Category: Town Houses

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The Wallace Collection Marylebone London + John O’Connell

Quotes of Armour

Despite being a Sèvres urn’s throw from London’s Oxford Street, The Wallace Collection at Hertford House always radiates an air of calm and civility. Perhaps it’s the sylvan setting of Manchester Square. Maybe it’s the muted acoustics of the Courtyard Restaurant. But most likely it is the dignity – even with some daring moments – of the interiors that secures this aura of being far from the madding crowd. The latest room in the former home of the Victorian collector Sir Richard Wallace to shine once more is the Great Gallery. It’s December 2014 and John O’Connell, Founder and Director of John J O’Connell Architects, is about to give a private tour of The Wallace Collection. The municipal museum is once more a sumptuous townhouse. Over to John:

“Sir Richard Wallace planned the internal spaces around the main staircase which has a balustrade from the Hôtel de Nevers in Paris. In principle, each room is enhanced to stress the domestic or private mansion aspect of the main house. For example interconnecting doors between rooms have been reinstated and indeed in the Study we have introduced an entirely new false door to visually balance the existing doorway on the other side of the fireplace. Our main purpose is to provide an augmented setting for the Collection. It is not about re-creating rooms as they were, no, but rather re-presenting them for today’s visitors and scholars. The colour of the Dining Garden Hall is a quieter silver grey. You can’t have hectic colours all the time! Curtains should cascade and be three dimensional: they should come forwards and backwards.”

“This is the size of a city block, the Great Gallery, so it’s an extraordinary beautiful room and what we’ve done is gone and looked at the archived photograph of the room as it was with this lovely laylight which had to be abolished at a certain moment and now with modern technology we can again have this great laylight. This is where you have studio glazing at the top of the roof and it in turn lets light down onto this magnificent daylight so in other words it has a huge amount of natural light falling into the room.”

“It’s not wallpaper on the walls. It’s the most wonderful possible fabric, silk, and it’s not just damask, it’s a brocatelle, so it’s got even more silk in it! I think that to, as it were, bring the gallery forward into the modern age, you need to get the best possible conditions: lighting, climate control, security, fire safety compliance, decorative effects, so you can bring all of that into this great space. You could only do that if you go right back and lift the roof off because that’s what happened here. You see, the entire roof of the Great Gallery was taken off and what we have here is a whole new room within the gallery space because this has the technology almost of a railway terminal, when you see the supporting structure, and yet inside it is so beautiful.”

“Architectural features must do at least three jobs. The oculi in the latticed cast plasterwork punch through the cove: vertical stop, start, stop, start, all the way round the room. They also let more light into the room and act as the return path for the air conditioning. Reinstating wainscoting has curatorial importance. The paintings come to life against coloured fabric above the dado rail and the light coloured wainscot is appropriate as a backdrop to furniture. The gilt fillet of the wainscot is more pronounced than in the preceding galleries. If it was too small it would look titchy; if it was too over the top it would look bonkers. The wainscot must flow along. The Great Gallery enshrines everything we have learned during our 19 years working at the Collection. Everything bar the floor is new.”

“I think first of all The Wallace Collection is so multifaceted, the armour, then of course furniture, particularly Boulle, as an architect we love Boulle furniture, this is what we really want! The great thing is here the parameters are set. You can move everything but you cannot acquire and you cannot dispose which is marvellous, so it’s like a game of chess all the time. Everything is of equal importance. The placement of objects is just so important.”

Earlier that year Country Life had featured the Great Gallery in its 10 September edition hailing the “triumphant revitalisation”. The hang has long been recognised as one of the world’s best displays of Old Masters. Only two of the principal galleries attached to aristocratic London townhouses survive: Apsley House in Piccadilly and Hertford House. But it was John’s work which really enthralled the magazine. Michael Hall writes in Gallery Tour: The Great Gallery at The Wallace Collection:

“The present restoration – which forms a climax, but not the conclusion, of a comprehensive programme of refurbishment of the galleries begun under The Wallace’s former Director Dame Rosalind Savill in 2000 – has been paid for by a single donation of £5 million by the Monument Trust, in memory of the Honourable Simon Sainsbury, a major donor to The Wallace and a former Trustee. As with the other galleries, the design work has been carried out by John O’Connell Architects.”

“At first glance, it may seem that nothing has changed, but, in fact, almost everything has. Even the gallery’s two doors, at the far ends of the south wall, are not in their original places. They were formerly close to the corners of the room, creating a dead space in the angle; now that they have been moved closer together, there is room to hang large pictures on either side of them. In the 1978 to 1982 restoration, the walls were hung with a coral coloured fabric, which, by 2012, had faded. It has been replaced by a small patterned crimson damask woven by Prelle in Lyon.”

“Inspired by the great Victorian private picture galleries of London – continuing a tradition that goes back to the 17th century – it provides a satisfyingly rich and deep toned backdrop to the paintings. The main seat furniture in the room, an early Louis XVI set of chairs and settees, has been reupholstered to match. One subtle but striking improvement is the addition of a chair rail and dado, which the room had never possessed before. This anchors the furniture to the setting, but, more significantly, provides a strong architectural base for the hang of the paintings, preventing any feeling that they are floating on these huge walls.”

“Most impressive of all is the coved ceiling. An entirely new design by John O’Connell, it reintroduces indirect sunlight by means of oval laylights in the cove and a large laylight in the centre of the room. This has been made possible by advances in air conditioning technology: the new system installed as part of the refurbishment is very much smaller than its 1978 to 1982 predecessor. Daylight brings the room alive, and lends sparkle to the paintings, enhanced by an entirely new lighting scheme – predominantly LEDs – by the engineers, Sutton Vane Associates.” Michael Hall describes the Great Gallery as “one of London’s greatest rooms”.

Ros was Director from 1992 to 2011. Her appointment was approved by Prime Minister John Major because The Wallace is a national museum. She had the dual task of creating the optimal 21st century museum visitor experience and meeting the expanded expectation of the Government. Ros breathed light and life into the museum, excavating the basement and glazing over the courtyard. Two temporary exhibition galleries, a theatre, a learning studio, a library, a meeting room and rows of individual bathrooms were inserted into the basement. The new spaces combine the practical with the scholarly. Most of all, Ros wanted the objects to sparkle and to bring a new domestic intimacy to the staterooms. And so she called upon John and together they embarked upon the golden age of transformation – at pace. Visitor numbers more than doubled.

At her Memorial Service in St Marylebone Anglican Church in May 2025, the Reverend Canon Dr Stephen Evans said, “Rosalind is not only renowned for her services to the study of ceramics, but also someone once described as ‘the most distinguished woman museum director of the western world’. Not only the keeper who transformed The Wallace Collection. A trusted advisor. A wise, exciting and imaginative teacher. An engaging meticulous writer whose public service was enlivened by ebullience, verve and passion.”

It’s August 2025: asparagus and feta mousse followed by orange and poppyseed cake are being served in the Courtyard Restaurant. A time for reflection in and on and about a monumental cultural legacy. The late great Dame Rosalind Savill was an inspirational scholar of European decorative arts, a visionary museum director, and a human being of such intelligence, empathy and grace. She called John “my genius architect”. His practice would later be responsible for redesigning major country house estates such as Montalto in County Down. What Ros and John achieved together at The Wallace Collection remains a touchstone of excellence for museums everywhere. Dancing to the music of time.

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Passage des Panoramas + Musée Grévin Paris

A Lesson in Skiagraphy

It’s a diorama come to life. The past is present in Passage des Panoramas. A timeline as permeable as an Alice Rohrwacher film (La Chimera, 2023). It’s straight out of an Émile Zola novel. Literally (Nana, 1880). Built in 1799, this was the first covered arcade in Paris, oozing period character and historic authenticity. It combines beauty with functionality with rarity. Elegant white arches support the glazed pitched roof over rows of exquisite wooden shopfronts with colourful painted panels. Passage des Panoramas is a shortcut between Palais Royal and Montmartre. Only 17 such arcades have survived Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s rebuilding of the city.

