, plans and drawings have disappeared, but a labourers’ account book first mentions building work in 1757 and in 1750 mentions ‘Doorcasing and stroothing of grand staircases etc’. The 1757 to 1764 account book of the steward, Raymond Watt, shows that the house was complete in 1764, when on 17 March, Carr was paid £189 and 14 shillings, the balance of his account … Fitting up of the house continued well into the 1760s … Care and money were lavished on the elevations, with an attached Ionic portico on the east elevation. The main rooms are on the ground floor, and the Main Entrance Hall, with a handsome Rococo ceiling, has a heavy Kentian fireplace. The imperial staircase, one of Carr’s finest creations, is particularly grand and may have been inspired by that by Paine at Doncaster Mansion House of 1745 to 1747. The Dining Room shows the influence of Adam and must have been completed later. The house is now offices.”

In familiar country house fashion, portions of the preceding 17th century house were remodelled as ancillary wings around a courtyard. All that is hidden behind the lawn view of the entrance front. Nine bays rising three storeys are set in bright red brick in Flemish bond framed by a grid of stone and yellow painted stucco quoins and Ionic columns and string courses and cornicing. The proportions are so pleasing to behold. A pediment surmounting the three bay columned breakfront is just the right height. A hipped roof follows the slopes of the pediment. The main block is five bays deep. The three bay east facing Entrance Hall leads through to the Staircase Hall which links with the smaller North Entrance Hall (a double cube). Four reception rooms fill the rest of the ground floor. Four principal bedroom suites and Violet Clifton’s mid 20th century rooms occupy the first floor with secondary bedrooms on the second floor.

Good looks don’t come cheap. “It takes in excess of £1 million a year to run Lytham Hall,” Peter explains. “Once we’ve finished the expensive restoration projects, we should really just be maintaining the place but maintenance alone costs a fortune. For example, the building has a very intricate expensive alarm system – it’s got museum status in its own right.” Paul adds, “We do have a vast stable block that could potentially be used as holiday lets in the future. It’s going to cost a fortune to restore that area because it’s a large building and in quite a state. It would make a lovely kind of retail space for local crafts as well. We utilise every corner of what we have because you have to when our costs are so high.”

Peter says, “We just strive to get bigger and better each year and to give the best visitor experience. We now have around 250,000 visitors a year. When we came on board that figure was around 20,000. I always call it mould to gold: we have gone from a mouldy old mansion to something now that is glowing and twinkling like a beacon. Our new larger shop has been a great success. We hold massive events in the grounds such as the Lytham Proms attracting a few thousand people. There’s never a quiet month because we’re open all year round whereas a lot of stately homes close for the winter and reopen at Easter. The start of our year is the snowdrop season which is very popular; that then gently rolls into Easter and before you know it the open air theatre is happening followed by Halloween and Christmas activities.”

“After weeks of hard work our Billiard Room is finally finished and we are over the moon with the results!” exclaims Paul. “This room had to be taken off our tour for a couple of years ago as the roof lantern was being problematic. Thankfully the roof work was completed last autumn and the large timber lantern was repaired and made watertight.” Local company Finelines then started work on the huge task of redecoration. A mauve and green National Trust endorsed Little Greene colourway replaces a toxic gâteau of beige paint layers. Brass Art Nouveau hanging lamps are quite an improvement on the removed strip lighting. Billiard rooms were the must have extension of the late 19th century. Think Mourne Park and Ballywalter Park, both in County Down. The Billiard Room at Lytham Hall is a late Victorian interior embellished with Edwardian stained glass windows. William Morris’ 1901 seaweed pattern was selected for the curtain fabric: historically and geographically appropriate.

A sign in one of the dressing rooms states: “Lady Eleanor Cecily Lowther Clifton’s beautiful dress was reproduced from the stipple engraving of Lady Eleanor (John Henry Robinson 1845, National Portrait Gallery) by one our talented house volunteers, Judith Davitt. The dress is made of silk taffeta and features a typical V shape at the waist. As we don’t know the original colour of the dress we used some beautiful fabric from a pair of donated curtains. The dress was first displayed Christmas 2024 at Mr Fezziwig’s Party, part of our Dickens of a Christmas display. Lady Eleanor (1822 to 1894) was married to Colonel John Talbot Clifton (1819 to 1882). She was the sister of the 3rd Earl of Lonsdale of Lowther Castle in Cumbria.”

Peter concludes, “Lytham Hall means the absolute world to us: we live and breathe it. We’ve lived in Lytham since 1997 so the Fylde is definitely home and Lytham Hall itself has become such a massive part of our lives. It’s so rewarding – no two days are the same. You never know what’s going to happen when you walk through that door and that’s really exciting. It’s not just a place to work – it’s a vocation. The people who we’ve met along the way and worked with including staff and volunteers have been brilliant.”

The last Squire, Henry Talbot de Vere Clifton (Violet’s son), gave up ownership of Lytham Hall in 1965 to the creditors Guardian Royal Insurance who used it as a headquarters. In 1998 a local charity Lytham Town Trust bought the house and its remaining 32 hectares of parkland, and two years later passed everything over to the Heritage Trust for the Northwest. Since 2017 Peter Anthony and Paul Lomax along with Trustee Stephen Williams have developed a sustainable operation maximising every useable area. Fylde Borough’s only Grade I Listed Building is in safe – and enthusiastic – hands.

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The Rembrandt Hotel Knightsbridge London + Ade Bakare Fashion Show

Whatever Happens

We love surprises. Who would have guessed Mexican and Japanese cuisine fuse so well? Not us, till after six hours of midweek lunching on ajo chipotle edamame and seabass ceviche in Los Mochis on Liverpool Street. Later, we will ask the bemused waiter at Annabel’s, “Where’s the rooftop terrace?” He will respond with glee, “You’re in it!” and immediately will press a button to slide back the ceiling, revealing a cloudy sky. Next, we’re filled with excitement when Queen Camilla arrives at Ascot but perhaps it shouldn’t be that big a surprise as she is handing out The King George VI and Elizabeth Stakes £668,400 prize to French favourite Mickael Barzalona riding Calandagan. It’s the 75th running of the race. Helicopter on standby of course.

We’re not at all surprised when Mary Martin receives her Damehood. Long overdue. On a hot Saturday evening we find ourselves in the front row of Ade Bakare’s summer show as Mary’s guests. It’s the Eighth Edition. We’re very Knightsbridge (think Giovanni or The Franklin) although The Rembrandt Hotel is new territory to us. Mary and Brenda Emmanus OBE are holding court in the lounge. That red sports car of Mary’s sure is raving up the kilometrage. The Queen of Fashion needs a helicopter! Ade speaks to the glamorous crowd: “I look forward to you wearing my latest collections. And that includes the exquisite perfume line that is available too. The T shirts have been inspired by African flowers. The jumpsuits come in vibrant pinks, blues and yellows.” It’s an eclectic show from casualwear, eyewear and millinery creations to the grand finale bridalwear. To quote Elizabeth Bowen in Bowen’s Court, 1942, “Like all stories told with gusto, it has its variations … I will give the version that most appeals to me.” In modern parlance, this is our authentic best selves’ truth. As always, we’re channelling our inner Deborah Turbeville.

The eponymous designer launched Ade Bakare Couture in 1991 with the assistance of a loan from the Prince of Wales Youth Business Trust and has grown it to a notable name in the global fashion industry. He had just majored in Salford University College Manchester following a history and education degree from the University of Lagos. The following year the fashion designer produced his first of many prêt-à-porter collections. He opened a high end boutique in Lagos in 2006. Ade was born in Britain to Nigerian parents: these two worlds combine in his clothing which fuses the elegance of British tailoring with the vibrancy of Yoruba culture.

London’s fashion scene is renowned for its eccentricity and inclusivity but in the past black designers have often had to carve their own careers. Then in 2011 along came Africa Fashion Week London and everything changed. Led by Queen Ronke Ademiluyi-Ogunwusi, this event promotes and celebrates black fashion excellence. Ade Bakare Couture makes frequent appearances on the annual catwalk. Headlining fashion artist Dame Mary Martin says, “Africa Fashion Week London is a fantastic launchpad for new collections and has become the go to event of the season. I’ve launched many of my collections at the show from The Hidden Queens to The Return.” As for Mary’s next collection, she shares, “It will be a surprise. A huge surprise!” Whatever it is, we know Dame Mary Martin will always obey Luann Countess de Lesseps advice, “Don’t be uncool. Be cool.”

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Waddesdon Manor Buckinghamshire + Pablo Bronstein + The Temple of Solomon

Because Your Love Is Better Than Life

There are two principal Biblical temples: Solomon’s in the past; Ezekiel’s to come. God provides descriptions of both in the Old Testament. For example, Ezekiel 40:24 to 27, “Then he led me to the south side and I saw the south gate. He measured its jambs and its portico, and they had the same measurements as the others. The gateway and its portico had narrow openings all around, like the openings of the others. It was 50 cubits long and 25 cubits wide. Seven steps led up to it, with its portico opposite them; it had palm tree decorations on the faces of the projecting walls on each side. The inner court also had a gate facing south, and he measured from this gate to the outer gate on the south side; it was 100 cubits.”

King David was a man of war; his son, a man of peace, would be chosen to build the Temple. II Samuel 7:5 to 12, “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: You are not the one to build me a house to dwell in. When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for Me, and I will establish his throne forever.’” I Kings 6:1 states that in the month of Zif in the 480th year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, Solomon began to build the Temple. It was the fourth year of his reign, which likely spanned from around 1,015 to 975 BC.

The Bible provides dimensions and details and decorations. I Chronicles 28:11, “Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement.” The foundations were 60 cubits by 20 cubits (II Chronicles 3:1). The interior was covered with pure gold according to I Kings 6:21, and pots, shovels and sprinkling bowls were of burnished bronze (I Kings 7:40). Upon completion of the Temple, Solomon summoned the leaders of Israel to bring the Ark of the Covenant from Zion, the City of David, to its final resting place in the Temple on Mount Moriah.

Artist Pablo Bronstein (who was born in Argentina and lives in London) believes, “The reconstruction of ancient and Biblical structures says more about the societies that reconstructed them than it does about any long gone originals. My reconstructions of the Temple explore idealising tendencies in architecture across porous boundaries of styles relevant during a defining era of archaeology – roughly the 18th to 20th centuries. That’s precisely the time when nationalisms sought to tie themselves to particular architectural traditions and during which nascent professional archaeology informed our understanding of the past. I’ve tried to inhabit the ambitious contestants entering the Prix de Rome as they set about reconstructing the Temple entirely in their own image.” And where better to host such an exhibition rooted in the Tanakh than that most Jewish of English country houses, Waddesdon Manor?

Mark Girouard was a prominent country house architectural historian of the 20th century. His grandfather Henry Beresford, 6th Marquess of Waterford, owned one of the top estates in Ireland: Curraghmore. He records in Historic Houses of Britain (1979), “Baron Ferdinand, like other Rothschilds of the later generations, had largely detached himself from the Rothschild banks, except as places through which to invest his money. He was able to devote himself to sport, politics, philanthropy and pleasure. Like all Rothschilds he entertained lavishly. Waddesdon was meant for use, not just as a repository for treasures. Edward VII, who had a fondness for Rothschilds, came there frequently, and once fell down the staircase. Victoria was there for the day in 1890; her visit was something of a triumph for she was much less partial to Rothschilds than her son, and Waddesdon was the only Rothschild house she ever visited.”

He continues, “It is easy to envisage house parties at Waddesdon. It is harder to think of children playing there, or in general, to envisage a Rothschild nursery. Indeed there never was a nursery at Waddesdon. When Baron Ferdinand died childless in 1898 (he caught a chill on one of his regular visits to the grave of his wife), he left Waddesdon to his sister Alice, who never married. When she died in 1922 she left it to a French Rothschild, her great nephew James. James de Rothschild was married but had no children. It was he, on his death in 1957, who left the house, all its contents and an endowment to the National Trust – a legacy of almost unequalled munificence.”

Soon after they inherited the house, James de Rothschild and his wife Dorothy installed an electric servants’ bell system to replace the traditional manual bells. The indicator panel includes connections to Baron’s Room, Blue Dressing Room, East Hall, Low White Room, Portico Bathroom, Smoking Room, State Entrance, Tower Drawing Room, Turret Bedroom and many more. They also installed hot and cold water plumbing. The tradition of entertaining continues at Waddesdon with the Manor Restaurant on the ground floor of the Bachelors’ Wing. The wine list includes Waddesdon Rothschild Collection Viognier 2024 with hints of peach and apricot, sourced from the hills of Languedoc in the south of France.

In 1870, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild had bought 2,500 hectares near Aylesbury (favoured family territory) from George Spencer-Churchill, 6th Duke of Marlborough, to build a country house designed by a French architect (the gloriously named Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur) filled with French furnishings (coordinated by interior design company Decour) and surrounded by gardens planned with the assistance of a French landscape designer (Elie Lainé). More Loire Valley than Aylesbury Vale. His wife had died in childbirth after a year and a half of wedded bliss: they had met at their mutual relatives’ London residence of Gunnersbury Park House. Cartoonist Osbert Lancaster even included Le Style Rothschild in Homes Sweet Homes (1939), referring to “heavy golden cornices” and “damask hung walls” and “fringed and tasselled curtains of Genoese velvet”. The tradition of supporting the arts continues with the Rothschild Foundation. CEO Roger White states, “There are still remarkable philanthropic initiatives happening at Waddesdon.”

Senior Curator Janet Carey introduces The Temple of Solomon and Its Contents exhibition: “In this room are Pablo’s two different versions of the Temple of Solomon. In order to create them he has imagined himself in the personae of prize seeking students of 19th century architecture. We have extraordinarily detailed instructions from God written down in the Bible but of course nobody actually knows what the Temple looked like. So what Pablo has done is read those instructions and make these incredible works of art conjured up from the hands of imagined individuals.” Divine design.

Erudite quotations range from the portico of Palais Garnier in Paris to William Blake’s painting The Great Architect. Styles include Adamesque, Indo Egyptian and Persian. “Pablo uses the famous spiralling Solomonic columns,” Janet notes. Or is he inspired by the spiralling copper pipes of Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur’s architecture? “His Veil of the Temple is quite provocative: here it is interpreted as a very froufrou Waddesdon style curtain with glorious red tassels. The Veil separated the world from the Divine and was torn in two at the moment Christ died.” And what about the Greek key tile pattern around the courtyard? A nod to Sir William Chambers, perhaps? She smiles, “The pattern comes from the band around those ubiquitous New York takeaway coffee cups! It’s this blend of high and low references that is really fun.”

There are also acrylic on paper paintings of specific Biblical objects. Janet states, “You can read in the Bible how God gives very precise instructions to Moses about how the candelabra should be designed and Pablo follows to incredible detail how many branches and so on should be on this. It is an oil lamp, not a candle lamp, so God specifies that each of the cups for the oil at the tops of the seven branches must be almond shaped. Pablo interprets that very literally as a cast for an almond. He’s really obeyed the Divine instructions in the Bible while deriving some detailing from the objets d’art of Waddesdon.”

“In the space adjacent is this extraordinary selection of drawings and books from Waddesdon’s permanent collection,” she adds. “They’re mostly 18th century French works of art which Pablo chose himself from about 1,000 design and architectural works. The moment you see those works you will understand why he has chosen them. Each one has some very clear visual relationship with Pablo’s own work. Some of the drawings have never been displayed before.”

Another attraction feature of the exhibition space is a model of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem made by James Burke. Completed in 1992, the building was designed by Ada Karmi-Melamede and her brother Ram Karmi. The Supreme Court was proposed and funded by the Yad Hanadiv Foundation established by Dorothy de Rothschild in 1960 and chaired by Jacob 4th Lord Rothschild until his death in 2024. In the gallery on the floor above, 18th century Jewish Italian embroidered hangings from the Rothschild Collection depicting the Temple of Solomon and the Second Temple (built after the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC) are on display. Waddesdon Manor continues to evolve and expand.

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Design Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Eels Restaurant Paris + Le Déjeuner Le Plus Magnifique Imaginable Sérieusement

In Honour of Anguilliformes 

It’s a restaurant to design a weekend around. Eels. On the corner of Rue d’Hauteville and Rue Gabriel Laumain in the Grands Boulevards district, rows of windows lighten the interior and brighten the pavement. This establishment has the electric atmosphere of a new venue but it’s actually been going strong for eight years. So strong that the owner has opened another restaurant on Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière which runs parallel with Rue d’Hauteville. On a Saturday lunchtime Eels is a microcosm of Arrondisement 10 society. The beautiful people – staff and patrons – are out in force.

The dining room exudes that effortless chic Parisians somehow manage to pull off with aplomb. Decoration is kept to a bare minimum. Exposed brick and stone columns add patina. The vertical tubes of the radiators resemble rows of shiny white eels – or at least they do after the second glass of Vin de Savoie Domaine Chevillard 2021. Piped pop music adds to the electricity in the air as the staff set about making gastronomic magic. “I started to cook at the age of 15 right after secondary school,” says owner Chef Adrien Ferrand. “I then went to train at a catering college and after a few days I knew I wanted a career as a chef.” No man is an île and Adrien has left a pool of talent in charge today.

He comments, “Eels is a bistronomic or semi gastronomic restaurant – you can call it what you want! The menu of Eels takes inspiration from Asia and the Mediterranean as well as French cooking. It was my father who introduced me to Asian cuisine. I love Asian food so much I have opened a fully Asian restaurant nearby – Brigade du Tigre.” The name of his first restaurant comes from Adrien’s fascination with the ray finned fish. The English word was chosen as it is a little easier to pronounce than the French “anguilles”. Most of the eels are sourced from Greece.

“The connection I make between cooking and smell is the rising of images and emotions,” Adrien relates. “My aromatic catalogue includes Thai basil, lemongrass and galanga which is a rhizome and a cousin of ginger. I also use cardamon and Voatsperifery pepper which comes from Madagascar.” It would be rude not to order his signature dish of charcoal smoked eel, liquorice, apple and hazelnuts with roasted butter sauce. All the right ingredients – scent, taste, texture, beauty, impact, originality – are present in abundance.

Marinated Corsican meagre, samphire, kohlrabi with elderflowers, dashi vinaigrette and sea lettuce followed by white chocolate crunch, rhubarb, rose marmalade and Bronte pistachio pralines continue this elevation of Franco Asian cooking status. The stars they are aligning. Starters range from €19 to €22 and mains from €33 to €43. Puddings are all priced €17. There’s a midweek two course lunch menu for €37. Plenty of bottles on the wine list will tempt the connoisseur: Échezeaux Domaine Jean-Pierre Guyon 2021 pinot noir for €1,053 or Bourbogne Domaine Arnaud Ente 2019 Chardonnay for €430. But there are reasonably priced wines too such as the Vin de Savoie at €62. Meals at Eels live up to the hype and eclipse the rave reviews.

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People Restaurants

Café Le Brébant Paris + Pacha

At Midday Venus Passes

“Earlier that morning Zoé had made the apartment over to a caterer from Brébant’s and his staff of helpers and waiters. Brébant’s would provide the food, the crockery, the glasses, the tablecloth and napkins, the flowers, and everything down to the chairs and footstools.” In between preparing her mistress Nana’s toilette, Zoé knew where to go to get set up for a party. Nana is Émile Zola’s ninth novel in his journalistic 20 volume Les Rougon-Macquart series. It captures the loucheness of society during the reign of Napoléon III. Café Le Brébant had been open 15 years when Nana was published in 1880. The Second French Empire has never truly ended on Boulevard Poissonnière. This is still Paris, the Paris of letters, of pleasure, of romance. Wicker and tassled lightshades hanging midair sway in the gentle summer breeze cooling the terrace of Café Le Brébant. Pacha the resident Maine Coon cat plays and poses and preens herself, blissfully unaware of her role in the street theatre of life. Très Grand Guignol. 

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Architecture Art Country Houses Design Hotels People

The Sweeneys + Castle Grove Letterkenny Donegal

Weathering Well

Tiree, Stornoway, Lerwick, Wick Automatic, Aberdeen, Leuchars, Boulmer, Bridlington, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, Greenwich Light Vessel Automatic, St Catherine’s Point Automatic, Jersey, Channel Light Vessel Automatic, Scilly Automatic, Milford Haven, Aberporth, Valley, Liverpool Crosby, Valentia, Ronaldsway, Malin Head, Machrihanish Automatic. For the uninitiated that’s the pure poetry of Radio Four’s shipping forecast, a rhapsodic melodic episodic late night cruise circumnavigating the coastlines of the British Isles.

The penultimate point along the shipping forecast’s journey, Malin Head, is the exposed most northerly tip of Ireland teetering on the tip of the Inishowen Peninsula in view of the Aurora Borealis. The ultimate location in this neck of the island is Castle Grove. Unlike windswept Malin Head, next stop Iceland, this romantic estate lies huddled off the Wild Atlantic Way in the sheltered mid southwest wiggle of Lough Swilly, the waterscape separating the peninsula from the mainland.

A two kilometre long drive sweeps through 100 hectares of bucolic parkland complemented by glimpses of the Lough as composed as a Derek Hill landscape; a wave of anticipation rises, then behold, a house four square, an abiding place of great and unsearchable things. Like two faced Clandeboye in County Down, the principal elevations stand proud at right angles to one another. Face to the avenue, face to the sea. Unlike Bellamont Forest, Edward Lovett Pearce’s poppet of Palladian perfection in County Cavan which is designed to be seen from every angle, Castle Grove is country house front, farmhouse back. A Tuscan porch fills the vacancy of the centre of the south facing four bay façade: charm captured in render and stone.

Subsumed within its solid footprint lies an older house dating back to 1695 and rebuilt in 1730. A radical makeover brought Castle Grove bang up to date for the swinging 1820s. As the Grove family went up in the world, so did the height of their windows and ceilings. The resultant structural idiosyncrasies only add to the house’s character. Four of the façade window openings are higher outside than inside – this comes to light when the shutters are pulled and a gap appears above them. A shuttered cupboard in the Samuel Beckett Room was once a window on the east elevation. Elsewhere, blind windows and angled openings maintain external symmetry. A 19th century conservatory to the side of the façade has come and gone. Heritage architect John O’Connell remarks, “Castle Grove now looks like a beautiful Regency house.”

The Wrays of Donegal by Charlotte Violet Trench, 1945, is a carefully researched genealogy of the family who owned the adjoining estate southwest of Castle Grove. Unusually, the walled gardens of Castle Wray and Castle Grove adjoin each other. Down the centuries, the two families were linked by various marriages. Charlotte records, “I went to Castle Grove, about three or four miles outside the town of Letterkenny on the shore of Lough Swilly. A large demesne, then a lawn with flowerbeds and the house; not the original Castle Shanaghan; but, like most of these places, a house built a couple of 100 years ago and added to at intervals. Mrs Grove was at home and I was led through a square hall to a long shaped drawing room with many windows, where Mrs Grove received me … Mrs Grove told me of the sorry state of ruin into which the house of Castle Wray was now falling, and said her gardeners should take me to see it.”

It’s after spring equinox. Snowdrops have disappeared; daffodils are in late bloom; primroses are on their way. “Castle Grove was a country house closed up when we bought it,” says Raymond Sweeney. “The owners were all dead and the next of kin were living in Northern Ireland. So it was up for sale and we were lucky to get it. We got possession of the house on 23 February 1989. It wasn’t looking as well as it looks today! It took time as well as money to get it going. The house was structurally sound though; the previous owners looked after it well over the years. Do you see that lock on the front door? It came from the women’s prison in Armagh 200 years ago!”

The Sweeneys bought the house and estate from Commander Peter Campbell and his wife Lady Moyra Hamilton, the sister of James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn. Incidentally, Lady Moyra was one of Queen Elizabeth II’s six Maids of Honour at her coronation. She died in 2020 aged 90 and her husband died four years later aged 97. Lady Moyra was one of three titled ladies known for their charitable works who simultaneously spent their last years in Somme Nursing Home, Belfast. The Commander had inherited Castle Grove on the death of his distant relative Major James Grove but he already lived at Hollybrook House in Randalstown, County Antrim. Mary agrees with her husband Raymond’s comment, “The land steward and housekeeper kept Castle Grove in good shape. For the first year we lived in the house and opened it as a bed and breakfast.”

“We wanted to develop it but not spoil it,” she explains. “The house – it was a real challenge. We wanted to keep the characteristics, the symmetries. We again looked and looked at it. In the end we pushed the entire house back into part of the rear courtyard. The stable wing was already lofted so we retained its front and added a corridor behind linking it to the main house. We didn’t want guests having to go out in the rain. The bedrooms in this wing are just as big as those in the main house. We never demolished a wall in the original house. Instead, we adapted windows as doors or indoor mirrors. I feel a great obligation to maintain Castle Grove.” Heritage. History. Hibernia.

Mary continues, “When we applied for a dining room addition the planning officers wanted it to be a conservatory. But that part of the house faces northeast and rarely gets direct sunlight! It took a year to resolve, to get our sympathetically designed extension approved. We didn’t want the corner sticking out in views from the driveway so it’s chamfered. We turned the sideboard recess in the old dining room into double doors under a fanlight. A local carpenter built the doors to match the 1820s double doors between the two main reception rooms. The fanlight is based on the one between the entrance and staircase halls.”

“The original dining room is now the Red Drawing Room,” she notes, “and next door is the Yellow Drawing Room. The marble fireplace in the current Dining Room is a replica from my old home. I jokingly asked Portadown Fireplaces if they could remake it based on a photo and sure enough they did!” The house is filled with modern Irish art. “Buying paintings from young artists exhibiting their work on the railings of St Stephen’s Green in Dublin in summer stemmed our interest. Artists like Maurice Wilks, Liam Jones, Brendan Timmons. Derek Hill gave us his oil painting Donegal Late Harvest. Derek brought many guests here. Really such a humble man and so friendly.”

The house is filled with antiques. Mary relates, “We have some stories to tell about auctions! Newark Antiques Fair is good. So is the Mill at Ballinderry. The bed in the George Bernard Shaw Room came from Seventh Heaven outside Chester. The beds are unbelievable there! That bed was made for Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. When we bought the fourposter in the Jonathan Swift Room we used saddle soap and toothbrushes to carefully clean it before using French polish. Beds and food – they’re so important!” As for the chandeliers, Sia could swing from them.

It’s time to talk to Mary’s daughter Irene who is managing reception (the former flower room). “The weather is unpredictable in Donegal or perhaps that should be predictable – it rains a fair bit! Donegal may be right off the Atlantic but we’re very inland here. The house has a warm, loving presence. It’s a very welcoming atmosphere. Whether this is us as a family, or the building, I’m not sure. The Groves were extremely good landlords, especially during the Famine when they fed and educated local children in the long barn. Perhaps this generosity and goodwill has over the centuries seeped into the walls. There’s houses before you know the history, they’re chilling …”

Irene explains, “Our main bedrooms are named after Irish writers including Oliver Goldsmith, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats. There are 15 in total; eight in the main house. The exception is the Daniel O’Connell Room. He actually stayed in the house. Daniel wrote to the Groves after his visit, referring to his ‘answer to the Irish problem’. Mr Grove introduced him to the House of Lords. General Montgomery also stayed here. Mrs Grove invited him from Dublin to stay.”

She recommends, “We can accommodate 120 guests for a wedding in our Michelin recommended Restaurant. Or 140 if the adjoining Red Drawing Room is used too. The Bar was once a breakfast room and the TV Room was a library and office. We still use the original Kitchen. We grow organic vegetables, herbs, and fruit – apples, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries – in our four acre Walled Garden.” Other stats include the size of the George Bernard Shaw Room which is 4.3 metres wide by 5.5 metres deep by three metres tall. The George Bernard Shaw Room bed is two metres wide. The wall between the Entrance Hall and the Yellow Drawing Room is 0.8 metres deep. The Yellow Drawing Room mantelpiece projects by 0.3 metres.

Charlotte Violet Trench recalls the Walled Garden as: “A vast place, enclosed by great high stone walls. It seemed very full of fruit trees and vegetables of all sorts, some parts were rather wild; it would have needed a regiment of gardeners to keep it really in order; but the old time herbaceous border was a blaze of colour and rich in beauty. In the old days there was a gate in the wall that divided the two gardens by which the families could pass through to one another’s place.”

Dinner in the Restaurant accords with Irene’s description of very local produce. Walled Garden leek and potato soup. Coffee infused garden beetroot, beetroot remoulade, salted feta cheese, toasted walnuts, garden greens. Garden rhubarb and white chocolate crème brûlée, sweet sable biscuit, cherry gel, mango sorbet. On a Saturday night the Restaurant is filled to its chamfered corner. The atmosphere is chilled on a Sunday morning as oak smoked Killybegs salmon wild salmon and scrambled Glenborin eggs are served. The Irish economy has sailed through some choppy waters this century but at Castle Grove the outlook is bright.

Archivist at Donegal County Council Archives Service, Niamh Brennan, and archivist at the Irish Architectural Archive, Aisling Dunne, have unearthed a Grove family tree and some accompanying photographs and letters as well as several 19th century recipes from the estate [the latter with lots of sic]. William Grove, High Sheriff of Donegal, rebuilt the house in 1730. His son Thomas was also High Sheriff; he died childless. William’s second son James married Rose Brook. William’s sister Dorothy Grove married John Wood of the 9th Light Dragoons in 1802 and they lived at Castle Grove. Their son James Grove Wood was born in 1803. He was a barrister and became High Sheriff.

James married Frances Montgomery of Convoy House, 32 kilometres south of Castle Grove – close neighbours in gentry terms. The 1806 building accounts of Convoy House record tree coverage of 300 Alders, 300 Beech, 300 Larch, 200 Ashes and 200 Scotch Firs. James and Frances’ daughter Dorothea Alice married the Reverend Charles Boyton of Derry City in 1871. Dorothea Alice’s brother John Montgomery Charles Grove was born in 1847 and inherited Castle Grove. He was land agent of Convoy House for three years starting in 1890.

John Montgomery Charles Grove married Lucy Gabbett, daughter of Major General William Gabbett of East India Company’s Artillery. John and Lucy’s children included Lucy Dorothea and her elder brother James Robert Wood Grove. He was born in 1888, joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers aged 20, and served in World War I. James married Eileen Edmonstone Kirk of the now demolished Thornfield House in Jordanstown, County Antrim. They were the last of the Groves to live at Castle Grove.

“Marrow Bones. If too long to serve undivided saw them in two; cover the open ends with a lump of paste and a cloth floured and tied close. The paste must be removed before being sent to table. Boil one and a half and two hours according to size. Put a ruffle of papar round each and serve in a napkin, with very hot toast. The marrow is spread on very hot toast and seasoned with pepper and salt.”

“Raisins Chutnee. Raisins cleaned and minced two pounds. Sugar three and a half pounds. Salt eight ounces, green ginger eight ounces, red pepper two ounces and garlic half an ounce. These with the exception of raisins sugar to be separately well pounded then mixed. Add to them the raisins and sugar and lastly one bottle of vinegar. This quantity will make nearly four bottles. Fill and leave them in the sun in India but at home cook for about an hour.”

“White Milk Soup. One onion. One carrot. One turnip. Three cloves stuck in the onion. A little stock made of rabbit vial, fowl or button. Put the vegetables in the stock and boil for an hour and a half to two hours. Strain salt through a verry fine hair seive. Then warm one pint of new milk and add all these together. Season with pepper and salt. This soup must be made just before using as it will not keep – the vegetables turn the milk sour.”

“Bed Sore Prevention. 10 grains of the nitrate of silver, to one ounce of water, to be applied by means of a camel hairbrush over every part exhibiting the highest appearance of inflammation, two or three times a day, until the skins has become blackened, afterwards only occassionally.”

“Anglo American Hospital Cairo. 11 May 1915. My Dearest Madam, Just a line to let you know that I am going on all right, and that there is really no more to tell you. The wound on the back of my hand has practically healed by now, but the other one is still pretty unpleasant and is exuding a good deal of matter and stuff. However the doctor seems satisfied about it. It is tied up still of course and has to be dressed pretty frequently. I can’t do very much with the fingers yet but they are better than they were. I can write a little faster with my left hand now though it is still rather a tedious process. The chief difficulty is to keep the letters at the right angle and prevent them falling over backwards. I don’t know yet whether I am likely to be sent home later or not, but very possibly will be. Anyhow I shan’t be able to move from here for the present till the wound has healed a bit.”

“We are very lucky from what I can gather to be in this hospital as everything is very comfortable and they look after us very well. Some of the other hospitals are very different from what I hear as they are badly off for nurses etc and the food is pretty rough and badly served out of tin mugs and tin plates etc. I fancy they weren’t prepared for such a large number of casualties from the Dardanelles. 12 more officers arrived here last night but all very slightly wounded from what I gather. Don’t bother to send anything from home as I can get anything I want here. A suit of my thin khaki might be useful but that is about the only thing. Major Molesworth and Captain Mood are the only ones of the regiment here. The others I think have been sent to Malta. Well, must stop now. I haven’t had any letters since about 23rd, but I hope some will come very soon. Love to you and Monsieur and you needn’t worry about me as I am quite all right. I sit out on the verandah most of the day. Your affectionate son, James Grove.”

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Luxury People

Dunmore House + Gardens Carrigans Donegal

Northern Dancer

Wiling away endless days during the sunniest Irish spring while County Donegal opens up as a new front of the western riviera. Gnomons cast their shadows across plates of 1930s stone sundials. A drawing room lit by tall windows on two sides. The French door ajar to country air. Alexander Moore’s mother in Jennifer Johnston’s 1974 novel How Many Miles to Babylon? lyricises, “The evenings are so beautiful. Ireland should be renamed, I always think, the Island of Evenings. Don’t you agree?” Lounging in the wing of a country house. How many kilometres to Derry?

“When I arrived in Ireland I couldn’t read or write English,” says Amelia McFarland, châtelaine of Dunmore House. “I was brought up in Moscow until I was 10. I learnt to ride with the Russian Cavalry stallions at the age of seven.” Both sets of grandparents lived in Ireland so her parents returned and eventually took over Dunmore House. Her grandfather, Sir John Talbot McFarland, 3rd Baronet of Aberfoyle, died in 2020. He’s buried in St Fiach’s Church of Ireland Church in the village at the end of the avenue, Carrigans.

After living abroad, the 35 year old has returned to open her family’s ancestral pile as a setting for weddings and corporate events. She admits, “I love travelling and I love Dunmore. It was always well known for its hilarious parties and welcoming atmosphere and I wanted to bring all of that back again. I wanted to share this beautiful house and its gardens with everyone. So I came home to Donegal for a whole new adventure.” A converted barn is perfect for nuptials and there is overnight accommodation in the east wing and log cabins in the grounds.

As for wedding photographic opportunities, where to start? The conscious coupling of the seven bay house and 1.3 hectare walled garden is a match made in heaven encircled by woodland. Architecture, texture, horticulture, culture. “We try to be sustainable,” explains Amelia, “and encourage wildlife like bats and hedgehogs. As well as providing a wedding and events venue with accommodation we have a 100 acre farm and estate.”

“There are actually no records of Michael Priestley’s involvement with the house,” she confirms. “A large servants’ wing at the back of the house was knocked down some time in the 20th century. When the porch was added the area in front of the house was filled in. That created tunnels going nowhere under the house. You can see the top of two basement windows that were blocked up. The house is actually quite compact and not that hard to heat.” In between hosting, Amelia farms, rides and plays rugby for the City of Derry.

Wedged between Derek Hill by Bruce Arnold (2010) and Derry and Londonderry History and Society by William Nolan and Gerard O’Brien (1999) on a Georgian bookcase in the drawing room of the wing is Agatha Christie’s The Complete Short Stories (2008). The crime novelist was related by marriage to the McClintocks who formerly owned Dunmore House. A bedroom over the drawing room is also lit by windows on two sides. “This wing was added by the owner in the 19th century for his own use,” Amelia explains. “We let it out as one self contained space with its own door off the terrace.”

Identifying Michael Priestley as the architect of the main block is on stylistic grounds. The giant Palladian window was his trademark. His certified work of Lifford Courthouse, County Donegal, has a particularly fine example on its riverside elevation. St John’s Church of Ireland Church in Ballymore Lower, County Donegal, is attributed to Michael and has a vast Palladian window on its east front and a smaller version on its west front. The first floor central Palladian window of Dunmore House over the entrance hall – all 42 panes of it – lights the landing of the staircase hall. Confident handling of architectural components is another subtler clue to design ownership.

The entrance elevation of the 1742 block is five bays wide by two storeys over (hidden) basement and (hidden save for gable windows) attic with a high pitched slate roof. It’s a rebuilding of a 17th century house. Walls are roughcast rendered with ashlar sandstone quoins. A 19th century smooth rendered porch is painted dark yellow: Doric pilasters support an entablature with triglyphs to the frieze and mutules to the cornice. The Doric order frieze and cornice are repeated in the drawing room of the 19th century wing. This south front, elevated on a rise, can just about be glimpsed from the road between mature trees. The informal north elevation with various projections backs on to a courtyard surrounded by outbuildings.

A book of newspaper cuttings in the drawing room includes this intriguing undated unattributed piece, “Missing deb says: I want to marry. Reported missing earlier in the week from her home at Blessington, County Wicklow, Eire. 19 year old [sic?] debutante Miss Ann Daly turned up in London, yesterday, with Mr Robert Knowles of Sneem, County Kerry, Eire, 25 year old son of Lady Farquhar of Blandford, Dorset, and said: ‘We want to get married.’ They had been staying at the home of Lady Farquhar and her husband Lieutenant Colonel Sir Peter Farquhar at Turnworth, Blandford. The Farquhars are a well known hunting family.”

“‘I met tall dark Miss Daly with Mr Knowles as they arrived together at Waterloo Station, London, late yesterday on the train from Blandford. ‘I can’t understand all this mystery and fuss,’ Miss Daly told me. ‘We have come up to London to try and persuade mother to let us get married. There is no real mystery about me leaving home, and I am sure my mother and father must both have guessed where I was. Robert and I met nearly three years ago. We have been racing, hunting and point-to-point riding together many times since then.’”

“‘We want to get married but I am still a minor and my parents have objected. But I feel sure that if mother gives her consent now father will agree readily.’ Robert Knowles said, ‘There has been no objection from my family, and we should both be happy if it were possible for us to be married soon.’ Mr Knowles and Miss Daly went off to meet Miss Daly’s mother, who has been staying at a West End hotel. Miss Ann Daly is regarded as the most beautiful girl in Irish society. Although only 18 years of age she is such a good horsewoman that she rides at many point-to-point meetings in Ireland, and competed in such events during the past season. She is a member of the fashionable Kildare Hunt and has ridden to other packs in Ireland. She is tall, dark and athletic and is expected to be one of this year’s most popular debutantes.” Go Ann!

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Art Design People

Amazing Grace Viewing Point Buncrana Donegal + John Newton

A Vapour that Appeareth

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Donegal I, 1833 to 1835: “Buncrana lies near five miles up shore from Dunree Fort. This shore is altogether exposed and does not afford an eligible site for either pier or quay; but, off the mouth of the Crannagh River or under Buncrana Castle, there is safe anchorage for vessels of any burthen and boats can enter the river with but little floodwater, and here they bring nearly all the fish caught in Lough Swilly for sale.”

Over the centuries several illustrious gentlemen have graced this shore. Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, made an unofficial visit to Buncrana while he was commanding HMS Magpie from 1950 to 1952. He was attending a five day training course at the Joint Royal Navy Air Force Anti Submarine Training School in Lough Foyle. The Prince enjoyed a meal with other officers in the Green Bay Restaurant in Buncrana.