There’s quirky and there’s Victoria Station Wagon Restaurant which is like a railway coach derailed at the entrance. A winged wolf and a bejewelled lynx peer through the windows of Caffè Stern in the centre. Philippe Starck designed the interior of this petite restaurant owned by the Alajmo group which runs the three Michelin star Le Calandre in Padova. Postcards of flooded streets and reclining kittens can be found in Maison Prins. On the opposite side of Boulevard Montmartre is Musée Grévin which opened in 1882. It’s where celebrities come to life – in wax.

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Architecture Art Design Fashion Luxury Town Houses

Paris + L’Art de Vivre

Releasing the Pressure

A dash across Paris can easily turn into a Coco Mademoiselle Chanel ad style escapade. Sipping morning coffee on a balcony of Le Milie Rose Hôtel teetering over Rue des Petites Ecuries (Street of Little Stables). Popping into Pleaseness for an 80s retro retail kick. Saying salut to François (Mahé) and Nico (Francioni) in La Mâle d’Effeenne. Lighting a candle in St Paul and St Louis Church. In an increasingly byzantine world, the French Capital never fails to elevate the body and soul.

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The Flask Pub + Highgate London

Raising the Roofs

It’s the part of London associated with the dead but there’s also plenty of life in Highgate. England does pubs well and The Flask is an oasis for thirsty – and hungry – travellers. The pub blends in so well with its Georgian neighbours it could easily be mistaken for one of the grand houses. A stone plaque on the five bay three storey redbrick façade displays the date “1663” which must predate the current building. A rabbit warren of bars and dining rooms, some under low vaulted ceilings bending all sorts of modern building regulations, has all the atmosphere of a coaching inn. Highwayman Claude Duval might just swing by for a pint.

Or a glass of Champagne. She may have had a vested interest but a chalk message on a blackboard in The Flask quotes the sage words of Lilly Bollinger, “I only drink Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.” A faded print of Queen Anne hangs on the ladies’ lavatory door; Henry Prince of Wales beckons the gents.

Opposite The Flask is The Grove, an early 18th century suburban residential development in leafy environs. Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Leigh Hunt; spy Anthony Blunt; singer George Michael; musicians Annie Lennox, Yehudi Menuhin and Sting; actors Gladys Cooper, Robert Donat and Jude Law; and model Kate Moss have all called The Grove home across the ages. It’s the sort of Georgian enclave that can only be found in London’s classier outlying villages such as Blackheath, Clapham and West Dulwich.

Across the road, or is it down the hill, or maybe over the brae – Highgate’s attractiveness is matched only by its confusion of layout – stands Lauderdale House. Vicky Wilson writes in London’s Houses, 2011, “An unattractive pebbledash building with an uninspiring five bay Georgian entrance front, a surprisingly unthought-out arrangement of windows on its long southeast side and a fine Doric colonnade at the back, Lauderdale House is nevertheless endowed with a history – both architectural and social. One of the few surviving large timber framed London houses, Lauderdale was built in 1582 by Sir Richard Martin, Warden and Masterworker of the Royal Mint, for his younger son Richard, probably with a rich bounty of Spanish gold earned from financing Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigatoin of 1577 to 1580.”

She summarises the evolution of the house: “The Martins’ home was designed to be a U shaped plan around a central courtyard. The long southeast flank was probably divided into three rooms with a traditional great chamber on the first floor; the present entrance hall in the northeast wing was probably a dining room. A single storey building at the open end of the courtyard, connected by a corridor to the dining room, contained the kitchens. The construction is timberframe infilled with wattle and daub, with the larger upper floor frame resting on projecting joists, a method known as continuous jetting. The slight projection of the the upper floor today and the asymmetrical fenestration on the long front are the clearest clues to the building’s Tudor origins.”

Professor Finola O’Kane of University College Dublin has a slightly more positive view of the house, “Lauderdale House is an attractive, rambling, not very distinguished looking building which conceals a much earlier timber house. It has a few vestiges of its early garden including a parterre and mount. St Paul’s Cathedral could be seen from the garden. This is a suburban house closer to the City than the West End. Highgate wasn’t very fashionable in the 17th century and it really only got going in the 18th century.”

Both commentators criticise its mostly casual appearance resulting from a Georgian cloak draping over a Tudor frame. The lawn front is symmetrical from the first floor five bay jettied projection upwards. A second floor Diocletian window is surmounted by a pediment and flanked by half gables. The garden backs onto Waterlow Park which in turn abuts Highgate Cemetery. Lauderdale House is now an arts and education centre. Sunbathers catch rays between crawling ladybirds and fluttering white butterflies. A sky of awnings provides respite from the summer heat. An ice cream parlour is handily located off the lawn front.

Northwest of Lauderdale House is the former residence of the 19th century explorer Mary Kingsley. She was brought up in Avalon, a late Georgian two storey over basement redbrick villa with an elegant prostyle Roman Doric porch. The only window on the façade is over the porch. Four blind windows complete the balanced elevational composition. Wide windows capture views of the Capital on the garden facing south front. Opposite Avalon is a long single storey redbrick block with a double height centrepiece. A plaque under the central pediment reads: “Anno 1722. The si almes-houses founded by Sir John Woolaston being very old and decayed were pull’d down and these 12 built in their room together with a schoolhouse for the charity girls at the sole charge of Edward Pauncfort, one of the governours and treasurer of the Chapell and Free School of Highgate.”

In contrast to its Georgian neighbours, Holly Village is very High Victorian Gothic. An archway on one side and a gateway on the other side linked by holly hedgerows provide tantalising glimpses of 12 highly ornate large cottages grouped around a green. Built in 1865 by the property developer William Cubitt to the design of Henry Astley Darbishire, the four villas and four pairs of semi detached houses are – to use modern property parlance – highly spec’d, from Portland stone to teak wood. Gated developments are very Highgate: luxuriously appointed apartment and housing schemes behind cast iron railings would arrive in the 20th century on nearby Hillway.

Another piece of non neoclassical architecture is the Catholic Church of St Joseph on Highgate Hill. It is known locally as “Smoky Joe’s” after the high church religious order which runs it. The Passionists built the current monastery and chapel in 1858 in a Neo Romanesque style to the design of Albert Vicars (potentially some nominative determinism going on with that surname). The powerful white gone grey brick complex with copper domes over a dominant octagonal tower and smaller octagonal corner turrets dominates the townscape southeast of Lauderdale House.

The cemetery can wait.

Postscript: we know many of you missed out on the limited first edition of our bestseller Sabbath Plus One. But fear not: Daunt Marylebone may have sold out but north London’s top independent literature retailer House of Books in West Hampstead is now stocking the second edition. And the most flattering compliment of the month comes from said retailer about the 30 year old opening portrait in the fabric covered hand stitched 300 GSM paper heavyweight book, “That’s still you!”

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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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Architecture Country Houses Design Restaurants Town Houses

Ramelton Donegal +

Drop the Tea and the Haitch

Donegal County Council’s 2020 Ramelton Action Plan prepared by Dedalus Architecture of Moville states, “Ramelton is a town of significant built, social and cultural heritage with a unique regional character and comparable in quality to the most visited historic places in Ireland. The current town was founded as a Plantation settlement in the early 1600s by Sir William Stewart of Ayrshire on the site of an O’Donnell castle.” Sir William built Tullyaughnish Reformation Church on the edge of the town, now a scenic ruin. Dr Finola O’Kane of University College Dublin ruminates, “Ruins in Ireland have always been political in light of the country’s history.”

In his 2021 essay Beyond Pastness: Reuse in Ramelton, Gary Hamilton argues, “In the picturesque town of Ramelton, located in the northwest of Ireland, a hulking set of warehouses on The Quays are a tactile reminder of what this place used to be. In stone, shale, and concrete, they tell a story about the past: of bustling trade, industrialisation, and prosperity in rural parts of the country. After decades of dereliction, some of the warehouses have been recently repurposed into a heritage centre, a café, and even apartments. Two, however, remain in a state of decay, and one is on the brink of collapse. The tourism economy values the ‘pastness’ of rural Ireland, but preserving that pastness has the effect of consigning towns to a state of perpetual limbo.”