Harry Percival Swan reports in Romantic Stories and Legends of Donegal, 1965, “The Duke, who was accompanied by several other naval officers, motored to Buncrana and parked his car along the front. The Duke and his party walked along the shore for some distance and up Castle Avenue and through Main Street. They patronised a number of establishments and visited a restaurant where they had a meal. The proprietor was warmly complimented by the Duke on the excellence of the fare provided. While in the restaurant a great crowd gathered outside and it was found necessary to close the doors of the restaurant where the crowd who wanted to see the Duke had to be regulated by Civic Guards.”

Just over one and a half centuries earlier, a Protestant revolutionary of Irish independence arrived in Buncrana. Harry states, “Admiral Commodore Bompart, of the French Fleet, left Brest on 16 September 1798 with a 74 gun man-of-war, eight frigates and a schooner under his command. He had orders to land the 3,000 troops on board his vessels at Lough Swilly. Wolfe Tone, leader of the United Irishmen, commanded one of the French frigates, the Hoche. Bompart’s fleet was sighted by Sir John Borlase who was commanding a British squadron on 11 October and a fierce battle took place off Tory Island the following day.” Wolfe was forced to surrender and was brought ashore at Buncrana. He died shortly after aged 35 in the Provost Prison of the Royal Barracks Dublin.

But neither gentlemen made as lasting an impression as John Newton.

In the field of tourism branding, hymnal inspiration must rank among the more original, if not the unique. Welcome to Amazing Grace Country. A hymn was certainly a good excuse to transform a concrete viewing platform into an artwork. Local artist Andrew Garvey-Williams designed a mosaic floor which incorporates images of the hymnwriter John Newton’s ship The Greyhound, the words Amazing Grace in his handwriting, and broken chains symbolising the end of the transatlantic slave trade.

Sailing from Africa to England via Newfoundland was a long and dangerous voyage. Exactly half a century before Wolfe Tone was captured, John’s ship was caught for weeks in a violent storm in the Atlantic Ocean. A fellow sailor was instantly swept overboard. In John’s own words, “The sea had torn away the upper timbers … and made the ship a mere wreck in a few minutes. It was astonishing, and almost miraculous, that any of us survived. We expended most of our clothing and bedding to stop the leaks.”

When all hope was lost, “We saw the Island of Tory and the next day anchored in Lough Swilly in Ireland. This was 8 April. When we came into this part, our very last victuals were boiling in the pot and before we had been there two hours, the wind began to blow with great violence. If we had continued at sea that night in our shattered condition, we would have gone to the bottom. About this time I began to know that there is a God that hears and answers prayers.” He had realised God’s grace could save even a “wretch” like him.

John stepped ashore in Buncrana a changed man. The viewing platform marks the spot. His crew received a warm welcome from the locals including carpenters who set about repairing the battered ship. While the ship was being repaired he visited Derry City, attending prayers at St Columb’s Cathedral. On returning to England, John was appointed captain of a slave ship. But as his faith grew he jumped ship to join the Anglican clergy in Liverpool in 1764. It was while he was Curate at Olney Parish Church that he wrote Amazing Grace to illustrate his 1773 New Year’s Day sermon. John was promoted to Rector of St Mary Woolnoth. He led the congregation at this Nicholas Hawksmoor designed Anglican church in the City of London for the last 27 years of his life. During this period, he met the politician William Wilberforce and together their combined efforts batting slavery were successful.

The slave trade was abolished in the spring of 1807. John died the same year, four days before Christmas. He had written almost 300 hymns such as the belter Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken but historically Amazing Grace wasn’t the most popular. It really only gained status during the 19th century Christian revival which swept across both side of the Atlantic. His words were attached to several traditional melodies until 1835 when the composer William Walker married the hymn to the tune New Britain.

The hymn has an enduring quality, an eternal appeal. Amazing Grace has been recorded over 5,000 times including a moving rendition delivered by Aretha Franklin to the Obamas. It has also inspired contemporary songs such as Phil Wickham’s This is Amazing Grace. John Newton’s legacy lives on in lyrics and now in Amazing Grace Country in this far flung part of the universe. Growing at a rate of knots, Buncrana is now County Donegal’s second largest town and the biggest on the peninsula of Inishowen.

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Art Design Luxury People Restaurants

Royal Hospital Chelsea + Treasure House Fair 2025

Collections May Vary

Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport at the ready, it’s the third edition of Treasure House Fair at Royal Hospital Chelsea London. Edmond Joy’s 1709 construction is a surprising component of the Sculpture Walk directed by Harvey Horswell and curated by Dr Melissa Gustin, both from National Museums Liverpool. Brought to the show by Thomas Coulborn and Sons, it is a child’s wardrobe masquerading as a Dutch style doll’s house. It meets the accepted definition of sculpture as a work of art in three dimensions while also being a functional object and one of architectural interest. This magical wardrobe with its bewitching façade deserves to be lionised. Little did Edmond Joy know three centuries ago that he would be creating the ultimate collector’s item with his Kew Palace in miniature.

There are first editions at Shapero Rare Books such as Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1934) and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1845). And there are newly signed editions at Potterton Books: Blenheim 300 Years of Life in a Palace (2024). Blenheim Palace is the most visited of all of Britain’s stately homes. Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, renowned interior designer and author is on standby with her Sharpie pen. She grew up at Blenheim: it is now lived in by her brother Charles, 12th Duke of Marlborough. “I was always the one who was interested in art and architecture and the history of buildings,” Henrietta relates. “That, coupled with working with my father on the restoration because of my career in interior design meant I’ve more interest and knowledge of the house than perhaps other members of the family.”

Galerie Marc Maison is a canine art collector’s paradise. Two life size sculpture groups guard the entrance to the room. In 1893 banker Jacques Stern commissioned Auguste-Nicholas Caïn to replicate his hunting dogs in dark green patina bronze for outside his Château de Fitz-James in Oise. The room is dominated by Augustine Ricard’s monumental oil painting Après la Chasse dated 1885. She was one of the few female artists to exhibit her work in the fashionable Parisian salons. A dozen dogs are pictured resting in their kennel. “We are located in Rue des Rosiers, St Ouen sur Seine. Everyone comes to Les Puces in Clignoncourt!” declares Daisy Maison.

“Huon Mallalieu has an incredible depth of knowledge as an art and antiques historian,” is how Country Life Interiors Editor Giles Kime introduces one of the magazine’s long term contributors. Huon begins, “The 50s were rather important because there was a change of American tax law which encouraged people to buy art to hang on their walls during their lifetime but was tax exempt after their death if they donated it to a museum. This meant they were looking for new markets and so were dealers. And that was how the Impressionist market actually began on a major world stage.”

He continues, “I mention that because people are worried markets are collapsing. The art market has a circularity about it. One thinks that in 1962 Lord Leighton’s most famous work Flaming June was sold for £62 and it’s now worth millions. It had been out of fashion for 50 years. This happens regularly and there is no need to panic. One must remember that what was cutting edge for one generation is old hat for the next generation and old master for the one after that. Things go round and round. What people want now is completely different compared to the 70s and 80s. And that’s no bad thing. Markets dry up; contemporary artists become less contemporary. And once they are being resold on the secondary market their original dealers can no longer control them by waiting lists and the like. At that moment prices may well drop and if you want to that’s the moment to start buying them.”

Huon recalls the brown furniture market in the 80s, “It was focused on the Fulham Road and Kings Road but also Bond Street in a very big way. Again, it was partly driven by American fashion of the 20s which had been all for the grandest of 18th century furniture and that continued. There were big collectors in Britain as well and when their collections came through in the 80s and 90s that was the peak – and the end of it too. After that people thought brown furniture was far too grand. They wanted simple mid 20th century stuff – the generational shift occurred.”

Writer and Executive Director of the Design Leadership Network Michael Diaz-Griffith comments, “I think if we look at the market for high style traditional English material, the US was offset just a bit from the UK. If you think of some of the great sales of the 70s like the Mentmore sale, the great houses were being decanted of this wonderful material and it was often Americans who were scooping it up and taking it back to Fifth Avenue. So there remained a great deal of excitement about that high style really through the 80s and into the 90s. The baby boomers of the early 2000s became very excited about contemporary art and in the US at least that was the driver of collecting and tastemaking really until the millennials – the generation that I am trying to be a cheerleader for – began to come of age and exhibit a different type of taste.” Exhibitor Philip Mould’s room features both old masters and modern British artworks.

“The pendulum swings back and forth always,” New Yorker Michael believes. “The pendulum is swinging back in the direction of antiques, of historic decorative arts, and that is a very good thing indeed. You are searching for your own taste, what is comfortable, enjoying history and what it has to offer but also being at home in the world as it is today.” Fresh from Marrakesh, interior decorator Henrietta von Stockhausen reckons, “Christopher Gibbs and Robert Kime started this type of decorating. They managed to go much deeper into that story of a home and the most important thing is comfort. They were very bravely mixing styles and the stuff owners had collected.”

Henrietta recollects, “Christopher mixed some incredibly important things with some really not important things but everything was beautiful and told a story. I think that juxtaposition created great energy and developed a much less precious way of decorating which is really very much where we are now I believe. My clients now are much braver at telling their story, much braver at choosing things that they want. It’s not about show anymore – it’s about actually enjoying your pieces and looking at them. Sometimes you have this beautiful antique piece which along with another 100 beautiful pieces feels like you’re in a museum. But if you place it opposite some incredible contemporary piece it really begins to sing and creates this energy and this is what is required these days.

Firmdale Hotels have a collection of top spots in London and New York. What better way is there to celebrate their 40th anniversary than launching this year’s Brasserie at Treasure House? It’s also the 25th anniversary of their Charlotte Street Hotel in Fitzrovia. Smart menu main course choices include asparagus and artichoke salad with toasted almonds and pan seared seabass with lobster bisque. Puddings vary from baked chocolate cake to strawberries and rhubarb with shortbread and ice cream. Next door, Ostra Regal Gold Oysters in the Oyster Bar are fresh from Clew Bay in County Mayo and full of joyful surprise.

Treasure House Fair 2025 has plenty of heroic moments, some of epic grandeur, and an immaculateness of purpose.

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel + Victor Garvey at The Midland Grand Dining Room St Pancras London

No Rotten Tomatoes

So long ago. Back in 2011, we interviewed Harry Handelsman, the visionary replacing ossification with revivification at the majestic St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Rewinding 14 years: a Polly Morgan taxidermy of a fox snuggled in a glass dome in the reception is a sign this is no ordinary office block. The Edison Building on Old Marylebone Road is named after the world’s most prolific inventor Thomas Edison. Its 1930s Art Deco exterior has been reinvented by architect David Adjaye who’s cloaked it in his trademark charcoal grey rendering. The client was Harry Handelsman of Manhattan Loft Corporation, the property developer who brought loft living to London before reinventing the Capital’s best Victorian railway hotel.

“This could have been a cool apartment building but I wanted to do something more exciting,” starts Harry. He’s clad in a charcoal grey suit, no tie, sitting in his charcoal grey top floor corner office. So far, so suave. Sliding doors open onto a huge decked terrace. “I called on my friend David. He designed an amazing transformation.” Adjaye Associates now occupy the ground floor of the Edison Building which has filled up with design companies. Munich born Harry worked as a financier in New York before arriving in London in 1984. He soon realised the potential for American style loft living in Britain. “Lofts are the concept behind giving buildings a new lease of life – they’re exciting and wonderful places,” Harry enthuses. He set up Manhattan Loft Corporation in 1992. To date around 1,000 apartments have been completed in the UK and Germany.

“We’ve no concerns about building something new though,” he adds. “Even our first scheme in London – Bankside Lofts next to what is now Tate Modern – was part newbuild. So much other new development seems too simplistic. It needs to be more energetic, more dramatic. We want to give our developments a bit of punch!” There’s nothing unenergetic or undramatic about St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. And it literally has punch – as we will discover later.

Two decades after he brought loft living to London, he’s also the best man to know what’s next in the residential development world of 2011. “High rise apartments. That’s the way things are going,” states Harry. “London is the most exciting city in the world. Development can make such a positive contribution. It’s not all about commerce. Each of our projects is different. An exciting thing is that we can make a positive difference to the cityscape. We are incredibly privileged. My team is second to none, combining creativity and commitment. I wish the planning regime would be simplified but any issues aren’t insurmountable. There’s enough appreciation of design quality. If it was all smooth sailing I wouldn’t have any grey hairs!”

Also in 2011, a busy year, we reviewed the hotel opening for Luxury Travel Magazine. Paris in two hours. Amsterdam in four hours. Lobby in 2.4 minutes. Those are the travel times from the First Class platform of the Eurostar train in London to St Pancras Renaissance Hotel … and so we continued, the excitement lifting off the screen. The motif of the hotel is the peacock which represents rejuvenation – and not just vanity (although with such architectural beauty that would be justifiable). When a peacock loses a feather it grows back perfectly. St Pancras is more like plume replacement. In 1865 Sir George Gilbert Scott won a competition held by Midland Railway to design a hotel for St Pancras Station. The client’s vision was for an understated building. The architect had other ideas.

A Gothic Revival extravaganza, his gargantuan fairytale confection of towers, turrets and terracotta tiles overwhelmed visitors when it opened in 1873, did once again in 2011, and still does in 2025. The verticality of a 72 metre high clocktower is balanced by the horizontality of a sweep of 150 metre wide frontage and the third of a kilometre depth including engineer William Barlow’s railway terminus behind the hotel. If the hotel is all about design and detailing, the terminus with its 800 cast iron columns and 2,000 wrought iron girders is a pure expression of structure and function – the sort of thundering modernity captured on canvas down the line in Joseph Turner’s 1844 Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway.

Sir George’s design incorporated all the latest fittings too: the first lift in a British hotel; the first revolving door in Britain; 40 centimetre thick fireproof walls. The latter was to contribute to its downfall. Time stands still for no architect or builder or hotelier. Not long after it opened, en suite bathrooms became all the rage for grand hotels. Thick internal walls did not adapt well to the insertion of bathrooms. The hotel eventually closed after just 62 years of operation and was downgraded to British Rail offices. It was even threatened with demolition in the 1960s before Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman successfully campaigned for its retention.

This Grade I Listed Building was finally saved by Harry Handelsman. A labour of love, albeit an expensive affair. His company Manhattan Loft Corporation spent £100 million converting the three upper floors to 67 apartments and a further £150 million rejuvenating the remainder of the building back to a hotel. It’s a physical embodiment of joie de vivre. The peacock’s feathers have truly regrown. Such rare and colourful plumage! The original entrance hall is now a bar with a polychromatic corniced ceiling, encaustic filed floors and walls dripping in gold leaf. Upstairs, the Renaissance inspired ceiling of the Ladies’ Smoking Room cost nearly £1 million to restore. It was the first place in Europe where females could acceptably smoke in public. This room now aptly leads onto a smoking terrace (or at least did until the boring ban was introduced).

The St Pancras Railway Terminus designed by engineer William Henry Barlow was – wait for it, another record breaker – the single largest railway structure of its time. The former taxi rank between the railway shed and original hotel (originally the pedestrian entrance to the railway platforms) has been converted into a cavernous glass roofed lobby lounge. The adjacent Booking Office is now a brasserie and bar serving traditional English delights such as quail’s eggs with anchovies. Victorian drinks like Garrick Club Punch and Moonlight White Tea are served on neverending bar. The grand staircase is the interior pièce de resistance. It’s a cathedral of colour with hand painted fleur de lys walls framed by Midland Stone arches and vaults. Exposed structural ironwork under the flights of stair fuses romance and technology. Harry’s workforce even aged the carpet on the dizzying array of fanciful flights of stairs. In 2011, we observed that the limestone pillared Gilbert Scott Restaurant looked positively restrained in comparison. Celebrity Chef Marcus Wareing’s team offered its own take on nostalgic classics such as Queen Anne’s Artichoke Tart and Mrs Beeton’s Snow Egg. The Gilbert Scott Restaurant was the setting of our first lunch with Dame Rosalind Savill, then Director of The Wallace Collection, London’s best museum.

Harry carved 38 bedrooms out of the old building and inserted 207 into a new sympathetically designed extension. Once more, the hotel caters for the demands of five star guests. A subterranean spa occupies the former steam kitchen. Our Luxury Travel Magazine 2011 article ended with Stairway to Seven (Facts). A double storey apartment is housed in the clocktower. English Heritage only allowed a 20 colour palette which includes Barlow Blue and Midland Red. The latter hue has a tomato tinge to it, an augury of our 2025 dinner. On Thursday nights in 2011, DJ Eloise rocked the Booking Office and on Friday nights it was the turn of DJ Zulu. The diamond shape is another motif of the hotel and 725 can be found in the Booking Office.

In 2018, Harry reminisced, “I always knew that St Pancras would be a challenge. The complexity of the structure and the Grade I Listing by English Heritage allowing only minimum intervention in the creation of a 21st century hotel was always going to be difficult. Many of my business compatriots thought that I was mad for undertaking such an ambitious project. At times I thought they were right. It was the sheer excitement and privilege of being given the opportunity and responsibility for this most fascinating building that kept me from desperation.”

That was then and this is now: 2025 to be precise. We’re staying in a modern bedroom of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, dining in the restaurant and late night drinking in the hotel opposite. Bedroom furniture was graduated by wood when our hotel first opened. The best rooms on the first floor contained pieces made of oak or walnut. Second floor rooms had oak or teak furniture; third floor, mahogany; poor old fourth floor, ash. Decoration is more democratic this time round. Our fourth floor room is elegant simplicity: pattern free, clutter free, bad artwork free. The view is of the British Library, another vast red brick building (designed by Colin St John Wilson in the 1990s) although not quite so beloved as its neighbour. Our two paned rectangular window is set in a Gothic arch on the exterior: contemporary inside, traditional outside. Richard Griffiths’ architecture hits all the right notes. RHWL was the overseeing design practice of the development. Encaustic tiles on the floors of the long bedroom corridors draws the original hotel into the extension which fits neatly between the rear of the hotel and the side of the station.

The Gilbert Scott Restaurant closed in 2021. Two years later, The Midland Grand Dining Room by Patrick Powell (an Irish chef) opened before closing last year. And that brings us to The Midland Grand Dining Room by Victor Garvey (a mostly American chef). His CV includes working at two of the world’s most famous restaurants: El Bulli in Barcelona and Noma Copenhagen. Victor’s maternal grandmother was a personal chef for Charles de Gaulle so it makes sense the rebooted restaurant offers French haute cuisine even before you hop across the Channel on the Eurostar.

“There are only a few times in a chef’s life when they get handed a dining room,” says Victor, “and I’m extremely honoured and privileged and excited to be able to embark on this journey in something like this. The idea behind the menu here stems from respecting tradition but innovating and making it lighter and making it more streamlined and making it more concise and finding a way to tell the story of that incredibly deep French culinary heritage and respecting it but updating it. Old world, new ideas.” The sausage shaped Dining Room has a robust neoclassicism of the mid Victorian muscularity ilk befitting its original use as the Smoking Room. The Midland Grand isn’t the only French newcomer in town: a week later we will venture to the wildly popular Joséphine Bouchon in Fulham for cabillaud au beurre blanc à l’é chalote. Chef Claud Bossi of Bibendum South Kensington fame is once again putting the Lyon into lyonnaise in the English Capital.

Tick tock. It’s Pimm’s O’Clock on the Champagne Terrace (we’ve worked up a thirst strolling through the wetland habitat of Camley Street Park). One of London’s hidden gems, the Champagne Terrace is perched below the back of the hotel entrance tower and looked down on from the modern bedroom wing. Oysters are only to be consumed in months with an R and Pimm’s are only to be downed in months without an R. James Pimm’s recipe of liqueurs and herbs remains a warm weather winner 185 years after it was trademarked. In The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982), Peter York and Ann Barr order, “May: at the first sign of summer, Pimm’s.” But no accompanying oysters.

We’re all on for tenuously excused partying and it doesn’t come much better than the 5.05pm Punch Ritual in the Booking Office for guests to celebrate the 152nd anniversary of the original hotel opening. It’s a few days off the actual date (5 May) but we don’t fuss about detail. Historic fountain penned letters from the hotel’s archives are shared while the sommelier stirs his cauldron of elixir. We’ve barely ordered more drinks in the main hotel bar when we’re ushered to our window table in The Midland Grand Dining Room. Oh the anticipation! The à la carte caters for the carnivorous so our waitress suggests vegetarian alternatives. In between pretty amuse bouches and freshly baked bread we’re served a sliced tomato starter and a diced tomato main. We’re all on for retaining our Parisian waistlines. Minimalist plates in maximalist architecture. Pudding is l’Opéra which turns out to be a delightfully deconstructed coffee cake.

A quick dash across the road and we’re soon zooming up 11 storeys in the external lift of The Standard Hotel to Sweeties bar for Power Play cocktails (Belvedere Vodka, Dry Vermouth, Sweeties Savoury Brine). We skip the Bloody Marys: enough tomato for one day. Sure enough, against a darkening pink sky, St Pancras Renaissance Hotel looms in all its pinnacled silhouetted glory. But it’s not over till the fat lady sings or the slim girl walks: before stepping onto the First Class Eurostar to post paschal pastures anew in Paris we’re off to Lightroom (a Louboutin’s throw from the hotel and Central St Martin’s Art College) for a Vogue installation. A tomato red Mercedes roars up and the fashion artist Dame Mary Martin emerges to join us – from the hemline to the frontline of fashion. So now.

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Luxury People Restaurants

Ole + Steen + Trine Hahnemann

Summer Solstice Celebration

“We opened in St James’s nine years ago and that was the introduction of Ole and Steen to London,” announces Joachim Knudsen, Ole and Steen Group CEO. “Today we have 26 stores in Greater London. We believe we have a good understanding of how Londoners think when they want to enjoy pastries, sweet breads and rye bread. Our new Open Rye range is a collaboration with the celebrated Danish chef Trine Hahnemann. Her deep knowledge of Scandinavian food and love for honest, seasonal ingredients makes this partnership a perfect fit.” Ole Kristoffersen and Steen Skallebaek combined 35 years’ experience of running bakeries when they joined forces opening Ole and Steen in 2008. Ole comes from Copenhagen; Steen, Jutland.

Trine shares, “I am especially happy and proud to be here for this partnership because it is about rye bread. I am rye bread! I use this every day. Rye bread really is at the heart of Danish food culture. It started in the 1800s when it became a trend. You could go into shops and take it home and invite people over. Rye bread can be used with whatever you have in your fridge: potato, sausage, cheese. Rye bread is made out of flour of course and then it has seeds and has a very high percentage of fibre. So this is a really healthy bread and very tasty. It was the first fast food – the first takeaway food.”

She starts a demonstration making one of the new Open Rye range. “We want all the five flavours in fast food. Umami, salty, bitter, sweet, sour. As a human being if you eat something that has the five flavours you get so satisfied. That’s why we love burgers! Smørrebrød, the traditional Danish open sandwich on rye bread, can have all five flavours. The other important thing of smørrebrød is the structure. When you eat something it has to have different textures. You need something soft, something chewy, something crunchy.”

The demonstration is in full swing. “You cut rye bread thinner than say sourdough bread. The first thing I do with a slice is smell it! Rye bread has this wonderful bitter, sweet and also flowery smell – a sense of nature. Smørrebrød actually means butter, bun, bread. The butter is very important because when you put all these toppings on you need something to protect the bread so that it doesn’t get soggy. It is a tradition to always use salted butter and it is part of the flavour combination. We have here cream cheese and I have put some yoghurt, dill and chives in it. Fresh herbs are extremely important for the flavour but also for the decoration. In Scandinavia we are obsessed with fresh herbs! Of course everyone knows salmon is a Scandinavian thing too.”

The layering continues. “Put some slices of salmon on for texture and balance of taste. I chose fennel because it goes so well with salmon and dill. Just raw fennel because you don’t want any more flavours in there. We have all that already combined in this smørrebrød. You get a bit of crunchiness from the fennel. Black pepper is the spice – it has to come from a mill. I just want to say rye bread, salmon and pepper is a match made in heaven! And then I am going to put dill on top. You can never have too many herbs – never. And then cress: this is a purple one. We are obsessed with crest as well. Cress has a sharpness which goes really well with the sweetness of salmon. So we have all the flavours in there.”

“We also get to celebrate my new cookbook Eat Copenhagen,” Trine reveals. “In it is a guide to my Copenhagen. All the stories, all the things I love above my hometown, all the traditional food. It’s an insight into the culinary culture you can experience as a local Copenhagener. Food you can bake and cook at home. Then you can go to all the fancy restaurants! And there’s a little story in there about Ole and Steen. I have worked with them since I was very young. When I was 19 or 20 I used to see Ole in a bar. Copenhagen is a very small town. That whole gourmet revolution in bread that you see in Copenhagen now came from Ole and Steen. They were the pioneers and still make the best rye bread and very good cakes.” Bon appétit! Velbekomme!

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers People Town Houses

Sir John Soane’s Museum Holborn London + Richard Rogers

Architectural Communication

The extraordinary townhouse that is Sir John Soane’s Museum has played host to many exciting exhibitions drawing synergy from the riveting interiors. Highlights of the last nine years include shows featuring Alcantara (microfibre fabric) and Space Popular (multidisciplinary design practice); Emily Allchurch (artist); William Shakespeare (a certain playwright); and Sarah Lucas (artist). The latest is the first UK retrospective since his demise of the work of Richard Rogers, leading exponent of High Tech architecture. And so, at 13 Lincoln’s Inns Fields two architects who had a passion for materials, light and life meet posthumously.

Will Gompertz, Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, opens the exhibition: “Rogers Pink completely fits with the vibe of the good weather and also aesthetically fits with the vibe of Soane as next door in the South Drawing Room there is this extraordinary colour field of yellow which is called Turner Yellow – not Turner the painter but Turner the designer – which he very specifically chose and then you’ve got the Rogers Pink in this exhibition. I think Soane would approve of this enormously and also he would have loved Richard as a man. They would have had so much in common.”

“The exhibition started three weeks after I began as Director here and Richard’s son Ab got on the phone and said, ‘Can I come round with an idea?’ He came round and five minutes later we had a show! Ab’s idea was for the Soane to show the first retrospective of Richard Rogers in this country since he sadly passed. And the answer was emphatically yes.”

Ab provides a tour of the exhibition Talking Buildings: “It’s a simple show based on eight pivotal projects across his career. It’s really about this escalating idea how the buildings talk to each other. I think Richard really wanted his architecture to talk to the people, to improve the quality of the citizens’ lives, to celebrate the streets, to get people to look up at the sky, to enjoy the public space and to really look at the responsibility of the building to respond to its uses.”

“This ongoing conversation started with the Zip Up House which is a solution to social housing. It is an object made out of prefabricated units, incredibly well insulated, that can continuously grow and expand. He was looking at sustainable issues before there was awareness of them in 1969. The house he designed for his mother and father also in 1969 creates this very open space where there’s no specific programme and you’re free to play with it as you will. You can roll out of the building and into the grass – it’s very free, almost boundaryless.”

“And that plays into the Pompidou Centre in Paris where 50 percent of the site is given to the public; you see all the services taken from the inside to the outside to free up the programme of the interior. And you can argue that this free programme that exists inside the Pompidou also exists inside the Zip Up House. This escalation goes on and then he creates Lloyds Building – this shining armour sitting in the historical setting of the City of London. They’re both very brave and radical buildings. Lloyds was the youngest building to be Listed in the UK.”

“We go on to the Millennium Dome, a building which was quite controversial at its time although it came in on budget and on time. This huge roof held a world beneath it. The Dome was meant to be up for one year but instead 25 years later like the Eiffel Tower it becomes this icon of the capital. And from there we go back to social housing looking at The Treehouse which is a collection of ‘shoeboxes’ fabricated from cross laminated timber, rapidly assembled as a tower and very low cost. The roof of one becomes the garden of the next creating these ‘shoeboxes’ with free programmes.”

“We see this conversation and idea continue when we finally end up in the drawing gallery which takes us back to the Zip Up House’s very muscular cantilevered box. It is designed like a telescope with a straight line of viewing out to the landscape. Talking Buildings is a quick journey really trying to work around this conversation and Richard’s passion for creating civic architecture which is generous to the citizens and generous to the streets, while trying to provoke the role of the developer and the council to be bigger and more integrated.” This show adds yet another layer of brilliance to the immersive multimedia experience that is Sir John Soane’s Museum.

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Luxury People

WOW!house 2025 + Design Centre Chelsea Harbour London

Always

It’s the perfect single storey neoclassical villa. And there’s just one month to experience it. “The façade draws on early Georgian architecture amplified in a Chelsea London context,” explains Darren Price, a Design Director at Adam Architecture. “Its refinement embraces contemporary minimalism and reinterprets the language of classicism in a way that feels both timeless and relevant to modern sensibilities. The neoclassical design relies on lines and arches rather than columns and pilasters.”

WOW!house is back in the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour for another year to inspire, educate and thrill. One of several new elements is a Town Garden designed by Alexander Hoyle and delivered by Artorius Faber. Stone materially links Adam Architecture’s façade and the garden: a Portland limestone plinth; reclaimed sandstone cobbles and walling; and reclaimed flagstones for the portico and arcades flooring. Walking through Darren’s portico, under the oculus in the Soaneian pendentive dome, over the corresponding tiled circle, leads into a procession of eight rooms, a Courtyard, 10 further rooms and onwards and outwards to a Grand Terrace. It’s like wandering through a stationary Venice Simplon-Orient Express with side carriages. International collaborations of interior designers, architects, design brands and suppliers stimulate the senses. Even smell: each room has its own dedicated Jo Malone London fragrance from Pomegranate Noir to Red Roses.

Victoria Davar of Maison Artefact perfectly captures a sense of arrival in the Entrance Hall sponsored by Cox London. A five metre ceiling height adds an extravagance of volume allowing for a floating staircase to spiral up towards an imaginary upper room. Victoria reckons, “We have designed a modern day cabinet of curiosities including a cast bronze and iron chandelier from Cox London.” A Robert Adam plaster frieze from Stevensons of Norwich draws on the neoclassicism of the façade. In contrast, Chad Dorsey’s members’ clubby Drawing Room, sponsored by Fromental, is Arts and Crafts. Fromental’s Kiku wallcovering wraps the room (and ceiling) in panels of stylised chrysanthemums and sunflowers. Chad continues the nature theme with Kyle Bunting’s chequerboard leather rug featuring birch and wheat emblems.

“The Phillip Jeffries Study is designed to be visually compelling but also should enhance the way someone lives and interacts with their environment,” suggests Staffan Tollgård. The Creative Director of Tollgård selected a striking abstract artwork formed of slices of oak and paulownia wood as a wallcovering by Phillip Jeffries. Another cosy space is the Nucleus Media Room designed by Alex Dauley. This Myrrh and Spice Jo Malone London aroma filled cocoon is swathed in Zinc Textile’s suede wallcovering and incorporates Nucleus’ seamless home automation.

“A space to intrigue, inspire and spark conversation,” is how Spinocchia Freund describes The Curator’s Room. The designer has a commitment to working exclusively with women. She collaborated with Ashley Stark, Creative Director of the room’s sponsor Stark, on a bespoke rug. Spinocchia explains, “This rug is a celebration of 87 powerful creative women such as Élisabeth Garouste, Zaha Hadid, Charlotte Perriand, Faye Toogood and Vanessa Raw. Their names are woven into it. My biggest issue was deciding who to include as there were so many suitable names!”

Tommaso Franchi of Tomèf Design collaborated with three of Italy’s leading heritage brands for the Primary Bedroom. Fabric house Fortuny, rattan furniture company Bonacina, and Venetian glass masters Barovier and Toso have all contributed pieces to a room embracing Italian craft. A Primary Bedroom that could be in Venice or Verona is not complete without some Murano: a Tomèf designed coffee table contains a collection of objets d’art made from offcuts of Barovier and Toso’s Murano glassware. Alisa Connery of 1508 London based the House of Rohle Primary Bathroom on reflection, ritual and reverie. The fluid shape of the freestanding bath and standalone shower by the room’s sponsor embodies the energy and movement of water.

Hurrah, Treasure House Fair has come early this year! Or at a least a foretaste has popped up. The Season fixture is Daniel Slowik’s Morning Room sponsor. The interior designer and antique dealer sourced furniture, paintings and objets d’art from contributors to the Treasure House Fair. Daniel’s imaginary client Richard Wallace. The 19th century art collector’s London home, Hertford House in Marylebone, is now The Wallace Collection. This museum and art gallery was reinvented by the brilliant symbiotic force of the late Director Dame Rosalind Savill and the neoclassical architect John O’Connell. A Bardiglio marble chimneypiece by Jamb provides a focal point for the Treasure House Morning Room. Set pieces include a George III pedimented bookcase from Ronald Philipps and a portrait by the 18th century artist Maria Verelst from Philip Mould.

The second of three (or is it four?) open spaces at WOW!house, the Perennials and Sutherland Courtyard designed by Goddard Littlefair combines the best of Andalusian gardens and Moorish architecture. Jo Littlefair compliments Perennials and Sutherland’s technological advancement, “Their outdoor Crescent furniture uses powder coated aluminium as a finish. It’s perfect in hotter climates because the coating has good thermal stability.” The Sims Hilditch Courtyard Room is firmly back on British soil. Country house specialist Emma Sims Hilditch has created a very smart behind the green baize door space. A coffered ceiling and antique furniture elevate this space from back of house to front of courtyard. A dog room and a boot room are set behind glazed internal partition walls in two corners of the Courtyard Room.

The perfect neoclassical villa must contain at least one fourposter bed and American Alessandra Branca comes up trumps with the Casa Branca Bedroom. Drawing on eclectic sources from David Hicks to Lee Radziwill, the sponsor and designer’s own brand of textiles, wallpapers and furniture fill the room. A border stripe framing curly motifs wallpaper is echoed in the striped bed curtains. Murano vases provide hints of Alessandra’s Italian heritage.

“It all began with a pair of taps,” reveals Samuel Heath, the exclusive bathware designer and manufacturer sponsoring the Bathroom by Laura Hammett. The stepped profile, chamfered corners and bronze finish of the new taps could belong to only one style of full bathroom design: Art Deco. “This year is the centenary of l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs à Paris which launched Art Deco,” Laura relates. “We are really reimagining the 1920s style with gusto and have included a San Marino marble rolltop bath and matching double vanity unit.”

No world class display of interiors is complete without the Pre Raphaelite tour de force that is Kelly Hoppen CBE. Her moody Living Room, sponsored by Visual Comfort and Company, is all that is to be expected from the design powerhouse. She confirms, “Visual Comfort’s collection gave us the freedom to create atmosphere and rhythm through lighting.” Kelly has selected an earthy palette of rich brown, terracotta and muted neutrals. Vintage furniture sits cheek by jowl with bespoke pieces. She notes, “The Living Room blends asymmetry, history and personal storytelling.”

Curvature is a theme of the interiors and reaches a geometric climax in the Dedar Library by Pirajean Lees which is encircled by bookcases. Designers Clémence Pirajean and James Michael Lees discovered something they have in common with the cutting edge (no pun) fabric house of Dedar: a love of music. A440 Hz, the tuning standard of musical instruments before a concert, provides an unlikely source of inspiration for patterns in the painted dome ceiling and the rug made by Jennifer Manners. A pitch perfect room. The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges imagined Paris as a library. And as the American journalist Maureen Callaghan warns, “If you ever go back with someone after a night out and they’ve no books in their home, run! Run!”

Drummonds backed Nicola Harding’s jewel box inspired Powder Room. The Art Deco style collection includes a marble top vanity and storage units reflected in antiqued mirrors in a glazed ceramic tiled setting. “For the Powder Room you have to be more dramatic,” Nicola opines. “It’s a space where you’re likely to be alone so it can be an escape. We wanted to create an intoxicating atmosphere rich with colour and texture.” The colourway includes ruby, turquoise and jade. In contrast, Toni Black of Blacksheep uses a palette of soft blush, terracotta and taupe for her Home Bar. The scheme is centred on Shepel’s handmade joinery and furniture. A curvaceous bar follows the rounded rectangle room shape.

“The application and finish of the paint is paramount to the finished look and feel of any room, so we’re thrilled to work with Benjamin Moore, the best paint brand out there,” exclaims Peter Mikic, the designer of the Dining Room. A vast abstract artwork by Billy Metcalfe and trompe l’oeil panels by Ian Harper – using Benjamin Moore paint of course – provide sweeps of colour across the walls. Vintage Lucite leopard skin fabric metal framed dining chairs contrast with a circular dining table bejewelled with semi precious stones made by Kaizen.

Atmospheric lighting is another theme of this villa so who better than Hector Finch to sponsor the Thurstan Snug? “We were inspired by Hector’s enthusiasm for designing and crafting his lighting,” says the room’s designer James Thurston Waterworth, Founder of interiors practice Thurstan. “So we imagined a practical creative space where he could draft sketches, test samples and immerse himself in books.” Blue lime plaster walls painted with marble dust bound by varnish and a d’Ardeche parquet floor bring rich patinas to the Snug.

Ben Pentreath Studio is one of King Charles’ favourite architectural design companies. The Studio’s Rupert Cunningham, Leo Kary and Alice Montgomery have come up with the Kitchen built by Lopen Joinery which would definitely persuade Queen Camilla to don her cooking apron. Grecogothik is a novel portmanteau the team jokingly use to describe the genre of this unfitted room. Octagonal shaped cabinet legs reflect the shape of the octagonal rooflight. Art should be in every room in the house and paintings in the Kitchen include Tallisker Isle of Sky bye by John Nash (Paul Nash’s younger brother, not the architect).

His Majesty would certainly enjoy the Garden Terrace designed by Randle Siddeley which leads off the Kitchen. This exotic garden under the glass sky of the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour is filled with lush planting and framed by formal trellis in the style of an orangery. Randle believes, “The Garden Terrace is an immersive escape where one can pause, entertain and connect with nature.” Bespoke aluminium outdoor furniture by the space sponsor McKinnon and Harris includes scalloped dining chairs and an Italianate table. Mental note: every space deserves a crystal chandelier. Things get really wild … in the same collaborators’ Secret Garden filled with Oxenwood outdoor furniture.

This year, WOW!House truly is La Nouvelle Exposition des Arts Décoratifs de Londres. WOW!House 2025 deserves its own chapter in the sequel to Peter Thornton’s 1984 authoritative tome Authentic Décor The Domestic Interior 1620 to 1920.

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Art Design Luxury People Restaurants

Yugo Restaurant Belfast + Graffiti

A Sandbar Near a River Mouth

In the 1980s the choice was Speranza or Capers? Italian or Italianate? Those were the two stalwarts of the Belfast restaurant scene. More of a still than a scene. It would have been hard to imagine back then that the city would become a gourmet destination. Belfast eventually found its forte. Graffiti art replaces sectarian slogans in the city centre. Klaus Rosskothen who runs Pretty Portal in Düsseldorf, one of Europe’s leading urban art galleries, argues, “Graffiti art is a sign of vitality and life in a city.” Actually there’s a café on Ormeau Road called Graffitti [sic] which is famous for its tzatziki.

There certainly was no Michelin commended restaurant, let alone an Asian one, 45 years ago. “Behind an unassuming façade is this buzzy industrial restaurant,” records the Inspector, “where powerful music plays and a super friendly team bring the dishes as and when they’re ready.” That unassuming façade is on the grandly named Wellington Street which is actually a short laneway to one side of the City Hall.