Lo, the tide was turning. The following year Donegal County Council was awarded the Chambers Ireland 2022 Excellence in Local Government Award for Heritage and Built Environment for an urban scale conservation project in Ramelton. A 2019 audit had demonstrated a high rate of vacancy (13 percent), dereliction (seven percent) and buildings at risk (20 structures). The Council worked with the local community to reverse this advancing decay and repair 14 of the historic buildings.

Most visible is the restoration of The House on the Brae in the centre of the town. Council funding was the catalyst for Ramelton Georgian Society bringing this 1760s building back to life for community use. In 2025, the restoration is nearing completion. The House appears on Bridge Street as a modest two storey over basement rendered block with very wide windows on the first floor. Generously proportioned window openings are a feature of 18th century houses in the town, possibly to maximise natural light for linen weavers at work. The House falls dramatically to the rear towards the riverside Shore Road, revealing its three storey plus attic full extent. Ramelton Georgian Society plans to reinstate a two storey block along Shore Road, enclosing the rear garden of The House on the Brae.

Shore Road continues eastwards, becoming The Quays. Mill House is located at the sharp right angle of Shore Road elbowing into the River Leannan. It’s a tall, darkish and handsome 1840s three bay three storey villa faced with random rubblestone and cornered by squared smooth stone quoins. A shallow fanlight stretches over the entrance door and sidelights framed by Tuscan columns and pilasters. A hipped roof resting on eaves is fully exposed: this is a parapet free town. Mill House backs on to some of the restored and converted warehouses.

At the western end of the town, yet more gorgeous buildings are clustered around Bridge End where the River Leannan narrows and is crossed by Ramelton Bridge. The Tannery backs onto the river and was converted to apartments in 2000. Built in the late 19th century, it’s an impressive 13 bay three storey block. Coursed and square rubble limestone walls with flush squared rubblestone quoins produce a grand vernacular.

Set at a right angle to The Tannery is The Green, a country house and estate in miniature. Three bay two bay symmetrical perfection overlooks – as its name suggests – a large green. The house was built circa 1830 for James Watt, the owner of a linen bleach mill, now demolished. An Ionic distyle porch framing the entrance door with its fanlight provides the decorative highlight to the simply elegant smooth rendered with limestone plinth façade. A hipped slate roof completes the simple outline. The main block is three bays deep and is elongated by later return wings.

On the brow of the hill heading out of Ramelton and looking down over The Tannery, Bridge Bar Restaurant is the quintessential Irish pub. A slightly asymmetrical five bay two storey pebbledashed façade is quirkily enlivened by red shutters, red quoins and a red entrance door. it’s colourful and lively, just as a pub should be. This tour is but the icing on the cake that is the architectural treat of Ramelton. There are many rich layers to explore of the heritage of sweet unique town. Ramelton is no longer in perpetual limbo: pastness has a present and a future.

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Architecture Art Country Houses Town Houses

St Fiach’s Church of Ireland Church + Carrigans Donegal

Developing An Overarching Grammar Based on Idealised Irish Country Life

The Laggan lies between the River Foyle and Lough Swilly: a lowland rich in agriculture, rich in architecture, rich. It was once dominated by flax growing and salmon fishing. In between country house estates lies Carrigans, one of the prettiest villages in Ireland. Population in 1841: precisely 235. Population today: about 350. In between single and double storey houses, Main Street has a Garda Station, Carrig Inn, Post Office and Village Shop, Village Chippy, and AMC Hair and Beauty. This 215 metre stretch of road is bookended by a a painted boat in a sloping field to the west and a derelict cottage with windows and a door painted on its facade to the east. A car port provides a roof for a Christmas sleigh. Next door and set back from Main Street is St Fiach’s Church of Ireland church which is the Parish Church of Killea in the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe.

This is Plantation of Ulster country. After confiscation by the British Crown in 1607, County Donegal was carved up into parcels of 400 hectares, each distributed to mainly Scottish families. Scottish sounding surnames can still be found in the area: Buchanan, Galbraith, Hamilton, McClintock and Stewart. Other nearby Plantation settlements include Castlefin, Convoy, Killygordon and Stranorlar.Reverend George Hill writes in An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the 17th Century 1608 to 1620 (1877), “From occasional glimpses at the general condition of Ulster in the 17th century, as given in these Plantation records, the reader will probably infer that our northern province must have had certain rare attractions for British settlers. Among the descendants of the latter, however, it has been a cherished faith that our worthy ancestors came here to find homes only in a howling wilderness, or rather, perhaps, in a dreary and terrible region of muirland and morass. We very generally overlook the fact, that the shrewd and needy people whom we call our forefathers, and who dwelt north and south of the Tweed, would have had neither time nor inclination to look towards the shores of Ulster at all, had there been no objects sufficiently attractive, such as green fields, rich straths, beauteous valleys, and herds of Irish cattle adorning the hillsides. But such was, indeed, the simple truth.” The Laggan is still filled with that greenness, richness and beauty.

Many of the buildings of Carrigans are gaily coloured. Whoever decided to paint the rendered St Fiach’s Church was clearly a blue sky thinker. Literally. Most Irish churches are grey. This one is blue. Beyond the Pale blue. Erected in 1763, St Fiach’s was altered over the next two centuries while still retaining exquisite allure. It’s a simple three bay nave barn church. Roundheaded windows have extremely fine cast iron quarry glazing with timber Y tracery. The chancel, vestry and porch were added in 1856 to the design of Armagh architect Alexander Hardy. Their grey rubblestone contrasts with the blue render of the main church building. Reverend William Law was the first incumbent. The current rector is Reverend Canon John Merrick; his predecessor Reverend David Crooks retired in 2024 after 47 years service.

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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 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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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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Montparnasse Tower Paris +

Positive Capability

Dawn in winter 2019. Noon in spring 2025. Oh how the years go by. A century ago, Montparnasse hosted the vanguard of avant garde Paris. Writer Gertrude Stein’s partner Alice Toklas once called it “the city of boulevard bars and Baudeloire”. Poet Guillaume Apollinaire went further referring to it as “a quarter of crazies”. It was home for Marianne Faithfull from riding in a sportscar to missing the moon. Behind Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s homogeneity and square cut gentility lies the mysterious courtyard life of Paris played out in the penumbra of Montparnasse Tower. It’s a 32 second lift ride to the 59th floor of the tower to view the sacred horizontality and profane verticality.

The skyscraper in all its splendid isolation was completed in 1973 to the design of Eugène Beaudouin, Urbain Cassan, Louis de Hoÿm de Marien and Jean Saubot. The Tower’s height, all 210 metres, was not universally welcomed. It didn’t quite accord with Baron Haussmann’s rule that no building should be taller than the width of the boulevard on which it stood. Two years after Montparnasse Tower’s completion, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing banned buildings over 32 metres in central Paris. In recent times, the limit has been relaxed to 50 metres but only on a case by case basis. Wallpaper* City Guide, 2022, provides a contemporary reassessment, admiring the Tower’s “wonderfully gridded curtain wall” before adding, “The redevelopment of the down-at-heel area around Gare Montparnasse in the early 1960s was, by and large, a piece of inspired city planning.”

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Le Littré Hotel + Left Bank Paris

Rêve Parisien

Nos jours. The late great chanteuse Marianne Faithfull latterly lived in a lateral apartment on Boulevard du Montparnasse. She once shared, “I have some lovely paintings and photographs and furniture. All things that have been passed down by my family. But actual decorations are absurd!” Hôtel Le Littré is on a quiet side street off the southern end of Boulevard du Montparnasse, under the shadow of the (in)famous Montparnasse Tower.

Rue Littré fortunately isn’t named after rubbish but rather the multihyphenate Émile Littré. This politician, philosopher and linguist Left Banker fulfilled his aptronym by writing an etymological dictionary, published in 1841. A few copies of the Littré Dictionary are in the Winter Garden of the hotel which opens onto that most Parisian of spaces – the courtyard. There has been a hotel behind the Haussmann façade of 9 Rue Littré since 1967. Full French breakfast is served in the lower level dining room.