Lunch in Yugo is fusion at its best: Buzen meets Baishan meets Belfast. Panko prawn, gochujang (£8.00). Tempura spinach maki (£11.00). Aubergine, hot honey, chilli, yoghurt, pomegranate, mint (£10.00). Dulce de leche ice cream, brownie crumble (£3.50). The aromatic crispness of Domaine de Menard Cuvee Marine Sauvignon 2023 (£30.00) with notes of tropical fruit is the perfect accompaniment to the flavour and texture of the savoury and sweet dishes.

Seasoned restaurateurs Gerard McFarlane and Kyle Stewart opened in Yugo in 2019 and it has proved to be popular ever since. The restaurant was, “Born out of an idea with Far Eastern roots and a modern aesthetic. At Yugo we bring you a selection of modern creative and traditional Asian styles of cooking with a Belfast Bushidō attitude.” There’s a lot to unpack in the Japanese term Bushidō. It’s a Samurai moral code that embraces virtues including benevolence, courage, honour, justice, loyalty and politeness.

The restaurant is laid out in two areas flanking an entrance lobby: the main dining room (with a kitchen to the rear) and a smaller dining room and bar. A dark moody atmosphere is heightened by lots of black surfaces – especially atmospheric on a rainy Saturday lunchtime. Vintage slides of the Far East are projected onto one of the internal walls. Yugo has a great vibe and when it comes to top notch nosh of the Asian persuasion there’s no beating round the Bushidō.

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers People

Fleet Street Quarter + Lady Lucy French OBE + Oskar Zięta + Whispers

Wielka Sztuka

“Good morning. Dzień dobry. Deputy Ambassador, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen,” welcomes Lady Lucy French OBE, looking very on brand in a salmon pink and blush orange outfit in New Ludgate. She is CEO of the Fleet Street Quarter. “It is really fantastic to see so many people here in the Fleet Street Quarter for a very special moment: the unveiling of Whispers which is a collaboration to mark the UK Polish Season and to launch the London Festival of Architecture. This project has been a real coalition of the willing, of people coming together.” The Polish Cultural Institute sits right at the heart of the Fleet Street Quarter on Bouverie Street.

Lady Lucy continues, “This has been such a privilege to get to know you all! The UK Polish Season is very much a celebration of our two countries’ enduring collaboration highlighting cultural dialogue and opportunity. And the art of the possible! The Festival theme of Voices and Polish artist Oskar Zięta’s Whispers echo the ethos of this season: cultural dialogue, discussion, debate. As Dr Johnson, our esteemed former resident and father of the UK dictionary once said, ‘You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.’ I would suggest that perhaps we need more whispers around the world right now. So it is a wonderful thing to have Whispers in this part of London!”

Fleet Street Quarter is a Business Improvement District that represents the voice of business across 43 hectares of the western side of the City of London. Established three years ago, it has four strategic aims: putting Fleet Street Quarter firmly on the map; being clean and green; promoting safety and security; and creating connected communities. Lady Lucy relates that when she visited Oskar and his wife Agata Świderska-Zięta in Wroclaw: “I was just blown away by the extraordinary magic they create in their studio! It’s a compound of science, technology and art.”

She concludes, “This technology will change and is changing the world. And you are shortly going to witness a little bit of modern alchemy. I cannot think of a more fitting location for this installation. We are in the shadow of the great St Paul’s Cathedral, a wonderful monument by Sir Christopher Wren. And indeed like Sir Christopher Wren, Oskar is very much an expert in science and engineering and art. So Oskar you have a lot in common with Sir Christopher Wren and it’s such a pleasure to have you here today.”

But first there’s breakfast in New Ludgate, a reinvented urban block designed by Fletcher Priest and Sauerbruch Hutton formed of two office buildings separated by a passageway named Belle Sauvage after a 15th century coaching inn that once operated nearby. A tradition of six centuries of good hospitality continues with Purpose Catering’s buffet. Scottish smoked salmon blinis; Provençale cake with mozzarella, sundried tomato and basil; and orange and olive oil cake all maintain the brand colourway of salmon pink and blush orange.

Oskar ushers everyone outside New Ludgate for the street performance to begin. Dignitaries from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Republic of Poland join Lady Lucy and Oskar on the pavement to pump up a piece of flat steel using Zięta Studio’s pioneering FiDU metal inflation technology. Minutes later – and much to the fascination of passing commuters – a two metre long boxy steel sculpture is added to the two cylindrical forms already erected on the pavement. The quiet collection is complete.

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers People Town Houses

Micky Damm + Studio Baukunst Düsseldorf

Rethinking Urban Space Through Architecture and Art: Innovation, Preservation and Sustainability in Modern Design

“Coming from the Art Academy we want to have a little bit of art always incorporated into every project. It’s always different: it can be something typical like art integrated into the building or meanwhile uses such as exhibitions before we start to build,” says Micky Damm who founded the architectural practice Studio Baukunst with fellow alumnus Philipp Bilke and their former professor, Karl-Heinz Petzinka. They now have 15 employees. “I studied architecture and fine art – sculpture at Kunstakademie.”

Their studio on Oberbilker Allee in Düsseldorf is a case in point. The bronze wheat sheaf entrance door handle sculpted by Joscha Bender provides a clue to the site’s origins and the practice’s ethos. “This used to be a farm a few hundred years ago called Leeschenhof. ‘Doff’ is village and ‘hof’ is farm.” He jests, “That’s all the German you need!” The two storey 1950s villa was refaced in natural stone. An attached single storey bow cornered building was formerly a DIY store.

Micky explains, “I started out as a graffiti artist in my teens. It was a good connection looking with my eyes on the city for spots to spray. I am still reading the city but instead of providing text somewhere I now build houses. Since we launched Studio Baukunst in 2018 it is about building a big dream. The funny thing is there are parts of north Düsseldorf where there is no graffiti at all. Outsiders would come in and go oh this is a good area. But it’s a boring area! No one has been there. So you often have graffiti as an indicator that something is going on. There is graffiti in Bilk, this area where our studio is located.” Graffiti was written on the fascia of the DIY store when it closed down. It translates as, “We don’t want to have gentrification here.” Studio Baukunst kept the graffiti. The parking bays to the rear are going to be removed and replaced with a pocket park. Striking green tiles are currently being wrapped round the ground floor exterior of the apartment building completing this urban block.

It’s hard not to talk about Bauhaus in a German architecture studio. Micky argues, “Bauhaus is influential in terms of straight and clear architecture and having big ideas in small spaces. So it’s all about the greatness of architecture – the decisions you have over everything. You always have to keep in mind what you are working on and not lose your way. The built Bauhaus projects are so great in all sorts of different dimensions: footprint, floorplans, materials. Everything follows one idea and this has been a huge influence on our way of thinking.”

But he thinks there’s a downside: “Right now I have problems with Bauhaus today because too many people use it as an excuse to build boring things. Money is no excuse. That was the nice thing about Bauhaus: you have great architecture in economic spaces. Today when people have the excuse we need more money to make something better I am like no! Lack of money is not a reason to build something that is not good. it just sets the parameters you are working with.”

Take his latest office scheme in the city: “When we design workspace we want to make it more interesting to attract the young people back into the office. So we create spaces that are so unusual that you would never have them at home in your apartment. We want it to be a benefit for employees to be in these special spaces. We have placed a tower of balconies linked by gangways to the front of an existing 1950s building. Every 500 square metres of internal office space has a 50 square metres balcony. We want to have office space outside too. So it is like you can talk on the open deck of your boat! We want to get away from the same boring spaces.”

This innovative approach flows from outside spaces through external walls to internal spaces. Micky says, “So for example here inside our studio we had the problem that there wasn’t enough concrete over the steel. We didn’t have the required 90 minute fire protection so we had to spray three centimetres of concrete onto everything. But instead of hiding the sprayed concrete we’re keeping it exposed. Ordinarily everything is completely different and we leave it that way. The rough textures of the walls contrast with the shiny floor. It’s good to get this together. In our projects every colour is usually the result of the material. Although there is a typical industrial green and a fire protection red so we make an exception and don’t count them as colours!”

Sustainability is such an overused word but like everything, Micky has his own original take on it. “What do we have to do so that things last very long? When we talk about sustainability it’s not really about how much insulation we put into the walls. It’s about how we develop the architecture as a whole so that it remains for a very long time because it has good spaces. We’re not so much about developing new forms. There are other practices doing that. We’re about cutting things out and making new collages together. Just as a DJ starts cutting out music and arranging new songs by putting them together that’s how we think about architecture.”

Are there any modern practices he admires? “Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei known as LRO in Stuttgart. What I like about them is that they have different projects of different sizes and they have different answers to the site specific questions. But you can always see their handwriting on everything. So they are following a bigger idea of architecture. Then there are other big architects you can go to and ask for a Bauhaus house, a classical house, any style of house. If you do everything what is your own idea of architecture? So I do like the architects that have their own idea of practice and are not just doing development for others.”

Micky’s tour of his studio ends on a high in the new glasshouse on top of the villa building. “There are so many lines that are happening. The staircase or ‘water tower’ with the round form doesn’t care about all the structure lines of the house. It’s just here. Every rectangle aligns in this glasshouse but the round water tower is just there. You walk up the stairs through the dark then you open the door and you have the light of the glasshouse. And that’s the idea of architecture, experiencing how spaces can change. It’s about the space beyond the floorplan too.”

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Art Design Fashion Luxury People

Hiroyuki Murase + Suzusan

Looks At Us Now

We’re on an exploratory journey led by top German journalist, stylist and trendsetter Ilona Marx. The city is our oyster on a spring Saturday. In an early 20th century former bakery in Ronsdorfer Strasse amidst music recording studios is the most discreet atelier imaginable. Low key, high fashion. We’re here to meet Hiroyuki Murase, the inspiring CEO and Creative Director of Suzusan. His fashion and interior pieces are for sale in 125 stockists worldwide from Ireland to Israel and Lithuania to Lebanon. He is bringing a new elegance to storied lineage.

“I found this building space five years ago,” Hiroyuki begins. “My office and workshop are here too. I studied fine art when I was 20 at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham Surrey actually! Tuition fees are so high in the UK a friend of mine in Germany told me that studying here is for free. So I researched the art scene in Germany and came to Düsseldorf’s well known Kunstakademie. I didn’t study fashion or textiles: I still studied fine art.”

We’re intrigued how his business came about. “Well, my family has been doing this dyeing technique for 100 years in Japan. It’s a very traditional handicraft called Shibori and where I am from – a village called Arimatsu between Tokyo and Kyoto – is well known for this. The Shibori technique is over 400 years old and was used mainly for making kimonos. Every family in our village was once involved in this industry. I am the fifth generation now practising Shibori. Initially, I didn’t want to do what my family does so I escaped. After spending some years in Europe, I recognised actually this is beautiful.”

Hiroyuki continues his story, “Dyeing was dying! There were no young generations making it. There once were more than 10,000 Japanese artisans but when I was studying my father was one of the youngest and he was over 60. In Japan when you talk about Shibori people think of their grandmother’s kimono. It’s like talking about the past or old things. But a show in Europe was a turning point for me. My father came to the UK and showed his textiles at a fair he was invited to. He couldn’t speak any English so he called me to support him to I went to the UK.”

Hiroyuki’s female pet tortoise Ken ambles past us across the tiled floor. “People saw these fabrics from my home village and how beautiful they are – I also saw how people reacted to the Shibori. It was all new to them. Then I met Victoria Miro at her huge art gallery near Old Street in London. I met her by chance and showed these textiles to her. And she said well they’re beautiful and she wanted them immediately. Victoria Miro is like the godmother of contemporary art and I studied contemporary art! Eastern handicraft is right now.”

He started his own brand in a student flat in Düsseldorf in 2008. And the rest is history. And the present. And the future. Young people are now working for Suzusan in the artisanal studios of Arimatsu, making exclusive much sought after clothing with individual contemporary designs. It takes three to four days to make one garment and one to two months to make a kimono. Silk and cotton are traditional Shibori materials but Hiroyuki also uses luxury materials like cashmere. He sits down on the floor next to Ken and gives us a demonstration of the tying and sewing methods which are the initial stages of the process before dyeing takes place. Outside, the rose clad terrace is gaining colour to the day.

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Architecture Art Design People

Klaus Rosskothen + Pretty Portal Gallery Düsseldorf

See How They Do It

“Pretty Portal is celebrating its 18th birthday!” greets Klaus Rosskothen. His gallery in Düsseldorf specialising in urban contemporary art has a Europewide following. “I represent about 10 core artists. I like experimental artists such as Alexis ‘Bust’ Stephens who comes from the banlieues of Paris. He combines dancing and painting in his artistic style. Bust started his artistic journey in urban culture in Parisian street art and the graffiti scene.” This artist’s brush strokes vividly express movement and rhythm through the medium of paint.

“My father took me to about 10 museum shows a year,” Klaus recalls. “I was a graffiti writer and artist in the 80s. I then took an apprenticeship as a photographer and worked in 3D animation. I later worked in marketing but I was always very much into art. I started collecting and buying art in 2000 and opened an early online shop. I then opened Pretty Portal on Brunnenstrasse in Bilk which is an area with nice independent shops and cafés.”

He shares, “The underpass concept at the northern end of Brunnenstrasse running under the S Bahn railway line is of an open air public museum. It was five years in the making from concept to railway company negotiations to planning to funding.” Paintings, drawings and mixed media installations by 10 artists transform this most urban of spaces. ARDIF, Demon, Roman Klonek, LET (Les Enfants Terribles), Theo Lopez, Top Notch, Oliver ‘Magic’ Raeke, SKIO, Alexis ‘Bust’ Stephens and Marc Woehr created art from abstract to figurative.

LET’s artwork on the corner of this outdoor gallery, spells out: “This is your life. Do what you love and do it often. If you don’t like something change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. If you don’t have enough time stop watching TV. If you lookin’ for the love of your life, stop. They will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love. Stop over analysing. All emotions are beautiful. When you appreciate life is simple, open your mind, arms and heart to new things and people. We are united in our differences. Travel often, getting lost will help you find yourself. Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them. So go out and start creating live your dream and passion. Life is short.”

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Art People

Kaoli Mashio + Düsseldorf

Arresting Infinity

“It’s difficult to say this in words but the concept is coming from all the events happening in this world,” says Kaoli Mashio. “And I don’t want to explain about my work but it could be that I have packed together this land – this land, this land, this land – using stones from different places and it’s a limited extent you are looking at. The strips along the sides of the pieces are so important, defining where you are looking. Without them, there is too much of infinity. I call this concept Panorama. I try to do this without explaining what it is using these materials and paints.”

The critically acclaimed 49 year old artist was a student of Peter Doig at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where she graduated with a Masters in Fine Art in 2011. Originally from Gunma Prefecture in Japan, she moved to Europe in 2004 to pursue a career as an artist. Kunstakademie’s alumni include Joseph Beuys, Andreas Gursky and Gerhard Richter. Peter – whose painting White Canoe broke the record for a living artist’s work when it sold at auction in 1996 for £7.3 million – describes her work as “delicate and beautiful”. He invited Kaoli to exhibit with him last September at the Annely Juda Fine Art Gallery in London.

“I just hung this piece five minutes ago,” she says, standing in front of it. “When you face the work you see yourself – you are part of it. If you see the world you have to see yourself. The mirror in the middle of this piece is a metaphor for what are you? So you are looking at this like it is a small panorama. The landscape metaphor in the pieces on this wall is that you are looking at a limited place with a limited view. I need to continue these.” Kaoli speaks thoughtfully and articulately yet in the end she wishes her art to speak for itself. And it does. It speaks volumes. It tells of simplicity, nonduality, knowledge – and genius.

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Düsseldorf +

Completing the Circle

“He made a circle out of a lake; he formed two rivers from the circle; he flooded and destroyed an island, creating a sea,” writes Gore Vidal in The City and the Pillar (1949). “Dorf means ‘village’ and Düssel is a tributary flowing into the Rhine,” announces the well informed tour guide Katja Stuben. The origins of the city may lie in 7th century farming and fishing settlements where the minor River Düssel flows into the major River Rhine. In 1288 the ruling Count Adolf V of Berg granted a town charter to Düsseldorf. “Today there are around 700,000 people living in Düsseldorf but it still resembles a village. It is a friendly local community with all the benefits of a city.”

“Düsseldorf mainly developed on the east side of the Rhine,” Katja explains. “Only about 10 percent of it is on the west side in Oberkassel, Niederkassel, Lörick and Heerdt. During World War II much of the city was damaged or destroyed but the Art Deco residential buildings in Oberkassel were relatively unscathed. These are now some of the best properties in the city overlooking the riverside Rheinwiesen Meadows.” There is a surprisingly large restored and rebuilt Old Town known as Altstadt. “The cobblestoned square of Burgplatz connects the banks of the Rhine to Altstadt. In the middle of Burgplatz is Schlossturm, the remaining medieval tower of the ducal palace.”

Two of the oldest and grandest buildings in Altstadt are the Catholic Churches of St Lambertus and St Andreas. Founded in 1288, St Lambertus overlooks a courtyard behind Burgplatz. Its wonky spire, one of the many idiosyncratic glories of the city’s exhilarating skyline, is the result of an 1815 reconstruction which was too heavy making the roof tiles gradually twist. In contrast to the red brick walls of St Lambertus, the exterior of St Andreas is painted lemon yellow and pepper grey. This Baroque ecclesiastical edifice founded in 1622 stands further to the east of Burgplatz. HeimWerk is the best brasserie in Altstadt to sample schnitzel. The vegetarian option is vegetable and potato rösti in a marinade of horseradish and mustard topped by carrot flakes.

“Japanese people settled in Düsseldorf in the middle of the 20th century,” records Katja. “They came to establish businesses in the steel industry. The population of this city is now around one percent Japanese. Little Tokyo is the Japanese business district. The Michelin starred Nagaya is one of the best Japanese restaurants in Europe. There are still traditional Eastern travel agents in Little Tokyo.” Heading westwards geographically and culturally, Königsallee is devoted to luxury fashion houses and hotels. The glitzy five star Steigenberger Park Hotel overlooks this verdant boulevard. Its retail concessions include Dolce Gabbana, Givenchy, Stefano Ricci, Catherine Sauvage and Wellendorff. Everyone and everything in this postcode is preened to perfection, even the posing pondside ducks.

“Let’s go up the 240 metre high Rheinturm – the Rhine Tower!” suggests Katja heading back to the river. “The penultimate floor viewing gallery of the tower rotates a full circle once an hour like it’s on rollerblades.” Slanting windows frame an eagle eye’s view of the Landtag North Rhine-Westphalia Parliament building completed in 1988 to the design of Eller Maier Walter. Its floorplate of overlapping and concentric circles draws on an aspiration for openness and transparency in politics. A decade younger is Frank Gehry’s RheinHafen Arts and Media Centre on Am HandelsHafen in his “where’s my T square gone” trademark idiom. Each of the three curvilinear concrete volumes is individually finished. The northernmost block is white painted render. The southernmost, red brick. The middle block is coated in stainless steel. Using identical rectangular windows set in deep surrounds (except for the ground floor windows which are similar but taller) demonstrates the architect’s functionality of fenestration amidst whimsy of form. Later, the moon will rest on this tricoloured trio.

She points out, “Look down again and beyond RheinHafen is MedienHafen, the Media Harbour which was the old riverside industrial area. It mostly accommodates media, communications, IT and fashion companies now. Many of the big international architects have designed buildings there: Will Alsop, David Chipperfield, Steven Holl, Helmut Jahn,  Renzo Piano. Ok, let’s go shopping now. Schadow Arkaden on Schadowstrasse is one of the large shopping centres in Düsseldorf.” The nearest subway station is a work of art. A screen over the line records anonymised images of passengers entering the building with a few minutes delay, deriving geometries – many circular – from their movements. Called Turnstile, this installation was designed by local artist Ursula Damm.

Borrowing the words of Gore Vidal “On the warmest and greenest afternoon of the spring” Carlsplatz is where everyone aesthetically pleasing is hanging out for food and wine. It’s a downtown upmarket market. “Three guys – Philipp Kutsch, Björn Schwethelm and Nico von der Ohe – started Concept Riesling in Carlsplatz in 2017. They source from young to vintage wineries. There are 1,500 bottles to choose from priced right up to €7,000,” Katja confirms. Prost! Sláinte! Cartwheeling is the urban sport of Düsseldorf. Happiness is the city’s default disposition. Next to Concept Reisling is a potato stall; many varieties have girls’ names. Adretta, Gunda, Laura, Marabel, Rose, Theresa and Violet all vie for attention.

“Twilight and the day ended,” prompts Gore Vidal. There’s so much promise and pleasure in the air. Destination: The Paradise Now on Hammerstrasse. Co owner Garciano Manzambi shares, “I wanted to bring the holiday vibe of Mykonos to my hometown. We can accommodate 800 people who come early and stay late. Come with me and check out the nightclub.” But first there is caramel and truffle pasta to enjoy on the vast terrace. And bread. “This butter is heated and whipped to give the taste of nut and truffle,” explains the friendly waitress. Everyone is friendly in Düsseldorf. “Your wine is from the Pfalz, one of the famous regions of German vineyard production.” Sorbet is Stilllebenmalerei. The Paradise Now is open till 3am on weekends. The hot DJ is already mixing cool tunes. Everyone here is genetically blessed and materially privileged. Dining, drinking and dancing in the same venue till dawn or at least the wee small hours will unfold as a theme of this city. Fast forward 24 hours and cruising up the Rhine on the KD (Köln-Düsseldorfer) is what it’s all about. Good food, good company, good music and thank goodness two discos to shape those midnight grooves.

On another day, leading journalist and trend consultant Ilona Marx cuts a dash as she shares her creative passions under the constant blue velvet sky which is crisscrossed by white streaks, a reminder that the airport lies in the city itself. Five years ago, goldsmith and jewellery designer Lisa Scherebnenko took over as Director of Orfèvre. The gallery and workshop is on the prestigious Bastionstrasse. She relates, “I use classy materials for jewellery: silver, gold, platinum but also tantalum which is a very special one. Do you know about it? Tantalum is a super nice material and not a lot of jewellers use it because it’s very hard to work with. But it’s very beautiful and really lovely on every skin.” Very fine jewellery has been made in Orfèvre since it opened in 1969. Her Rope Collection uses intertwined circular forms. Further down Bastionstrasse is Constanze Muhle’s eponymous atelier. “This is a hidden gem with collections from the likes of Nasco, Neni and Bruno Marnetti inside,” Ilona observes. “Constanze is incredibly well informed.”

Ilona states, “Ruby Luna is one of our trendiest hotels. The name comes from the popularity of the moon landing in the mid 20th century. This building started life as a Commerzbank drive through in the 1960s. It was designed by architect Paul Schneider-Esleben. You can still see the control panel of the bank which is now the breakfast bar of the hotel! Come on up to the rooftop terrace for a view of the city and the Rhine.” Upstream is Kunstpalast which celebrates art history. Mid 20th century Arno Breker figurative sculptures line the lawn. Midtown is K20, another museum, known for its modernist art such as Andy Warhol’s 1962 silkscreen ink and pencil on linen A Woman’s Suicide.

Lunch of porcini mushroom ravioli is on the stylish terrace of Schillings overlooking Hofgarten. This restaurant is on the ground floor of Schauspielhaus. The theatre with its white ribbed concrete exterior forms an enigmatic volume resting on pilotis (The City and the Pillars pluralised into physicality?) in front of the partly glazed ground floor. It was built to the design of local architect Bernhard Pfau in 1970 and has an enigmatically timeless quality. The dining room is as monochromatic as the exterior. Previously, Katya had discussed some local cuisine. “Himmel und Erde is a traditional brewery dish. It is mashed apple and potato. The name means literally ‘sky and ground’! Then there is Sauerbraten which is made of hot brown raisin. Adam Bertram Bergrath mustard or ‘ABB’ dates back to 1726. It comes in a refillable ceramic pot. Van Gogh included a pot in one of his paintings.” A circularity of existence.

Cultural hours with creative Düsseldorfers don’t come any better than learning about art and fashion and life with Hiroyuki Murase, Kaoli Mashio and Klaus Rosskothen. CEO and Creative Director of the internationally successful fashion and interiors label Suzusan, Hiroyuki has a studio in a historic former bakery building in Ronsdorferstrasse. He relates, “My family have been doing the dyeing technique called Shibori for 100 years. This traditional craft is usually for making kimonos but I use it in a contemporary way for a range of clothes as well as cushions and other items for the home.” Hiroyuki’s wife Kaoli’s studio is hidden at the end of a wisteria clad mews in the Grafenberger Wald area. Her critically acclaimed paintings and mixed media art are borne of an intense study of simplicity, nonduality and infinity. Across the city, former graffiti artist Klaus established Pretty Portal on Brunnenstrasse in 2007. His influential gallery represents emerging and established urban artists across Europe.

Later, architect Micky Damm of Studio Baukunst in the Bilk quarter will complete the circle. “We always try to develop circles. We want a client to have a bigger benefit than he would usually expect. And at the end of every project we want everyone to look with their eyes and say we would like to do another project. So that’s it. Those are the terms of the circle. We are developing properties for clients but we also support the subculture of artists and musicians. So you need the creatives and clubs to have this special space. And the other ones who pay full rent. This keeps a space alive. If you make these circles work then everyone is happy.” Everyone is happy. This is Düsseldorf turning full circle.

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Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Lavender’s Blue + 1,000 Articles

Upward We Fly

The Tuamgraney born London based novelist Edna O’Brien once remarked, “There’s a very interesting thing about memory and exile. It is only when you leave someone or something that the full power if you like, the performance of it is in you, it’s inside you. So separation brings the emotions and ultimately a book. I think a book is the accumulation of emotions written in a particular, hopefully musical, way. It’s a beautiful feeling actually; it’s like the whole influx of something that is stronger than memory. Of course, it’s memory but you’re back in it, not writing it secondhand. Again, that counts for a certain derangement.”

It all started with Cliveden. In September 2012, we received an invitation to stay in the Berkshire hotel but as hard copy publications back then were disappearing faster than Veuve Cliquot at one of our soirées, we came up with the idea of publishing an article online. And so Lavender’s Blue was born. The name has triple derivation after our home (“Your house is so cinematic!” declares film director Stephan Pierre Mitchell), our location and the song by Marillion. Before long, every PR in London and further afield learned we always turn up, give good party, and even better copy. Although five parties in one day starting with an 11am Champagne reception for New York thinker John Mack in the Rosewood Hotel was pushing it even by our standards. Actually, it all really began in April 1995 with a column House of the Month in Ulster Architect magazine, edited and published by the bold and brave and brilliant Anne Davey Orr. But that’s a whole other story.

While most events are one-offs, from a vanishing crystal coach at Ascot to a vanishing guest on the Orient Express, others would become annual events. If the preview of Masterpiece (in Royal Hospital Chelsea grounds) was an early summer hit each year, the Boutique Hotel Awards (in Merchant Taylor’s Hall) would quickly become a midwinter highlight. Fortunately Masterpiece has been replaced by The Treasure House Fair and WOW!house and we’ve landed ourselves on their preview lists. We’re also proving a hit at the annual International Media Marketplace.

Behind the curtain. That’s our forte. And we don’t just mean peeping round the iron variety (think Gdańsk). We’re not only through the gates: we’re over the threshold. We gain access where others dare not tread. If it’s an Irish country house, we’ll stay with the owners and explore the cellars and attics – preferably when they’re tucked up in their fourposter (Temple House). We’ll pop into the kitchen to see what’s really going on whether in Le Bristol or Comme Chez Soi. We’ll talk to the lady of the manor and a millworker (Sion Mills). Sometimes it takes a village to raise an article: in Castletownshend the fun began over breakfast at The Castle continuing through public houses and private houses up Main Street before ending back in The Castle by dawn.

If “design” is the mauve thread that sews Lavender’s Blue together, “celebration of life” is our way of banishing anything mentally blue. Illuminated by art and architecture, fashion and the Divine, we’re mad for life, channelling that literary derangement. But if it ain’t good, it don’t appear. Simple. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some events are far too private to be published such as an impresario salon recital in one of London’s grandest houses surrounded by more Zoffanys than The National Gallery owns while sampling the owners’ South African wine cellar. Or a party in Corke Lodge, County Wicklow, with more diplomats per square metre than Kensington Palace Gardens being serenaded by the Whiffenpoofs on the folly gladed lawn.

Lavender’s Blue is all about places and people so we rarely do personal. You won’t read how we were catastrophically frogmarched out of The Lanesborough (too much catwalking) or categorically told to pipe down in Launceston Place (too much caterwauling). Or the full story of hijinks with the model Parees which one friend described as sounding like an escapade from an Armistead Maupin short story. Original writing and original photography – and occasionally original drawing (from a two minute sketch of Mountainstown House to a 10 hour floor plan of Derrymore House) – are our creative cornerstones. We never plagiarise except from ourselves: to quote from one of our most read articles, Beaulieu House, “Lavender’s Blue is the brilliant coated edition of universal facts, riveting mankind, bringing nice and pretty events.” We’ll coin the odd phrase too from “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder” to “You can’t be this fabulous and not make a few enemies!”

What’s our literary style? Well we’re not paid up members of Plain English for starters. Lord Wolfe would blanche at such opening gambits as, “There’s nothing standard in The Standard” or “Mary Martin London fashion is more than an antinomic macédoine: it is a semiotic embrace of science and conviction made manifest in materiality, tactility and sartorial disruption”. There are a quarter of a million English words to choose from (compared to a mere 100,000 in French and a meagre 85,000 in Chinese) so why reach for simplicity when you can stretch the lexicon? We don’t like to namedrop but as Daphne Guinness shared with us about her lyrics at a party in Notting Hill, “There are some words I just really like the sound of!” A picture tells 1,000 words and sometimes we’ll deliver 1,000 words and 1,000 pictures. But how can you keep the shutter open when you’re cherishing Chatsworth or roaming round Rochester? We’re not just about obvious glitz and glamour. So we frequent Hôtel Meurice in Paris and Hôtel Meurice in Calais. We’ve explored Georgian Bath and Georgian Dover. Doubling down on clichés is avoided except in derision while downing Chapel Down south of the Kent Downs.

How long does an article take to prepare? Some flow with automatic writing on a commute or in bed or in the bath in almost unconscious reverie. Others take decades. Mourne Park House started with a memorable visit in 1992 (the boathouse collapsed and gracefully slid into the lake mid morning coffee) and continued with return visits up to 2021 (by then the house was badly burnt). Crevenagh House was photographed over two decades in every season from heavy snow to scorching sunshine. We visited Gunnersbury Park four times over a London heatwave to capture it morning, noon, evening, and after supper. We also vacationed at Murlough four times, Irish Sea hopping in search of elusive sunlight. Montevetro and Marlfield both first appeared in Ulster Architect before being resurrected on Lavender’s Blue. Marlfield is the work of genius architect Alfred Cochrane with later lodges by the talented Albert Noonan. And on that note, John O’Connell’s work (Montalto) and tours (Ranger’s House) have added an abundance of sparkle to Lavender’s Blue.

We’re always up for top drawer collaborations: polo in Buenos Aires; the Government in Montenegro; Audi in Istanbul; Boutique Hotels Club in Bruges; Guggenheim in Bilbao; Rare Champagne in Paris. Did we mention Paris? The friendliest city in the world! As long as you’re in the right set, of course. We know our French, spring, red and rings. Oh, and we’re easily dragooned to fashion shows stretching the bailiwick especially when it comes to fashion artist Mary Martin London. Vintage models (Goodwood, Carmen dell’Orefice and Pattie Boyd), modern models (Esther Blakley, Janice Blakley and Katie Ice – all beautiful, all gazelles), royalty (Queen Ronke and Catherine Princess of Wales) and pop star royalty (Heather Small) have all enjoyed Lavender’s Blue exposure. There are even occasional segues into filming (Newzroom Afrika and English Heritage) and the dreaded bashing of ivories (Rabbit).

The current culmination of Lavender’s Blue is an exquisitely printed hardback coffee table book of substance on the Holy Land. The first edition of SABBATH PLUS ONE was an instant sellout at Daunt Books Marylebone. It’s now on the coffee tables of all the best homes – including a certain Clarence House. Oh yes, King Charles III is really enjoying his copy. “Your most thoughtful gesture is greatly appreciated …” So it’s time for the second edition. Same high quality print with a reddish burgundy rather than navy blue hard back hand stitched fabric cover. We’re still gonna vaunt about Daunt. Only the finest. In all the best libraries now, not least earning its stripes at Abbey Leix House and Pitchford Hall. And lobbies: The American Colony Hotel and The Jaffa.

We do love our triple Michelin starred places (L’Ambroisie, Lasarte, Core). Champagne! Foam! Truffle! While most of the restaurants we have visited are still thriving, unknowingly at the time, Lavender’s Blue would become an archive for quite a few. Aquavit, Bank Westminster and Zander Bar, Duddell’s, Farmacy, Galvin at Windows in The Hilton Park Lane, The Gas Station (one of our regular rendezvous with fellow gourmand Becks), Hello Darling, Marcus Wareing’s Tredwell’s, 8 Mount Street, Nuala, Plateau, Rex Whistler at Tate Britain, San Lorenzo, Senkai, Tom Kemble at Bonham’s, and Typing Room all in London have disappeared. So have Scheltema in Brussels, Le Détroit in Calais, The Black Douglas in Deal, The Table in Broadstairs, l’Écrivain in Dublin, Cristal Room Baccarat in Paris, and Forage and Folk in Omagh.

Still, nothing tastes as good as skinny fries. It’s survival of the fattest! Impressive as it was, Embassy Gardens Marketing Suite was never built to last. Erarta Art Gallery, Fu Manchu nightclub (the real Annabel’s!) and The Green and Found gift shop are lost in the mists of time. We’d barely photographed Quinlan Terry’s 35 year old junior common room bungalow at Downing College before the wrecker’s ball entered the site. We’re already missing our perfumer neighbour Sniff.

Even sadder, we have become the repository for final curtain interviews. Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors magazine and Anna Wintour’s first boss, the 9th Marquess of Waterford and the musician Diana Rogers entertained us – and hopefully you – with their end of life witticisms. David George, a reader of our Diana in Savannah article wrote, “I was married to her for 10 years and we were together for more than two decades. When you look in the sky she is the brightest star that you will ever see! I love you sweet middle class princess! Rest in peace, all my love, David.” We featured artist Trevor Newton’s final solo show and fashion designer Thierry Mugler taking his au revoir bow at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris. Now historic photographs of model Misty Bailey appeared on Lavender’s Blue. Lindy Guinness, the last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, shared thoughts at one of her last townhouse parties full of people one should know like the international tastemaker Charles Plante. Beresford Neill reminisced on early 20th century Tyrella. And of course, two memorial pieces to the much missed Dorinda, Lady Dunleath. The last book launch of Dame Rosalind Savill, the inspirational scholar of European decorative arts and visionary museum director of the Wallace Collection, is another moving memory now frozen in time.

Readers’ comments are always of interest. Standout messages include a painting request to Ballyfin; advice on the best photographic viewing point at Dungiven Castle; revealing a shared love of Mary Delany or the Mitfords; a discussion of the meaning of Rue Monsieur; Samarès Manor relatives trying to contact each other during a Jersey storm; and an unreported baby drowning in a mansion swimming pool in Sandwich Bay. Mount Congreve attracted interesting comments including from James Sweeney who wrote, “I worked in Mount Congreve Estate for many years as a Private Chef to the Congreves. It was a joy and a pleasure and has given me cherished memories. Mr Congreve was an amazing man and I owe him a great deal for his wisdom that he kindly let me benefit from.”

Ewelina from Beauty on the Cliff poetically scribed, “Waterford is my home since 17 years and Mount Congreve was always my soft point. The moment when you enter the place is simply magical. I’ve been inside the house recently, just before yesterday. I was inside of the Blue Wedgwood Room … well … only the pale blue walls and the beautiful but sadly empty china cabinets reminded me about past grandeur of this place. It’s really really heartbreaking to see the empty rooms, stripped from everything … even the curtains … the books all over the floor in the library … totally without the respect for Mr Congreve. I hope that Waterford City Council didn’t forget that was someone else’s home. As Mr Yeats said, ‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’ Thank you so much for your review. Kindest regards from Waterford.” Sara Stainsby messaged, “Really interesting essay on Stapleford Park. My great grandparents worked there, my grandmother was born there and was married in the church. In the 70s I visited my great grandparents when they lived in a flat above the stables …” Birthday wishes (Portrait) and restoration concerns (Barden Towers) are always welcome. Even more welcome was a Champers accompanied poem hand delivered to the state dining room (Hartwell House).

There are direct messages too: “I came across your Lavender’s Blue series starting from Auchinleck then Crevenagh House and Tullan Strand. I can see from your McClelland connection that you have an interest in Northern Ireland including Donegal … I found that your articles on architecture address the most erudite, meticulous and expansive aspects of the subject so perhaps the work of James Taylor in late Georgian times will fall beneath the range of your interest in the style and proportions of symmetrical Palladian buildings.” We jumped straight in a car to Islington. Likewise when tipped off about Stockwell Park. A reader enjoyed our “wonderful commentary on various aspects of Ballyshannon … tis wonderful to share your thoughts about my hometown”. We’ll accept high praise from Ireland’s greatest host: “I just love your articles striking notes of deepest erudizione to soprano and coloratura gossip! I’m so glad you were the catalyst to my party and I can’t believe it went so well.”

Amazing Grace Point inspired a declaration of faith: “Lough Swilly and Fort Dunree is one of the most wonderful places in Ireland to visit, and especially to look out across the waters where so many great ships have sailed. But most of all – to ponder the words of Amazing Grace written there by John Newton. His miraculous conversion credited to his mother’s prayers. She never gave up, like my mother, who never gave up but prayed me into the Kingdom.” Messages come from above and down under: “I hope you don’t mind me emailing you but I happened to walk into a beautiful graveyard today in Picton, Australia, and happened to come across this one particular headstone. I was instantly intrigued as my grandparents were from Donegal in Ireland and I wanted to see if this was close? Anyway I just read about Mountjoy Square and when the area become established. I’m not sure but working out the dates I think this couple might have been some of the original inhabitants? I saw an article that you wrote and just wanted to share this with you – you may or may not appreciate it but I wanted to bring this couple home!” They’ve come home.

Artist and art restorer Denise Cook crosses the rare divide from comment provider to content provider sharing her expanse of knowledge from Pink Magnolias to the Rector of Stiffkey. So does Dr Roderick O’Donnell, world authority on all matters Pugin. Another reader turned writer, the ever erudite historian and patron of the arts Nicholas Sheaff, brought Gosford Castle completely (back) to life. “There is really too much to say,” to parrot Henry James in The Portrait of a Lady, 1881. Haud muto factum.

As Reverend Prebendary Andy Rider once quipped, “You do get around.” Amsterdam to Zürich, Brussels to Verona, Channel Island hopping, nowhere is safe from the Lavender’s Blue sagacity filled patrician treatment. As for our favourite place, that’s simple: Bunbeg Beach, especially at 10.30pm on a sun drenched midsummer night. Chronicling our times, we produce the material – and sometimes we are the material. But only when shot by the likes of top cinematographer Mina Hanbury-Tennyson-Choi and shoot the shoot supremo Simon Dutson. Striking a striking pose. Fading grandeur (the interior not the model).