Keeping to the literary theme, the hotel stocks Le Littré News (April 2025 edition) and La Gazette de Littré (timeless edition). One of the recommendations in Le Littré News is for a restaurant across the road from the hotel called Le Petit Littré. Jean-Baptiste Bellecourt opened the restaurant in 2012. On a rainy Saturday evening, it’s at full capacity. The convivial owner explains that the waiter cut his hand earlier and had to go home. So Jean-Baptiste is acting as receptionist, maître d’, waiter, sommelier … a one man machine (presumably there’s a chef hidden away somewhere). Dinner of risotto and Tarte Tatin is an essay on perfect French cuisine.

“Madame de Pompadour ate four meals a day: breakfast, dinner, a late afternoon snack (goûter) and supper,” the much missed Dame Rosalind Savill records in her 2022 double volume literary masterpiece Everyday Rococo: Madame De Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain. Madame de Pompadour would have adored the French fries and shrimp parcels lunch in a casual café on Boulevard du Montparnasse.

A short stroll past the glasshouses of Jardin Botanique de l’Universitie Cité leads to Jardin du Luxembourg. The world and its beautiful partner are playing boules, sunbathing, promenading. All 25 hectares are brimming with life. The ghost of Louis XIII’s mother, the Regent Marie de’ Medici, must be looking down in wonder at the bourgeois from her top floor bedroom in the 17th century Palais du Luxembourg. The balustrades and pedestals and statues and urns are all still very recognisable from John Singer Sargent’s 1879 painting In the Luxembourg Garden.

Getting ever closer to the River Seine, past the scent of Goutal perfumery (a modern day maker of myrrh), is the city’s third largest church: St Sulpice. Construction of Daniel Gittard’s neoclassical design began in 1646 and its 21 chapels were decorated over the following decades as the architecture evolved. Most splendid of all is the Virgin Chapel started by Giovanni Nicoli Servandoni in 1777 and completed 48 years later by Charles de Wally. “She was perfectly in tune with the rococo period in which she lived, and enabled it to evolve and flourish,” Ros comments. Madame de Pompadour would feel very at peace under the rococo golden dome of the Virgin Chapel.

A visit to San Francisco Books literally continues the literary theme.

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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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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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Radio Bar + ME Hotel Aldwych London

Norman Architecture

Chilli squid tempura, king prawn tempura and white miso pavlova on the sun kissed roof terrace are the only way to mark the 12th anniversary of Radio Bar. It’s the last Monday before Passiontide but the working week has to start somewhere. In reverse Philip Larkin, the roof terrace is shaped to the comfort of the first to arrive. A joyous shot at how things really are, wide fallen long. At the eastern end of the terrace, the ornate gable of neighbouring Marconi House rises like a curling swirling treble clef carved of stone. Norman Shaw at his most expressive. The western end reaches a crescendo with Suite ME, a legibly lined bass clef in glass. ME Hotel is an architectural duet of contextuality and originality. Giving the musical metaphors a rest, it’s over to Norman Foster to discuss his composition:

“The triangular site of ME Hotel was once the home of the Gaiety Theatre which was damaged in World War II and then demolished to make way for a 1950s office development. Our scheme completes the grand sweep of early 20th century buildings, repairing the urban grain of this crescent. Everything from the shell of the building to bathroom fittings was designed by Foster and Partners. The restoration of Marconi House to accommodate 87 apartments seamlessly integrates with the construction of this 157 bedroom hotel. The hotel building corresponds in height, scale and material to its neighbour. Triangular oriel windows projecting from a Portland stone exterior capture a vista of The Strand while maintaining similar proportions to Marconi House’s fenestration. An elliptical corner tower defines the end point of Aldwych.”

Outdoors and indoors, everything is as monochromatic as a keyboard. The triangle is a complex instrument in the hands of Foster and Partners. Lesser talent would find a wedge shaped plan restrictive. Instead, one of London’s most exhilarating angular interiors forms the heart of the hotel. A tetrahedron ascends in ever decreasing triangles soaring 30 metres from the first floor reception lobby to a glazed apex. Architecture as captured light is taken to a new level. White marble lines the inside of the pyramid; corridors lean against the black marbled outer skin.

The glazed apex pops up as a petite pyramid in the middle of Radio Bar: a transparent splayed metronome. Distant views are of trophy towers, all with sobriquets in honour of their outlines, reaching for the sky in contrapuntal consonance. The Gherkin, Cheesegrater, Shard, Walkie Talkie … A joyous shot at how things really are, wide fallen high. Intermediate views are of the quad of Somerset House. Close views are of the glasshouses and skylights and chimneypots in the valleys between double pitched roofs, hidden from street level by parapets. There’s nothing new under the sun, but there’s plenty to wax lyrical about Radio Bar.

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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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Clarance Hôtel Lille + Aurélie Vermesse

Fire in the Sunshine

It’s been a while since our last visit to France’s fourth largest city – Paris is ever so distracting – so we’ve dusted down our previous article and spruced it up. Of course we’re back to Aurélie Vermesse’s urban oasis and a return visit to Méert Chocolaterie. Nothing tastes as good as skinny truffles. We’re pleased to see Lille is still a little frayed round the edges. A touch crumbly. Shabby chic. What’s not to love again?

Sitting on the Nominations Committee of the 2018 World Boutique Hotel Awards was our excuse to stay in five star intimate luxury in Lille first time round. No excuse needed this time. Three blind arches on either side of a gated pedimented Corinthian pilastered archway line the pavement of Rue de la Barre in Quartier du Vieux. Beyond this most enigmatic of screen walls is a courtyard aproning the façade of a gorgeous nine bay three storey stuccoed mansion. It’s Relais and Châteaux; it’s really a château.

Clarance Hôtel started life in 1736 as the home of the Count and Countess of Hespel. Hotelier Aurélie relates, “It took me more than two years to set up La Clarance as a hotel, opening in April 2015. Today, I have 30 employees, a Michelin starred restaurant and a thriving bar! The Clarance is the result of a dream that was born during a weekend at Domaine Les Crayères in Reims, a Relais and Châteaux hotel. I quit my job to go back to school and then create the Clarance from scratch!”

Beauty and simplicity form the cornerstones of her hospitality. “Baudelaire’s poetry is at the heart of our contemporary artwork and room decoration,” Aurélie explains. “Art, gastronomy and kindness are essential to my life and, I hope, to yours too. I want to share the warmth and diversity of our cuisine and the products of our region. And the light of the north that bathes our house.”

Our coterie in this corner of the ancient capital of Flanders, we’re an outré beau monde, is at home among the soignée haute monde, overlapping social carousels in slow motion, floating through the airily graceful reception rooms. A row of French windows lighting the rear enfilade opens onto a gloriously private walled garden with the tower of St Catherine’s Church as a backdrop. Fruit trees and beehives surround a waterlilies pond that would give Claude Monet a run for his money. Clarance Hôtel is so chic.

By nightfall, turndown of our light and spacious bedroom includes a handwritten card: “There, all is order and beauty, luxury, peace and pleasure. I wish you a pleasant stay at Clarance. Aurélie.” And the all important skinny chocolate truffles on our pillow. Our room is called Le Voyage, complete with map of the world headboard. It’s one of just nine top floor rooms. The other second floor rooms are Allegorié; L’Albatros, Crépuscule du Soir, Hymne, Le Flacon, Le Jeu, La Musique and Clarance. They’re all numbered. What should be room 13 is luckily unnumbered: it’s the broom cupboard. First floor rooms include Le Cygne, La Géante, L’Horloge, L’Idéal and Le Rebelle. But no À Celle Qui Est Trop Gaie or Les Métamorphoses du Vampire. There are 27 guest bedrooms in total. An illustrated book of Charles Baudelaire’s poems placed in all the rooms is a clue to their nomenclature.

A segmental arched window set in the wide dormer of Le Voyage looks over the courtyard to a pleasing jumble of rooftops and chimneys. Directly below are seats perfect for enjoying a nightcap of Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu 2015 from Loire Valley under the moon rapt in idle reverie. Seven years will dissolve into the thin evening air before we get to repeat the experience once again.

There were a lucky 13 categories in the 2018 World Boutique Hotel Awards: Beach or Coastal; City Explorer; Classic Elegance; Culinary Excellence; Family; Honeymoon Hideaway; Inspired Design; Newcomer; Relaxation Retreat; Romantic Retreat; Wellness Spa; Sustainability; Stunning Views. We considered nominating Clarance Hôtel for all of them. Ok, Beach or Coastal was pushing it. The pride of Lille deserves its own category: Unique Boutique.

Lille in those days was for us still a city of newness, a fount of unexpected treasures. But it’s alright to renew an acquaintance, to once more exhale the soft air of youth. We now know that Lille stands for all the things that are important in life – love, beauty, food and shopping. We have not come to tan or trade. Living is our art form. We’re captivated by it all. Encore une fois.

We’re back under the eaves and this time sleeping in Le Flacon. A similar window to Le Voyage frames a view of St Catherine’s Church. Intoxicating memories in kisses of fine linen await. But first there are visits to Méert and its neighbours Comtesse du Barry (for essential terrines) and El Market (for concept clothing). That’s shopping sorted. Love and beauty are all around and will increase in abundance as the day fades. Just food to go then.

“Fast or slow service?” asks our waitress. We’re lunching in the boiserie bedecked Michelin starred dining room. “Fast!” The Countess Hospice Museum is still to be done. There are three midday menus – L’Horloge, L’Idéal and L’Invitation au Voyage – each with varying numbers of course. L’Idéal lives up to its name. Canapés are followed by a foamy pumpkin amuse bouche. The starter is three fat and juicy St Jacques of Boulogne-sur-Mer pan fried scallops. Roasted small boat sole main course precedes steamed orange and saffron pudding. No French lunch is complete without petit fours. Isabel Ferrando’s Stella Ducit 2023 delivers a floral nose of acacia, a hearty citrus palate and a pleasant fennel finish. As our sommelier confirms. La vin des avants.

Aurélie has penned uplifting messages on the back of the menu: “Préserver les cuisines du monde”; “Partager la passion du beau et du bon”; and “Être acteurs d’un monde plus human”. This is final level food. Plus haut n’existe pas. Breakfast will be an ecstacy of eggs to see. Oeufs à la coque, au plat, brouillés, omelette nature or omelette garnie. We head back to nature. Toujours la haute monde. Polo necked fellow guests look so sophisticated. Le paradis, c’est les autres.

The Countess Hospice Museum was built as a hospital founded in 1237 in the grounds of Countess Jeanne de Flandre’s palace. Galleries and the chapel encircle a cobbled courtyard. It’s all rather wonderful. Hits of its hallowed halls include a tiled image of a man in need of a chamber pot as well as Old Master paintings of butch nuns, dying gentlemen, raucous markets and flying balloons by the likes of François Watteau and Wallerant Vaillant. It’s the chauffeur’s night off but that doesn’t matter. La Barre is Hôtel Clarance’s new bar on Rue de la Barre and is Lille’s coolest nightspot bar none. La fin de la journée.

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Kitty Fisher’s Restaurant + Shepherd Market Mayfair London

Generations Come and Generations Go

Last autumn we somehow found ourselves invited to lunches in the private dining rooms of London restaurants on a weekly basis. Nice work, and all that. Six Park Place, Green Park, was all about white truffle and parmesan risotto in an Art Deco setting. Skipping the steak at Smith and Wollensky off The Strand we went for the seared hand dived scallops in the Martin Brudzinski designed basement dining room. Upping the grandeur, we’d gnocchi, ajo blanco, kale, feta crumble and sunflower seeds in the top storey dining room of The Ned under the plasterwork ceiling with its central MB for Midland Bank. The first floor private dining room of 34 was the setting of our The Not The What invitation to enjoy wild mushroom risotto, pecorino and summer truffle surrounded by Tracey Emin paintings. Not a beige buffet in sight.

The What House Awards are the biggest gongs in the housebuilding industry. So far, so mainstream. Much more fun are The Not The What parties contemporaneously thrown across Mayfair. After Champagne fuelled lunches everyone crashes The Red Room bar of The Grosvenor House Hotel. That’s before rounding off the night in Mount Street’s pub The Audley. Mayfair and its environs are not short of high end restaurants: Coya, Hide and Sexy Fish for starters, main course and pudding. In contrast to those three temples to Bacchus, the eateries of Shepherd Market are positively low key – and petite.

Oliver Bradbury records in The Lost Mansions of Mayfair, 2008, “Shepherd Market, named after Edward Shepherd, was laid out on the Curzon family owned waste ground north of Piccadilly and near Hyde Park Corner.” It’s a stretch to call somewhere a few dozen metres away from Green Park off the beaten track but Shepherd Market lends that impression. The short walk down White Horse Street along the side of Cambridge House (shrouded in scaffolding for years – when will the Reuben Brothers’ conversion of the In and Out Club to a hotel be finished?) opens into another world.

Narrow streets radiating off a square are lined with an array of international brasseries. In between are a few high end shops like Simon Carter menswear. Fancy Lebanese? Head to Al Hambra. Channelling Francophilia? There’s L’Artiste Muscle or Ferdi. Le Boudin Blanc closed in 2022. You can enjoy French cheese at Shepherd Market Wine House or pasta at Misto. Go Turkish at Fez Mangal. Iran Restaurant is what it says. Feeling adventurous? Try L’Autre, the capital’s only Polish Mexican. Or Middle Eastern food at our school night regular Sofra.

On the square itself is Kitty Fisher’s offering the best of British fare. Architect Chris Dyson provides some background, “Our practice’s first restaurant project was at 10 Shepherd Market for Penelope and Michael Milburn. The building is located in the northeastern corner of the market square, tucked away between Piccadilly and Curzon Street in Mayfair. In the early part of last century, Shepherd Market was a fashionable address. The writer Michael Arlen rented rooms opposite The Grapes pub, possibly this building, and used Shepherd Market as the setting for his bestselling 1924 novel The Green Hat, later made into a film starring Greta Garbo.”

“The building is essentially 18th century with a rebuilt mid 19th century brick façade.” Chris continues, “The fenestration dates from this partial rebuilding and is surrounded by alternating bands of yellow and red brick. The ground floor shopfront retains two carved stone corbels to either side. There are six floors in total. The basement extends under the pavement with two sizeable brick vaults.”

Typical of Shepherd Market restaurants, the ground floor is narrow fronted and deep in plan creating an intimate atmosphere. Precipitous stairs lead from the restaurant and bar down past the kitchen, fully on display through internal windows, to the rest of the restaurant. Cast iron ovens are retained in the basement thick walls. Cooking these days comes from a wood grill. Kitty Fisher’s was the toast of town when it opened in 2014 – one of its owners is the brother-in-law of then Prime Minister David Cameron who frequented it with his wife Samantha. The Nigella Lawson era of celebs has waned allowing this restaurant to settle into being a thriving slightly in-the-know establishment. On a Friday, especially today, the weekend before Christmas, the 75 covers are turned twice for lunch and twice for dinner. We’re perched on stools at the window in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks fashion.

This isn’t our first rodeo. Eight years ago, December 2016 to be precise, we dined on the same stools. We were surprised to get dinner without a reservation at the height of Kitty Fisher’s fame. Time to dig into the archives! Viognier Le Paradou 2015 (£30.00), dry with a hint of honeycomb. Whipped cod’s roe, bread and fennel butter (£7.50), Head Chef Tom Parry’s four fingered salute against mediocrity. A textural contrast of creaminess and crustiness. Taleggio, London honey, mustard and black truffle (£9.00), a bittersweet symphony of wood grill smokiness. There’s more. Burrata, beetroot and radicchio (£12.50), a colourful collage of purple and white. Cambridge burnt cream (£7.00) isn’t an undergrad’s baking error but a Cointreau and cinnamon crème brûlée smoothly nestling under a crackly golden lid. These plates are too good for sharing. We observed that currency signs had vanished from fashionable menus as swiftly as pounds disappeared from the wallets of the original Kitty Fisher’s gentlemen callers.