“The whole earth is filled with awe at Your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, You call forth songs of joy,” Psalm 65. Lavender’s Blue is between the bookends of everything that was and is to come. It’s about dealing with things as they are, not as they should be. We’re all about orchestrating a fresh approach, synthesising Baroque stridency with Palladian refinement. Our oeuvre is a sumptuous sequence of artistic compositions. On the frontline, turning to face the light. Mary Oliver always gets it right: Instructions for Living a Life, 2010, “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Thank you to all our readers. Thank you Council Bluffs. In the short now, to pluralise the words of the French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin, “We’d do it all again.”

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Architecture Art Hotels People

Patricia Cantlon + Cullintra House The Rower Kilkenny

The Circle Turns

Nobody encapsulates nature better than the late American poet Mary Oliver. And nobody embodies country living more than the Irish châtelaine Patricia Cantlon. “My house is in the most beautiful part of Ireland,” states Patricia with good reason. Her mother opened their 300 year old home to paying guests last century and Patricia has made hospitality her own life’s work. Mary Oliver, Wild Geese (1986), “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.”

There are multiple places in Ireland called Ballyduff, Edenderry, Kells, Monkstown and Stradbally but only one named The Rower. Patricia’s home, Cullintra House, is a few country kilometres outside the village at the foot of Mount Brandon. In spring, daffodils line the driveway which gently rises towards the house and rear outbuildings. First impressions of Cullintra conjure up Charles Baudelaire’s The Beacons (1857) as translated by John Tidball (2014), “Shaded by verdant pines in forests evergreen.”

A gated wall in front of the façade creates a garden within a garden. Ivy blurs architecture and nature. The three bay two storey with high attic pitched roof house is grander than a farmhouse yet more modest than a country house. Large rooms; low ceilings. A small one and a half storey wing is attached to the end gable. The site continues to rise beyond the façade so that the back of the house is lower, being wedged into the hill.

A drawing room and dining room flank the central staircase hall. The kitchen is in the wing off the dining room. Upstairs, the Oak Leaf Room is over the drawing room and the Poppy Suite (three interconnecting bedrooms) is over the dining room and kitchen. On the attic floor, the Lilac Room is above the Oak Leaf Room and the Bluebell Room and Hydrangea Room are above the Poppy Suite. There’s capacity for 14 guests. Patricia converted the outbuildings into further accommodation and an artist’s studio. Her paintings of local scenery, many of Cullintra Woods, decorate the interiors. A painting of a relative’s residence, Altamont House in County Cavan, hangs in the Oak Leaf Room.

She designed the outbuildings conversions, inserting Postmodern circular windows in the stone and corrugated iron elevations. A keen eye for design is also apparent in the interior design. In the drawing room, Patricia has hung four of her own large painted panels of forest scenes on two of the walls which together with a window and a French door on the other two walls blurs interior design and nature. Mary Oliver, Evidence 1, 2009, “Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function – to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.”

“Cullintra House would have been the agent’s house on Lady Annaly’s estate Gowran Castle,” the great conteuse explains. “That’s the huge big house where she lived. I called the kitten Annaly after Lady Annaly. My three cats come with me for a mile of a walk every day. One day the plumber was out and my phone rang and the person on the end of the line said they were doing a programme on cats for Japanese television. And I said, ‘Well the young lady is not here at the moment!’ That was Isabella my cat – she was out hunting. ‘You can rearrange to talk to us.’ So they came over in 40 minutes. I said to the plumber you better go home now and come back another day to do the work. The Japanese television crew interviewed Isabella and my other cat Charlie too.”

Patricia’s talents also stretch to cooking and baking. Breakfast is scrambled egg (beautifully presented of course), scones and her famous wheaten bread accompanied by butter with a sprig of mint. She relates, “Last night I did mashed potato with peas and venison with ruby port and crème de cassis which was lovely. Another main course I like to cook on my Aga is pork chops with orange sauce and Dauphinoise potatoes.” She makes her own clothes, always wearing a full length evening dress to dinner.

Patricia leaves a handwritten note of instructions beside the 18th century front door on how to access Brandon Cairn for a sunrise climb. Beyond the farmyard with its converted outbuildings, the driveway becomes a laneway turning and twisting up the hill before terminating at a timber viewing bridge. Patricia has land rights over the bracken and gorse carpeted summit which she protects as a nature reserve. She explains, “The cairn is about 3,000 years old and was a burial chamber. You can see six counties from the top of the hill: Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow.” Light streaks across the sky over this ancient vortex. Prehistoric stones are piled heavenward forming a low pyramid. Mary Oliver, Sunrise (1999), “This morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn.”

Patricia reminisces on the now derelict Butlers pub in The Rower: “It was burnt down during the troubled times then newly rebuilt in 1920. Everybody appeared for the pub and the people who didn’t want to spend money would come and sit round the corner. They were all there on the corner on a nice evening. All the fellas would sit there as there was no television. It was just a place where they’d get all the news. It’s not beyond repair. Sure Notre Dame was burnt down and was restored and is reopening this week!” Mary Oliver, Evidence 2 (2009), “Memory: a golden bowl.”

Cullintra is also a few country kilometres from Inistioge, the village made famous as the setting for Maeve Binchy’s 1990 novel Circle of Friends. A late 18th century bridge designed by George Smith – triangular buttresses between 10 arches on one side, Ionic pilasters on the other – spans the River Nore which forms the eastern boundary of the village. “At Inistioge you have to have a timetable because the river is tidal,” says Patricia. “Have you ever heard of the Olympic swimmer Michelle Smith de Bruin? One day I went in at Inistioge and I said Michelle never swam as fast as I did such was the current. I was lucky to get out alive!”

Opposite the former Butlers pub, a sign on the boundary wall of the Board of First Fruits Church of Ireland church in The Rower lists birdlife spotted among the gravestones of the bygone elites. Barn Swallow, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Buzzard, Coal Tit, Dunnock Chick, Flycatcher, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Jay, Lacewing, Pied Wagtail, Red Poll, Redwing, Robin, Sparrow, Sparrow Hawk and Wren. Mary Oliver, Evidence 2 (2009), “And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.”

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Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Cappoquin House + Gardens Cappoquin Waterford

The Best Days  

In The Super Seven Towns and Villages of West Waterford (2024), James Hyde describes the “glittering necklace” of Aglish, Ballyduff, Cappoquin, Lismore, Mount Mellerey, Tallow and Villierstown. “Cappoquin is a friendly business town located where the River Blackwater turns south. For decades it saw boats and paddle steamers plying their trade to the Irish Sea at Youghal, and bringing people upriver for days out and sports matches.” The crown jewel in this pretty village is Cappoquin House.  

The Big House in Ireland is usually hidden away behind high stone walls, locked gates and a wooded demesne. Notable exceptions are Castletown Cox (Piltown, County Kilkenny), Lismore Castle (Lismore, County Waterford, visible despite being set in a 3,240 hectare estate), and Rosemount House (New Ross, County Wexford) which are all distractingly visible from public roads. Cappoquin House firmly fits into the latter category: not many country houses have an address on Main Street. It rises high above the whole town, closer to heaven physically and visually that any of the nearby buildings.  

An Introduction to the Architectural Heritage of County Waterford by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (2010) states, “The late 18th century Cappoquin House (1779), home of the Keane family, was burnt in 1923 but was reconstructed with great care to designs by Richard Orpen (1863 to 1938), brother of the more famous society painter William (1878 to 1931). The by then conservative aesthetic in which Cappoquin was rebuilt underlined the cautious approach to architecture that more or less dominated the century.” 

There are a lot of plants to see for an honesty box €6 entrance fee. Current owner Sir Charles Keane’s mother Lady Olivia Keane revamped the 19th century gardens in the 1950s and then expanded them two decades later. Due to the steep gradient, the town is invisible from the house and garden, and instead the uninterrupted view is across the tidal valley of the River Blackwater as it gains momentum en route to the sea at Youghal. Rambling Rector climbing rose drapes over the verandah; Golden Showers climbing rose wraps round the courtyard.  

“My mother began to develop the grounds more vigorously and she had a great concept of design,” says Sir Charles who lives in the house with his wife Lady Corinne. “She planted well with an instinct for what looks right – and that’s key. The aim, really, is beauty. If you are on a slope you must keep open to the view which means we’re always cutting back.” His ancestor, solicitor John Keane, bought the property 290 years ago. The Keanes are descendants of the O’Cahans of County Londonderry who lost their lands in the Plantation of Ulster. Ah, the nuances of Anglo Irish and British and Irish and West British lineage.  

“The country houses of politicians became a regular target during the Civil War that followed Irish Independence,” Sir Charles relates, “so when my grandfather Sir John Keane was elected to the Senate in the new Irish Free State, he anticipated an attack. With considerable foresight he removed the contents and many of the fixtures, and placed them in storage. It transpired that his premonition was well founded and the house was duly burnt. But by the 1930s he felt sufficiently confident to rebuild with the advice of Richard Orpen. In the ensuing remodelling the façade became the garden front while the north front facing the courtyard became the entrance front.” Before the era of Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach, the Irish Free State Government provided compensation to country house owners who had their properties destroyed in the Civil War. Most chose not to rebuild. The shadowy veil of picnickers in a foreign land would sadly prevail down the generations.  

Cappoquin House and gardens are in fact a 20th century creation or recreation. The real Phoenix Park. There’s a tantalising approach to the house: it appears in long distance views only to vanish above the town; a steep avenue off Main Street leads to the stable block which offers the first glimpse of the house framed by an archway. Names mentioned in connection with the original 1779 house are John Roberts of Waterford or the better known Sardinia born Davis Ducart. John Roberts designed the simply elegant Gaultier Lodge in Woodstown, 73 kilometres east of Cappoquin. But there is more of Cappoquin House to be found in the refined Italianate neoclassicism of Castletown Cox, a Davis Ducart designed country house 226 kilometres north of Cappoquin. Both share a seven bay elevation with three bay breakfront and s scattering of arch headed windows.  

The Keane residence is a two storey building constructed of smooth grey limestone. A flat roof behind a parapet dotted with finials is centred on a circular lantern over the staircase hall. A seven bay south elevation with a three bay breakfront overlooks the Sunken Garden and far below, the Blackwater River. The breakfront of the corresponding north elevation has two first floor bays above a three bay entrance arrangement treated as a two dimensional portico: Doric columns flank the partially glazed front door and pilasters end said arrangement. The north elevation is slightly shorter than the south elevation due to the projections on the east and west elevations. It faces the courtyard and the Upper Pleasure Garden. A verandah is attached to the three bay projection to one side of the six bay west elevation facing the Croquet Lawn. This ivy clad front resembles Mount Stewart in Greyabbey, County Down. A neoclassical conservatory projects from the six bay east front: a lower earlier wing extends from the three bay projection. The east front is plainer than the rest of the exterior with no window surrounds and overlooks the Wing Garden.

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Dromana House + Gateway Cappoquin Waterford

Two Hours in Aragon

Quite the holiday destination, Blackwater River Valley is a dreamscape of country houses and their demesnes. A celebrated 20th century novelist was a frequent guest at one of these heritage delights, Dromana House, where she became well known for her penchant for gossip and awareness of social standing. The editor of the novelist’s later books, Diana Athill of André Deutsch, heaped praise on her in a 2017 recording: “Molly Keane was so remarkable because she was so lovely and charming and so nice. It was very odd she became a writer because she came from a completely Irish gentry background. She always insisted that she started writing purely because she had to make some sort of money to buy dance dresses and go to parties.”

“She had to write under a pseudonym because if young men had known she wrote books they would have thought she was brainy and that was thought to be the most awful thing. Her first nine books were written under that name so that no one would know. You think she can’t just have written them coldly to make money. She must have been enjoying writing because they are so good. Of course her darling first husband died young and quite unexpectedly. She was absolutely broken by that and she had to somehow cope with bringing up her two children along and managing as best she could.”

“The thing about Molly was she was so completely not conceited about her writing and she did in a way know she wrote well but she didn’t think that important. She was very charming – many people who are charming become corrupted by their own charm. You can’t help knowing it if you are a great charmer and so you exploit your charm. I’ve met charming people who are quite chilling to know because in a way it’s automatic with them to turn it on. Molly could turn it on if she wanted to. I’ve seen her to do it if she was wanting to get through an interview or something. But on the whole she was the most charming person I know who didn’t ever exploit it.”

Barbara Grubb née Villier-Stuart’s parents left Dromana House after most of the estate was acquired by the Irish Land Commission in 1957. In their absence, the residing cousin demolished the “new house” as Barbara’s husband Nicholas calls the later wing. “It’s a good view isn’t it?” asks Barbara with some understatement standing on the balcony accessed through French doors in the drawing room of the remaining house. “That’s Lismore over there – you can see the Catholic cathedral and to the right of it the Protestant cathedral. It’s such a good vantage point here.”

“And then you’re looking further to the right at the Knockmealdown Mountains and two of the main Blackwater Valley houses: Tourin House owned by the Jameson family of whiskey fame and then up the hill you’ve got Cappoquin House where the Keane family lives. Sir Charles Keane gave a presentation here last night on his three times great grandfather Lieutenant General John Keane, Lord Keane of Kandahar.”

“So here we are on the Blackwater, probably one of the widest stretches of the river. As you all know it sources in Kerry and goes 12 miles south of here into the bay in Youghal. There’s a four metre tide so it’s quite a serious one. We have salmon rights here which go back to 1215 to King John. Needless to say there are hardly any salmon left so very little fishing is done. In around 1905 there was just short of a quarter of a million salmon caught in the river which is a massive amount of fish! Now the annual quota is about 2,000. Just shows you what us humans have done.”

“There was supposedly a castle here burnt in 1200. We know nothing of it really. We then know about this towerhouse that was fought over in the 1640 rebellion that left it in a ruinous state. And then after that the family built a Jacobean low house lying east to west. In the 1700s they built on the Georgian block. The garden balustrade is the bow of what was the ballroom. That one room was 22 yards side to side which wasn’t small.”

The “new house” was erected in front of the older building in the 1780s by George Mason-Villiers, 2nd Earl Grandison, and remodelled by Henry Villiers-Stuart, 1st and last Lord Stuart de Decies, to a design by the architect Martin Day in the 1820s. It had a substantial nine bay two storey façade. All 17 windows on this elevation had raised stone surrounds; the eight ground floor window surrounds are surmounted by triangular pediments. The central entrance door (flanked by paired Doric columns and topped by a semicircular fanlight) was set in a larger triangular pedimented surround. Martin Day is mainly known for his severe neoclassical buildings in Counties Waterford and Wexford.

Demolition of the Georgian exposed the 1960s L shaped rear range of the inner courtyard. It was tidied up to achieve a pleasant harled manor house appearance with a cut limestone Gibbsian doorcase. Looks deceive: this is the Jacobean house incorporating the base of the medieval tower. Barbara and Nicholas returned in 1995 and ever since have worked on restoring the house and grounds. “The Georgian building was so vast if it hadn’t been demolished Dromana House would have been sold and would now be a hotel,” warns Barbara. Picturesque ruins of a 1751 banqueting house provide a shoreside folly. Azaleas, camelias, hydrangeas, magnolias and rhododendrons add colour and shape to 12 hectares of woodland gardens.

Barbara is the incredibly dashing 26th generation of the family to occupy the estate over the last eight centuries. Females feature prominently in her genealogy. A painting of her equally glamorous predecessor Lady Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, favoured mistress of Charles II, hangs in the drawing room. Another ancestral portrait is of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. “He had one of the shortest terms as a Prime Minister of Great Britain,” she ruefully remarks, “although that was until Liz Truss came along.” In 1826, the Irish Nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell visited the enlarged Dromana House as a guest of then owner Lord Henry Mount Stuart.

“Dromana House was the inspiration for the house in Molly Keane’s Two Nights in Aragon,” Barbara shares. Published in 1941, this was her ninth novel and the fate that befalls one of its protagonists, Nan O’Neill, is quite simply the most tragicomic in Anglo Irish literature. “Aragon stood high above a tidal river. So high and so near that there was only a narrow kind of garden between house and water … Directly underneath the house and this grove, the river swelled and shrank with the tides.” Sounds familiar? Barbara confirms that Dromana, like Aragon, is haunted. There’s holiday accommodation in one part of the house: a private reciprocal. Molly Keane lived for a while in Belleville, a country house upstream from Dromana closer to Cappoquin.

“Villierstown is named after the major landowning family of Villiers who founded a linen industry here about 1750,” writes James Hyde in The Super Seven Towns and Villages of West Waterford (2024). “Built to exploit flax growing, Villierstown was a perfect spot: broad fields, easy access to river transport and a large population to work as weavers.” This enterprise was established in response to a weather induced famine of 1739: homes were built for linen workers from Belfast and around 60,000 trees were planted. The village is 2.6 kilometres south of Dromana.

Now disconnected from the grounds of Dromana House stands arguably Ireland’s most extraordinary and certainly most charming gateway. “An Irish Georgian Society (US) Grant,” records Stuart Blakley in the Irish Georgian Society Bulletin (2023), “was awarded to the Indian Gateway of Dromana Estate for a conservation report. This archway flanked by lodges was designed by local architect Martin Day in whimsical mood in the early 19th century. Its Hindu Gothic idiom brings a little bit of Brighton Pavilion to County Waterford.” A public road runs through the arch and over the Finisk River bridge behind it adding to its precarious condition. All minarets and ogee arches, this silvery sandstone structure replaced a timber version built to welcome home newlyweds Henry Villiers Stuart and Theresia Pauline Ott. Their honeymoon location? Brighton, of course. Quite the holiday souvenir.

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Blackpool Pleasure Beach + Boulevard Hotel Blackpool Lancashire

From Swerve of Bay to Bend of Shore

CEO of Boulevard Hotel, Amanda Thompson OBE, states, “Blackpool may not be the first place that springs to mind for the luxury traveller and that’s a perception we feel strongly about challenging. We believe Boulevard has addressed a gap in the market to attract luxury and business travellers to the Fylde Coast area where there is a plethora of things to do and see.”

This holiday resort in the northwest of England dates back to the 18th century when visitors started coming to bathe in the sea for medicinal purposes. Its boomtime really began in the Victorian era with the arrival of the railway – there are three stations in the town – and the opening of the Pleasure Beach in 1896 (with its Witching Waves and River Caves). Blackpool continues to evolve and Boulevard Hotel now brings elevated hospitality to the promenade.

The hotel is Amanda’s brainchild. She is also CEO of the adjacent Pleasure Beach which was founded by William Bean, her great grandfather. Allison Pike Architects designed the multi gabled five and two storey building which faces the shoreline to the west and the Pleasure Beach to the east. Use of natural stone on the exterior reflects the built heritage of the historic town. Blackpool is not short of adventurous skylines: further north is the 158 metre high Blackpool Tower (designed by Lancashire architects James Maxwell and Charles Tuke) which opened two years before the Pleasure Beach. Its first guidebook was naturally effusive: “The successful erection of the tower is in itself one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times.”

An 1897 guidebook Blackpool: The Unrivalled Seaside Resort for Health and Leisure claimed the town had 10,000 rooms when the static population was 43,000. The guidebook classified accommodation into three categories. “Hotels, hydros and boarding houses” offering inclusive rates for a room and meals. “Private apartments” for a room with meals cooked by a landlord or landlady using ingredients provided by the guests. “Company houses” for a room or bed in a room with the option to dine in at extra cost or out.

Two of Blackpool’s finest stone buildings are Sacred Heart Catholic Church near North Pier and Holy Trinity Anglican Church next to South Pier. Sacred Heart was built of dark stone in 1854 to the distinguished Decorated Gothic design of Edward Welby Pugin. Just 46 years later a large octagonal lantern with a pyramidal roof over the nave as well as a sanctuary (top lit by a pitched roof of stained glass) were added by architect Peter Paul Pugin, younger brother of Edward. Holy Trinity was built in the last quarter of the 19th century to the design of Richard Knill Freeman. It is constructed of yellow stone with red stone dressings. The church is an accomplished example of the Free Style of Decorated Gothic with a square tower forming a South Shore wayfinder. Both churches still have active congregations.

The names of bed and breakfasts lining the promenade between North and South Piers are a nostalgic throwback to British summers, conjuring up images of ice cream and sandcastles: Blue Waves; The Chimes on the Sea; Crystals on the Prom; Craig-y-Don; The Golden Cheval; Oakwell; On the Beach; 359 Roomz; Royal Ocean; Royal Windsor; Sea Princess; Skye Oceans; St Albans; Sunny Days; and Talk of the Coast.

Amanda’s vision for the interior of Boulevard Hotel is a contemporary take on Art Deco inspired by the 1930s architecture of Blackpool. There are 120 bedrooms including 18 suites. Mid 20th century art by Tom Purvis originally created for the Pleasure Beach is displayed throughout the hotel. Fabrics by Designers Guild, wallcoverings by Andrew Martin and lamps by Chelsom deliver quintessential Britishness. Details are carefully considered: the wavy hotel logo appears everywhere from waiting staff’s ties to tins of mints and stationery. It is the only hotel in the UK to have bath products by Balmain.

“We are the best hotel in the region,” confirms General Manager Klaus Spiekermann. He has worked in high end hotels all his career and recently won Best General Manager at the Luxury Hotel Awards. “Our function suite can accommodate a 240 person gala dinner. There are also three syndicate rooms. We cater for board meetings, conferences and weddings. Ballroom dancing competitions attract visitors from many countries including the US and China.”

Klaus continues, “The first and second floors have family accommodation including some rooms with bunkbeds. The third and fourth floors are adults only. Breakfast for the top storey suites guests is served in the first floor Ocean Club to give that exclusive vibe. Our Head Chef Andrew Derbyshire uses the highest quality produce such as Lanigan’s Seafood and Lancashire Cheese. There’s a 24 hour studio gym and guests have a VIP entrance to the Pleasure Beach. We are a one stop shop for the luxury lifestyle!”

The ground floor Beachside Restaurant lives up to its name with views over the Irish Sea – perfect for watching the candyfloss pink and honeycomb yellow sunsets. A square pillared covered entrance – the traditional porte cochère reinvented – overlooks the Pleasure Beach, revelling in the symbiosis of luxury and amusement. It’s not every top hotel has a rollercoaster roaring past its roofline.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach, just like its host town, is ever growing. A £8.72 million Gyro Swing will be the next addition, opening in 2026. This ride is a giant spinning pendulum swinging 120 degrees and reaching up to 42 metres in the sky. Amanda declares, “We’re thrilled to confirm the addition of the Gyro with work already underway. We’re known for doing things on a large scale so becoming home to the biggest of this type of ride in the UK makes complete sense. It’s dynamic, fast and incredibly high! We’re very excited for the future at Pleasure Beach Resort.”

In the meantime there are plenty of thrills. The Pleasure Beach has 13 shops (buy gifts or confectionary), 26 food and drink outlets (eat burgers and drink Champagne), 27 family rides (jump on a ghost train or enter a mechanical steeple chase), eight attractions (experience over 18s pure fear in Pasaje del Terror) and 11 thrill rides (buckle up for The Big One in all its 1.6 kilometre long 72 metre high 119 kilometres per hour rollercoasting glory). Designed by Ron Toomer of Arrow Dynamics, The Big One was the tallest rollercoaster in the world when it opened in 1994. The 96 year old Sir Hiram Maxim Captive Flying Machine is still the oldest continuous working amusement park ride in Europe. There’s even a Noah’s Ark dating back to the 1930s.

And thrilling architecture. “The Casino, finished in 1939, is the purest example in Blackpool of International Style Modernism,” Allan Brodie and Matthew Whitfield record in Blackpool’s Seaside Heritage (2014). “No corner of the park was untouched as Leonard Thompson gave Joseph Emberton total control of the redesign of the park with new buildings and rides constructed and older features remodelled.”

Joseph Emberton was the only British architect to have a building included in Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson’s groundbreaking 1932 New York exhibition The International Style. Opening one year before the exhibition, his Royal Corinthian Yacht Club in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, made the cut. Joseph’s Casino at the Pleasure Beach is a gigantic three storey white painted concrete drum with a 28 metre high external spiral staircase. This £300,000 building incorporated company offices and a penthouse for the Thompson family. The Casino is coastal Art Deco architecture at its finest. Move over Miami.

“Four generations of the Thompson family,” writes Vanessa Toulmin in Blackpool Pleasure Beach: More Than Just an Amusement Park (2011), “have willingly shared their ideas and experiences with other park owners, including Walt Disney in the 1950s, and have reaped the rewards by this being reciprocated. The Pleasure Beach has always strived to offer its visitors the biggest, the best, the scariest and the most innovative attractions and has brought pleasure to millions.” Early inspiration for the Pleasure Beach came from the 1887 Earls Court London Anglo American Exhibition and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Amanda Thompson OBE concludes, “We opened Boulevard Hotel with the hope of introducing something rather unique to Blackpool: a truly luxurious hotel. Since then, we’ve won numerous awards including being named the current Best Luxury Hotel in Northern Europe for two years running. At Boulevard, luxury is defined by exceptional service and attention to detail. We pride ourselves on meticulously curating our guest experience which is complemented by exquisite accommodation, unexpectedly beautiful coastal vistas and delicious locally sourced gourmet cuisine.”

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Townhouse on the Green Hotel Dublin + Albert Noonan

Bird on the Wire

A note from the Front Office Team is in our nursery floor bedroom, “We would like to welcome you into our humble residence situated in the centre of Dublin. We hope you are going to enjoy your stay with us!” We quibble with the first sentence: it isn’t that humble. We comply with the second sentence: enjoying our stay to the max. Everybody knows St Stephen’s Green is Dublin’s joint best address (sharing that honour with Merrion Square). The south facing side is home to the prestigious Shelbourne Hotel, Kildare Street Club and Stephen’s Green Club. And now Townhouse on the Green, an intimate nine bedroom hotel with two restaurants. It’s an offshoot of The Fitzwilliam Hotel on the east facing side of St Stephen’s Green. There’s also The Fitzwilliam Hotel in Belfast next to the Grand Opera House. That’s not the only northern connection.

Number 22 St Stephen’s Green was built in 1790 by the son of a farmer from Strabane, County Tyrone. Thomas Lighton made his fortune in the East India Company and invested it in (garnet red) bricks and (moonstone grey) granite. He was High Sheriff of County Dublin in 1790 and for the following seven years sat in the Irish House of Commons as MP for Tuam. Thomas represented Carlingford in the Commons from 1798 to 1800. The three bay four storey over basement under attic home he built reflects his wealth and status. It is one of a pair likely designed by the architect David Weir. In 1885, a first floor trellis ironwork balcony was added to the design of McCurdy Mitchell. Rationalised windowpanes with external blind boxes are other rare survivals from this period. The postcard worthy doorcase is full bloom Georgian Dublin: an umbrella spoked fanlight radiates over a crinoline-wide door flanked by leaded margin lights. Number 23, now offices, fully retains its 18th century fenestration.

Elizabeth Bowen wrote the ultimate hotel guide, The Shelbourne, in 1951: “Gulls, in from the river, drift and plane on the air.” They still do in this coastal capital. “Given that Number 22 was constructed as the home for the very wealthy Thomas Lighton, it incorporates many decorative features including an ornately decorated barrel vaulted ceiling over a Portland stone cantilevered staircase,” highlights Albert Noonan, Partner at NoMo Architecture. This prestigious Baggot Street based practice was responsible for the interiors of the upper floors. “Many of the rooms have upscale elegant proportions with high ceilings and neoclassical plasterwork. Luckily a lot of these features have survived.”

He explains, “Quiet luxury is how we describe our approach. We’ve used the best of materials and fabrics layered in subtle tones to create rooms that are havens of tranquillity. Nothing in any bedroom shouts at you craving its 15 seconds of Instagram fame. These rooms are easy on the eye. They are serene and calm: transitional modern furniture seamlessly harmonises with the period building interiors. Each room has a deep pile green wool carpet, oyster coloured linen textured wallpaper and long curtains with golden ochre lining and moss coloured trimmings. The Monarch Chartreuse linen mix curtain fabric with its embroidered bees and butterflies draws inspiration from St Stephen’s Green and adds a touch of femininity to the building.” O’Gorman Joinery made bespoke dark stained bedheads with green granite bedside tabletops.

Each of the nine bedrooms has an ensuite bathroom wrapped in Calcutta Miele marble. A two man shower has curved corners decorated with emerald and bronze glass Sicis mosaics. A large classic white ceramic basin stands on nickel legs. “Given the building’s origins as a residence,” relates Albert, “we wanted to provide a distinctive homely feel of a well off friend’s house rather than a corporate hotel. To reinforce this impression, paintings, prints and objets d’art are curated for every room.” Bedside books on Morocco as well as Ireland in our bedroom are a reminder that no country is just an island.

Thursday night dinner is served in Floritz, the restaurant on the piano nobile. An Asian fusion menu takes its inspiration from Thomas Lighton’s adventures in India and the Far East. Suffolk based architecture and design practice Project Orange came up with the flamboyant interior. “I am going to make a Great Golden Grog for each of you,” announces our sommelier. “It is the most complicated cocktail in Dublin! Add full bodied daiquiri to carrot infused Bacardi, fresh lime juice, cardamom and pimento muscovado syrup, and then some magic!” No cars are required after dinner: Cellar 22 is below Floritz. This cosy wine and food bar was also designed by Project Orange and uses lots of natural earthy materials to reflect its original use as a kitchen. Tonight will be fine.

“Gay days at once ephemeral and immortal. They have a pulse of their own, and a golden mist round them which it is hard to capture in cold words – they should be lived, not written about,” scribes Elizabeth. Her words resonate so strongly with us on this sun saturated Friday after Sexagesima Sunday. We asked for signs, the signs were sent. A robin and her companions follow us on our morning walk passing through Merrion Square. Bird singing at the break of day. Hallelujah. A thousand kisses deep.

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Belvedere Restaurant + Holland House Holland Park London

Sequentia

It’s where Lord Byron lusted after Lady Caroline Lamb, Richard Sheridan wined, Charles Dickens dined, Noël Coward danced, Rosalind Cubitt (Queen Camilla’s mother) came out … before being blown to bits in the Blitz (the place not the people). Holland House and Park really are together an extraordinary survival of the fragments of a country house and estate in London. The remaining three storey wing of the house is now a youth hostel for debs on their uppers and beaus with backpacks. Various public uses fill remnants of the estate buildings. Holland Park Café is perfect for an alfresco breakfast in unseasonal sunshine of egg avocado roll then red velvet lamington.

The centuries old tradition of wining and dining continues at Belvedere. A restaurant since the 1950s, George Bukhov-Weinstein and Ilya Demichev (who own Wild Tavern in Chelsea) have relaunched it with great aplomb. Archer Humphryes’ design concept for the 2020s restoration and rejuvenation of Belvedere was inspired by an unearthed Inigo Jones sketch of the loggia. Architect David Archer explains, “The design creates an authentic interior which celebrates the original brickwork and elegant proportions of the arched arcade while creating atmospheric settings for diners. Fireplaces have been introduced on both levels and there is a two sided bar that wraps around the building’s colonnade. The restaurant becomes a summerhouse from spring onwards while in the winter months it is cosy and romantic.” The architects are no strangers to high end restaurant design. They drew up the dark and mysterious interior of Hakkasan, our favourite Chinese in London.

Tapestries have replaced the Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol artwork previously hung in the interior. Terracotta coloured walls complement the exposed brick while architectural details – especially those arches – are picked out in cream. Later accretions have been removed to let the bare bones of the building shine. Jigsaw windowpanes of intersecting hexagons and rectangles echo the timber herringbone speak. On the ground floor 60 covers are placed around an open kitchen. Upstairs is a private dining room of 20 covers. It’s always been a destination establishment, but under the new ownership, the restaurant is fresher and – to use the architects’ term – more romantic. Belvedere is perfect for a wintry indoors lunch of Apulian burrata, charcoal sweet pepper and Sicilian anchovy; vegan red lentil and coconut gnocchi; and tiramisu coated with hazelnut nibs.

It all began with the well endowed Sir Henry Rich who lived up to his name. Later known as the 1st Earl of Holland, he inherited 200 hectares from his father-in-law and decided to erect stables befitting his status and estate. The existing mansion, named Cope’s Castle after its builder Sir Walter Cope, had been started in 1605 and by 1614 had wings added by architect John Thorpe. Its strong Jacobean presence – bay windows, balustrades, Dutch gables, loggias and towers in red brick and white stone – remained intact (including being Italianised by the 4th Baron Holland) until World War II. The architecture was a stylistic forerunner, albeit a more refined version, of the Norfolk Royal residence of Sandringham House. Sir Henry splashed out £4,000 on new stables which would become a ballroom with a viewing gallery (then eventually Belvedere) and orangery in the Victorian era, joined to the house by a covered walkway. The surviving pieces of built form stretching 180 metres from Belvedere to the youth hostel resemble a stage set, an appropriate backdrop to Opera Holland Park held every summer.

The last private owners of the house and estate, the Ilchester family, sold up to London County Council in 1952. Their name lives on in Ilchester Place, London’s finest neo Georgian address where everyone lives up to Inigo Jones. This part of the estate was developed in 1928 for two and three storey townhouses and villas. An entry level house will set you back £20 million. Such is the price of possession and early enjoyment. Sir Henry Rich would approve. He would also be impressed by our lunch expenditure. Belvedere doesn’t do cheap: the rich eat cake and the not so rich drink the cheapest bottle of white (2022 Sensale Grillo from Sicily: £52). Alas Sir Henry didn’t get a happy ending – as a Royalist he lost his head in 1649.

In 1986, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea took over the remaining undeveloped 22.5 hectares of Holland Park, maintaining and enhancing the culture and horticulture. We enjoy preprandial and postprandial tours through its varied gardens. The remains of the 17th century Wilderness. The Pleasure Grounds designed by William Kent 100 years later. Green Walk planted by designer Charles Hamilton, also 18th century. Lady Holland’s 1805 Dahlia Garden. The 1876 Lime Walk replanted after the Great Storm of 1987. A 20th century arboretum. But it’s the latest addition which blows us away. The Kyoto Garden was a gift from Japan in 1991 to honour the friendship between Japan and Great Britain. In 2012, it was extended by the Fukushima Garden. Strutting among the stone lanterns, peacocks admire their reflection in the water feature. The richness of nature.

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Marble Hill House + Marble Hill Beach + St John’s Church of Ireland Church Ballymore Lower Dunfanaghy Donegal

Paradise

There are stunning houses with stunning views and then there is Marble Hill House overlooking Marble Hill Beach. The Barclay family clearly had taste. A three bay two storey over basement façade, grey as marble and high on a hill, is early 19th century neoclassical perfection. The central first floor tripartite window is in numerical harmony with the shallow triple inset formed by the two Ionic columns on either side of the entrance door hooded by a pair of pilasters with Soaneian recessed rectangular and circular panels supporting an entablature under a pediment. Roundheaded recesses define the ground floor windows flanking the portico. The slant of the portico pediment runs parallel with the hipped roof. Overhanging eaves are supported on paired console brackets. A materials palette of shades of grey is calming: ashlar, cut stone, render, slate.

Marble Hill House has an L shape plan. The longest elevation, all four bays, faces the coach house and outbuildings, enclosing a south facing garden hidden from public view. The substantial mid 18th coach house is almost as large as the house. It’s formal architecture: a two storey symmetrical façade confidently handled. A pair of central double height carriage doors under a fanlight is set in a shallow pedimented breakfront. On either side are three bay portions each with self contained symmetry. Both portions have a central arched carriage access (now fully glazed) and two first floor circular windows like architectural games of noughts and crosses.

Due to the sharp decline of the land, the coach house becomes three storey to the six bay rear elevation. This south front has a French look with its projecting eaves course supporting a hipped roof, arch heads to the upper floor windows (except the middle two) and a metal walkway wrapping round the first floor leading to garden level heading north. A row of carriage doors under fanlights opens off the lower ground floor into a walled courtyard. The grey materials palette continues: coursed stone, render, slate. Built by the Babington family, the distinguished neoclassicism of the coach house suggests the accompanying house (demolished by the Barclays) was of considerable merit.

A late Victorian three bay single storey gatelodge completes the three centuries of built form in this bucolic landscape on one of the most northerly tips of Ireland. It may be symmetrical but the gatelodge has an Arts and Crafts rusticity thanks to cottagey casement windows, a canopied porch supported on timber posts on the south elevation and a Roshine slate roof. The roof and porch canopy rest on sprocketed eaves with exposed rafter ends. Locally quarried Roshine slate is usually seen in vernacular buildings of this era. A bow window protrudes from the west elevation.

In 1987, Doe Historical Committee published A Guide to Creeslough-Dunfanaghy, “In the year 1894 a young barrister from Dublin, Hugh Law, married Charlotte Anne Stuart, daughter of the Rector of Ballymore. Hugh was the son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. He bought Marble Hill House, a stately Georgian mansion that stands in idyllic surroundings overlooking Marble Hill. It was a happy marriage. Hugh, a man of independent means, did not have to practise his profession. Instead, he entered politics as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and was elected MP. Hugh was best known for his hospitality towards artists and men of letters … including William Orpen, Patrick Pearse and William Butler Yeats.” Marble Hill House, coach house and gatelodge are currently being restored and will be available to let for short stays. The band of trees blocking views of the strand have been removed.

It’s reckoned to be the finest Georgian church in Donegal. It certainly has the largest Venetian window in the County. St John’s Church of Ireland Church stands on a hill accessed off a bend in the road between Creeslough and Dunfanaghy nearly opposite the road down to Marble Hill Beach. Dating from 1752, the church is attributed to Michael Priestley of Derry City on stylistic grounds. The raised quoins and heavy rustication of the Gibbsian arch headed window surrounds are similar to the architect’s distinguished Lifford Courthouse built six years earlier. Doe Historical Committee records that the church was built for £300 gifted by the Board of First Fruits.

Grey roughcast rendered walls and a grey cut stone bellcote and a grey slate roof anchor the design in this rocky coastal terrain: Muckish Mountain is the dramatic backdrop. That Venetian window (all 92 panes of it) faces east across Marble Hill Beach towards Sheephaven Bay. A more normally sized Venetian window (with a modest 42 panes) lights the west elevation of the porch. The small vestry with latticed windows was added in around 1853 to the northeast. It was designed by Joseph Welland who was responsible as architect for the Board of First Fruits for several churches in northwest Ulster such as St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Church in Gortin, County Tyrone. Isabella Stewart, wife of the local Anglo Scots Irish landowner Alexander Stewart, demanded a tenants dodging privacy tunnel was burrowed from the church to her nearby residence, Ards House.

Inland Fisheries Ireland promotes 53 places in County Donegal for sea angling. In clockwise order from the south: Mullaghmore Head; Mullaghmore Harbour; Bunduff Strand; Mermaids Cove; Tullan Strand; Creevy Pier; Rossnowlagh Beach; St John’s Point; Black Rock Pier; Fintragh Strand; Shalwy Pier; Trabawn; Tralore; Teelin; Silver Strand; Glencolmcille; Loughros Point; Dawras Head; Portinoo Pier; Illanafad; Termon Point; Burtonport Pier; Cruit Point; Kincaslough Pier; Bunbeg Harbour; Magheraclogher Point; Bunaninver; Ballyness Pier; Dooros Point; New Lake Estuary; Ards Friary Pier; Downings Pier; Derrycasson; Pollmore; Tra-Na-Rossan Bay; Glashagh Strand; Fanad Head; Portsalon Pier; Rathmullan Pier; Buncrana Pier; Dunree Head; Lenan Pier; Pollan Bay; Doagh Isle; Trawbreaga Bay; Portronan Pier; Portmore Pier; Bunagee Pier; Culdaff Strand; Tremone Bay; Kinnagoe Bay; Moville Pier; and Carrickaroy. Marble Hill is closest to Portsalon Pier.