The sharing plates menu has been replaced with a more traditionally laid out version of three courses plus sides. Still currency free. Tom Fairbank is now Head Chef. We stick to Viognier, crisp with floral notes Pays d’Oc Moulin de Gassac 2023 (£34.00). Mountain Bay sardines, Oyster Leaf mayonnaise and pickled green tomatoes (£17), latitudinal extremities. Scottish girolles, lentils and walnut (£30), vegetarian wholesomeness. Chocolate ganache, salted caramel ice cream and honeycomb (£12), sweet and smoky. The boudoir like theme has stayed the same: brown and purple walls, red lampshades, jazz music.

So who was Kitty Fisher? England’s original It Girl, no less. “Without a doubt, Kitty received a good education. She was witty and always known as a good conversationalist,” suggests Joanne Major in Kitty Fisher The First Female Celebrity, 2022. This background – and her natural prettiness – helped her climb up the social ladder with surprising ease. Fame collied with infamy in Kitty’s case due to her high profile affairs and liaisons. “Gossip about her antics reached the drawing rooms, coffeehouses and taverns of every town in the land,” writes Joanne.

In the 18th century painters were the paparazzi. After Sir Joshua Reynolds finished his first likeness, Joanne concludes, “In no time at all, at least four engravers had copied the portrait and Kitty’s likeness was to be had at every print shop in the country.” She lived for a while in Carrington Street to the immediate south of Shepherd Market. Towards the end of her short yet brilliance existence, Kitty found true love and married John Norris MP, Captain of Deal Castle. She died of smallpox aged 26 while visiting Bath. Shepherd Market would continue to have a racy reputation for ladies of the night right up to the mid 20th century.

We’re still up for private dining room lunches but, like Paris, we’ll always have Kitty Fisher’s. And we’ll aim to be back before another eight years have gone.

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Henry Stone + Stephanie Barrillier + Sha-Roe Bistro Clonegal Carlow

Swiss Cottage

Clonegal, County Carlow, population 280 in 2014, isn’t at first glance the most obvious place to come across one of Ireland’s finest restaurants. “You might say we’re in the middle of nowhere!” laughs co proprietor and host Swiss born Stephanie Barillier. “But we’re close to the borders of Counties Wicklow and Wexford. Bigger towns like Enniscorthy and Gorey aren’t too far away and Dublin is handy enough to get to.” That in part explains why it’s impossible to get a table on Friday or Saturday nights at Sha-Roe Bistro without booking. Great food, atmosphere and craic are the other factors.

Much of the food, as you’d expect in this rural terrain, is locally sourced. Fish is from Seatrade in Dunmore East, County Waterford. Carlow Cheese is another, even more local, source: “Owner Elizabeth Bradley is just up the road from Fenagh.” Stephanie’s husband Henry, originally from Arklow, is Head Chef and self explanatory as this may sound, actually does cook what’s on your plate, a rarity in this golden age of named chefs with multiple outlets. He was Head Chef at Marlfield House near Gorey for seven years. That’s where the couple met. “I love Marlfield!” enthuses Stephanie. “It’s like entering a different world and all your worries flying off your shoulder. We were there last weekend for a family celebration.”

Named after the village where Stephanie was brought up, Sha-Roe occupies the ground floor of an elegant Georgian end of terrace. It’s next to the avenue sweeping through the historic 60 hectare Huntington Castle estate and opposite the River Derry. What’s not to like? Orders are taken in the quiet sitting room on one side of the fanlit entrance hall. The frenetic restaurant occupies the room on the opposite side of the hall. “We’ve 32 covers and are serving 54 customers this evening,” she confirms. The place is buzzing. A fire roars in the massive inglenook fireplace and conversations sparkle like the wine. Candles and artwork are set in rugged stone niches. Tables are simply laid with stone mustard jars of fresh flowers.

Henry is renowned for taking seasonal country cooking to a whole new level. Sharper, more refined, make that much more refined. Those seven years at Marlfield clearly show. It’s hard not to overdose on sourdough balls before starter arrives. Mushroom and parmesan tart, roast parsnip, butternut squash and beetroot (€7.50). Main is bouillabaisse of monkfish, scallops and plaice served in a shellfish sauce (€23.50) with chips (€3.00). Finally, an Irish cheese board of Wicklow Blue, Bradley’s Sheep Milk and Carlow Tomme with apple chutney and homemade crackers (€7.70). There’s plenty more of course(s) on the menu but choices must be made. Sure enough, Sha-Roe lives up to, and surpasses, all expectations.

“We’ve been here nine and a half years now,” relates Stephanie. “It’s very funny by pure chance we came across the house for sale in an estate agents in Gorey. I love living here!” Henry and Stephanie’s home is above the restaurant with their three year old child and another is en route, so to speak. In 2015, the population of Clonegal will rise to 281.

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House of Tides Restaurant Newcastle-upon-Tyne +

Riding the Wave

“And the place where new life must start – this may be a surprise, because nobody seems to care two hoots for it at the moment – is the quayside. Whichever way you come to Newcastle, get down to the quayside first,” orders Ian Nairn in his 1967 guide Nairn’s Towns. We obey and not just because the city’s leading restaurant is on the quayside in a Grade I Listed former house opposite the Grade II* Listed Wetherspoon’s pub which was once a house and attached warehouse. Both date from the 16th century. Almost six decades after Nairn’s Towns was first published, the quayside is now a much loved tourist and cultural asset.

The House of Tides was launched a decade ago by husband and wife team Kenny and Abbie Atkinson. He’s now one of the north of England’s most acclaimed chefs. Past roles include a stint as Head Chef of Seaham Hall, Durham, then owned by Von Essen Hotels. “We didn’t want our restaurant to be in a glass box or near bars and clubs which is quite difficult in Newcastle,” relates Kenny. An historic merchant’s dwelling jammed against the gargantuan Tyne Bridge is definitely not a glass box and Wetherspoon’s is the only nearby bar. Clubland has never quite ventured this direction.

The pedestrian route from Newcastle Railway Station to the restaurant is full of intrigue and surprise. Tyne Bridge arches its way across the grounds of Newcastle Castle splitting the keep from the gatehouse. There were no Conservation Areas in Victorian times. Moot Hall is one of the visual treats en route: a Greek Revival courthouse soon to be converted into a hotel by the Gainford Group which owns the jolly decent County Hotel opposite the station. Completed in 1812, architect John Stokoe gave the entrance front a tetrastyle fluted Doric portico and the river facing front a hexastyle portico. Ian Nairn states, “John Stokoe makes the official masters of the style – Smirke, Wilkins and so on – look like pallid pedants.” Next to Tyne Bridge, steps called Long Stairs, bordered by overgrown vegetation and the backs of houses, descend to the quayside. Long Stairs feel a little isolated, a bit ghostly, a tad eery, even by daytime. Later, as dusk falls, orbs will appear.

First impressions of House of Tides – and lasting memories – are of rustic robustness. The three and four storey block has a stone faced ground floor, reddish brown brick upper floors and a pantiled roof. Some of the vertically proportioned sash windows have been reduced in size to casements leaving the original lintels charmingly floating like architectural eyebrows. Inside, the ground floor is one long open bar with informal seating. The restaurant occupies a similar space upstairs.

Rather than being hidden away, the kitchen faces onto the street. Its location adds to the drama of servers parading upstairs to the first floor restaurant, then standing to attention before waiters relieve them of their plates. That’s about as formal as it gets. “Are you enjoying the chilled vibe?” asks our waiter before methodically listing the ingredients as each course of the tasting menu arrives. “How do you remember all that?” we enquire. “I’ve no idea!” he laughs and summarises how the penultimate course, Buttermilk (pear, celery, lemon verbena), is a “journey from savoury to sweet”. A segue on the tongue. The mild vinegary tang jogs our memories of traditional pudding in the Aachen Town Hall cellar brasserie.

The first three courses – Gougère (butternut squash, miso), Goat’s Cheese Parfait (curried granola, rye crackers), Crab (spiced shrimps, crumpet) – set the scene. Refined unfussy food; accessible fine dining. A clarity of culinary vision matched by the white, off white and cream décor complementing the rusticity of the slanted windows and slanted timber floors and slanted plasterwork laden beams. Sourdough (malt butter, toasted yeast) is straight from the baker’s oven. Seatrout (kombu, trout roe, dill, dashi), Cod (mussels, Grelot onions sea herbs) and Monkfish (celeriac, onion, persillade) are three subtly sexy fish dishes. Kenny’s twists of tradition include gooseberry ketchup and wasabi ketchup. Blackberry Crémeux (apple, crème fraîche, meringue) has form and more. No wonder the restaurant snapped up its Michelin star just six months after opening.

“At House of Tides we believe our wine list is an extension of the ethos of the restaurant,” Kenny admits. “It is a collection of our favourite wines and reflects the tastes and passion of the people that have worked to put it together. Our ambition is to take you on a journey through the vineyards from around the world.” As Francophiles we are happy to go no further than across the Channel. A Peu Près Sauvignon Blanc, Loire Valley, 2020, for the savouries. Vigneron Ardechois, Coteau St Giraud, Late Harvest Viognier, 2020, for the sweets. Below at street level, during the course of lunch the bollarded space in front of House of Tides has been carpeted yellow with the fall of autumn leaves.

After lunch we will climb back up Long Stairs to inspect the Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin designed needle spired St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral on the far side of the railway station. The organist is practising for a wedding. He plays two minutes of Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, two of Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, César Franck’s Panis Angelicus, Richard Wagner’s Bridal Chorus and Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe. A musical tasting menu.

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Corsham Court + Corsham Wiltshire

The Remains of the Afternoon

It’s one of the key English houses to see, totally individual and unlike anywhere else. Set between Elizabethan to Victorian built form is a display of interiors from the third quarter of the 18th century, that fascinating period containing the stylistic segue from high rococo to neoclassicism. Even a taste for the macabre in art – Guido Reni’s touching St Sebastián in the Picture Gallery and his bloodied snowy Massacre of the Innocents in the Corridor and Alessandro Turchi’s equally gory Massacre of the Innocents in the Cabinet Room – cannot dispel the current glory of the place.

Corsham Court is positioned close to its namesake town, separated only to the west by a sea of wavy yews. A magical first glimpse of the south facing entrance front is captured through a gated archway linking two 16th century ancillary ranges. There’s never an excuse for missing Vespers: St Bartholomew’s Church is to one side of the short driveway. To the east and north are nine hectares of gardens and across the haha is a five hectare lake. The estate extends to 188 hectares.

First impressions are of a golden hued stone Elizabethan house. This is both true and false: a concurrency of reality. Thomas Smythe’s house of 1582 is clearly visible, not least on his central datestone, but Lancelot “Capability” Brown, acting as architect and landscape designer from 1760 to 1780, replicated the existing bays on either side of the central forecourt. Further works would follow. In the East Wing, the family accommodation, the additional bay lights the Breakfast Room. The original bay lights the Library. In the West Wing, open to visitors for centuries, the additional bay is part of the Cabinet Room but is walled off – too many paintings to hang. The original bay is curtained off by the fourposter of the State Bedchamber.

The Cabinet Room and State Bedchamber form part of Corsham Court’s celebrated suite of State Rooms and are joined by the Picture Gallery and the Octagon Room. Original blood red damask wall hangings and chair coverings complement furniture by the Adam brothers, Chippendale, John Cobb and Thomas Johnson, as well as two family collections of Old Masters. Move over Wilton House near Salisbury with its double cube room – Lancelot’s triple cube (in multiples of 7.3 metres) Picture Gallery is breathtaking from its symmetrical hang of masterpieces to its deep coved and coffered plasterwork ceiling. Unlike the lead paned mullioned windows in most of the principal rooms, the Picture Gallery has five 12 pane sash windows framing views of the lake. The adjoining Cabinet Room has two sash windows, also on the east elevation. The Library and Picture Gallery appear in the 1993 film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. Living up to his moniker, Lancelot also designed the lake, completed by Sir Humphry Repton four decades later, and the Gothic Bath House.

The second generation of the Methuen family to own Corsham Court still required more space for their original art collection so commissioned John Nash to remodel the north part of the house. That didn’t end well. Despite charging quadruple his original fee proposal, the ambitious Gothic extension was poorly constructed and damp – not so good for paintings. Completed in 1805, it was demolished 41 years later. The polygonal dairy wing with its row of pointy gabled windows is all that remains of his extension. John Nash’s Library and the Dining Room chimneypiece, both in the south part of the house, survive. He also further Gothicised the Bath House.

Discovering John Nash’s fame sometimes slipped to infamy – there’s a reason these days why both planning design and detailed delivery architectural practices are employed for major developments – in 1849 the Methuen family chose Thomas Bellemy, not a household name this time, to design the rebuilding of the north part of the house. His monumental neo Elizabethan north elevation with its staircase tower rising above the roofs is collegiate in tone, best viewed from the far end of the long lawn bordered by deciduous trees. This is its third incarnation: John Nash’s Gothic front had replaced a 1749 Palladian design by Nathaniel Ireson. Thomas Bellemy also inserted windows between the pair of bays of the central setback on the entrance front. Revelling in a typically Victorian eclecticism, his Staircase Hall and Corridors are Italian Renaissance.

The west front is similar in style to the south front. The little published east front is the most playful elevation. Lancelot Brown’s restrained Palladian design – like Alan Hollinghurst’s description of a house in Our Evenings, 2024, “Sash windows up and down were gleams and depths across the great plain face of the building” – was jollied up by John Nash’s Gothic first floor oriel window and turreted trimmings. Its papery architecture is straight off the drawing board. Under John Nash’s remodelling, the Octagon Room lost two of its four chamfered walls so is now six sided. Its centrepiece is a 1790s octagonal rent table. The Dining Room and Music Room unlike the State Suite are in Thomas Bellemy’s neo Elizabethan mode. There is nothing staged about the interiors; no curator has been at work. It is an aesthetic education to be within these walls – first those of the estate, then those of the house.

Splinter Corsham Court into its constituent parts, extant and demolished, disperse and redistribute them, lower the grandeur while raising the vernacular, and Corsham High Street will appear. Parallel lines of Elizabethan to Victorian built form terminate at The Methuen Arms, a three bay three storey Georgian hotel. Most of the buildings share the same golden hued stone of Corsham Court. Others are harled and painted mustard or skin colour. And everywhere, estate and town, the peacocks, symbols of beauty, rebirth, wealth and pride.

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The Goldens + The Lisantis + The Circus Restaurant Bath Somerset

Golden Ratio

“They arrived at Bath. Catherine was all eager delight,” Jane Austen enthuses in Northanger Abbey (1818). Between the architectural ring of perfection that is The Circus and the arc of joy that is Royal Crescent lies the uncurved stretch of beauty that is Brock Street. This artery linking major works is mostly residential except for The Circus Restaurant which fills the ground floor and basement of a house between one of the two Beau Nash antiques shops and Cobb Farr estate agents. Brock Street is exceptionally pretty but this being Bath prettiness is actually the norm. The architecture is still grand Georgian but taken down a notch in formality compared to its heavily parapeted and haughtily pilastered geometrically daring abutting addresses. Charles Robertson notes in An Architectural Guide to Bath (1975), “John Wood the Younger deliberately kept the Brock Street elevations relatively plain.”

The owners of Beau Nash know all about chips as well as Chippendales and sherry as well as Sheratons. The Food Guide (2024) prepared by dealers Ron Pringle and Cynthia Wihardja states: “We haven’t eaten everywhere but we have tried many places. When we recommend a place it’s not only about the food. We also rate the sincerity of the service. We believe the two are essential for a memorable dining experience.” The Circus Restaurant gets their approval, “You can’t go wrong. Good food, honest prices, seasonal menus. Lovely service and very good value for money.” And The Dark Horse sounds too tempting to miss: “Our top place for pre dinner cocktails! A vast array of concoctions to suit any palette. Cosy quality atmosphere.”

The West Country’s first culinary power couple Head Chef Allison Golden and her husband Geoffrey opened the restaurant in 2007. She recalls the warm glow of that golden era, “Our busy independent restaurant served modern European food accompanied by Old World wines in a relaxed atmosphere. We cooked sincerely and straightforwardly to ensure everyone experienced the authentic taste in our ingredients. You’d never find any of the big names that turn wine into an industrial product. Each wine on our list was the individual expression of expertise.” It was the golden age of dining but time moves on and Ally and Geoff have driven off into the sunset in their gold coloured Lamborghini.

It was a gilt edged opportunity for Chef Matt Lisanti and his brother Mike to take over the restaurant – one they couldn’t resist. The staff were retained and the new golden boys are serving up the same type of modern European food and independent Old World wines. Autumn Menu highlights include Sharpham Brie Croquettes (mustard mayo, black garlic ketchup) starter for £9.30 and Cashew Massaman Coconut Curry (sweet potato, pineapple, lemongrass ginger sushi cake, puffed rice noodle) for £21.30. House White is Claude Val Pays d’Oc (fresh, green apples, tropical, creamy) priced £26.50. The food and wine are easy on the tastebuds and wallet; the service is easy on the eye. After a busy day buying first editions from George Baytun bookshop and handmade Italian jumpers from Gabucci (moda per uomo) it’s straight up from the bottom of Gay Street for dinner at the top. Squeezing in a cocktail in The Dark Horse en route of course. Friday evening in The Circus Restaurant is buzzy with a D4 (Dublin 4) feel to it. “What a delightful place Bath is,” cries Jane Austen’s Mrs Allen.

In his essay A Sense of Proportion John Julius Norwich writes, “Bath is a city of superlatives. First of all, it is the most beautiful in Britain. Next, it is the most appropriately named [unlike Bognor Regis which despite name boasts an elegant Victorian seafront] … Finally, and most gloriously of all, it is the one city in this country where fine building and inspired town planning go hand in hand, together creating an atmosphere of Palladian elegance and civilised refinement without equal anywhere.” That was 49 years ago. But as Jane Austen’s character Mr Tilney asked 206 years ago, “Oh, who can ever be tired of Bath?”

The 2nd Viscount Norwich, son of the socialite Lady Diana Cooper, continues, “The Circus, with its three splendid superimposed arcades loosely based on the Roman Colosseum, is a triumph. Still unfinished when John Wood died in 1754, it was completed by his son, who went on to create an even grander concept, the Royal Crescent, the first crescent in English architecture. In the work of both Woods we can see the principles of Palladian landscaping being followed just as much as those of Palladian proportions. In The Circus, the streets leading in are carefully arranged not to bisect it; in the same way the Royal Crescent, though less than 300 yards away from The Circus down a dead straight street, is actually invisible from it – which makes the sudden discovery one of the great dramatic moments of European architecture.”

He ends, “Yet the beauty of Bath and its uniqueness lie less in these individual triumphs than in the ensemble – in the squares and crescents and parades, ranging from The Circus to many a secluded, unpretentious street behind. The life they were built to sustain was vacuous, vapid and, one suspects, quite shatteringly dull; but they themselves embody very different values – strength, reason, humanity, permanence. This is the paradox of Bath. When the guidebooks call it ‘a monument to bygone elegance’ they are wrong. Only the perishable has perished. The elegance remains.” People come and go; the golden hued architecture is still on show. “The bright genius of Bath is hardly more than a beautiful display, the whim or flourish of an era,” argues Jan Morris in the introduction to Charles Robertson’s An Architectural Guide to Bath. “Edited to the smallest detail of perfection,” to use a phrase of Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors.

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The Royal Crescent Hotel + Montagu’s Mews Bath Somerset

The Silent Banshee

In the late 20th century Cotswolds based neoclassical architect William Bertram converted one of England’s greatest country houses into a hotel and a pair of England’s greatest townhouses into a hotel. At one time, both were owned by Von Essen Hotels. Cliveden House Hotel, Berkshire, and The Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath. Two of the three centremost houses of Royal Crescent were combined and a Dower House built in the mews in the early 1980s. In his book Bath (1944), Tony Smith sums up the country’s most majestic concave semi elliptical piece of architecture: “The whole conception and plan of this dazzling achievement is eloquent of the halcyon days of Bath.” Professor David Watkin describes it in The Practice of Classical Architecture: Quinlan and Francis Terry (2015) as “a half crescent facing down a grassy slope”. In 2010, the Terrys even designed their own crescent of retirement homes in Danbury, Essex.

“As the black of a dinner jacket sets off the bright colours of a dress, so the squares, crescents, quadrangles and circles of bath provide a geometric stage for the flow of life,” reckons Jan Morris in the introduction to An Architectural Guide to Bath by Charles Robertson (1975). William Lowndes notes in The Royal Crescent in Bath, (1981), “The central house of the Crescent is Number 16. It is one of the largest houses, and the adjacent houses also come into this category. There are two distinguishing features about the façade of Number 16 which emphasise its commanding position at the apex of the great curve of the Crescent. Four columns are grouped in pairs, and there is an arched first floor window from which both arms of the Crescent can be viewed in all their elegant symmetry.” There is a third distinguishing feature: it is the only house with single pane wide hall windows flanking the entrance door.

The treatment of the centre of the Crescent has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Charles Robertson notes, “The colonnade is not perfectly continuous; in the middle there is the most unobtrusive of breaks, four of the columns being grouped in pairs with a round headed window in between. This method of marking the centre has been variously criticised as being either unnecessary or insufficient. The former view was voiced as early as 1773, as quoted by Walter Ison, ‘The wretched attempt to make a centre to the Crescent where none was necessary is absurd and preposterous, in a high degree. The pairing of the pillars is too small a difference to be noted in so large a building …’” This 18th century critic radically suggests a chapel should have been placed in the middle of the terrace.

“The houses have had some notable occupants,” opines William Lowndes, “particularly during the first 50 years of their history. Elizabeth Montagu, who rejoiced in the spaciousness of their rooms, entertained many of the outstanding literary figures of the late 18th century there … The first dramatic change for over 100 years came in 1950, when Number 16 became a guesthouse. In 1971, together with Number 15, the guesthouse designation was abandoned, and The Royal Crescent Hotel was launched.” He records the presence of a ghost in Number 15: a lady in a long blue silk dress at the top of the stairs. She graciously descends, bestowing a warm smile on guests and staff, before disappearing. He guesses it is the social reformer and patron of the arts Elizabeth Montagu still enjoying her home from beyond the grave. “I believe unique places and people are what give the fabric of our lives richness,” says Edward Gabbai, Founder and Director of the Boutique Hotel Awards.

A hotel is the perfect alternative use and does not require subdivision: these houses were built for entertaining. John Haddon frets in Portrait of Bath (1982), “Conversion is not easy and some of these flats are not particularly convenient, although others are rather splendid. After all, these houses were built without electricity or gas, upstairs piped water, bathrooms, or, in many cases WCs, and they were heated by coal fires, so that to provide separate entrances, kitchens, lavatories and bathrooms on each floor calls for a good deal of ingenuity, although more recent conversions to what the selling agents like to call ‘prestigious apartments’ is made easier by gutting the building and rebuilding behind the original façade. Moreover, subdivision of Georgian rooms destroys their proportions and creates units which tend to be too high for their width. On the other hand, if a room is left as originally built it is expensive to heat.”

John Wood the Younger employed several builders on the 30 houses. They were all constrained by defined dimensions and designs on the cut limestone ashlar façade while allowed to run amok inside and to the rear. Over the course of eight years starting in 1767, the 152 metre long 15 metre high 114 engaged six metre tall Roman Ionic columned terrace took shape in all its geometric sophistication. The columns support a continuous returned balustraded parapet, modillion cornice and frieze. The occasional plate glass window, blind box and metal balconette are almost the only later derivations from the architect’s original concept. One other variation counteracting the powerful elongated temple front is found in the fanlight glazing bars including single pane; three vertical panes; diamond, oval and fish eye patterns. The number of entrance door panels also varies. Clever maths is at play to allow a central door in a terrace of an even number of 30 houses: 95 windows are shared unevenly. Number 1 is three bays wide on the curve; Number 2 to 13 are each three bays wide; Numbers 14 to 16 are each four bays wide; Numbers 17 to 29 are each three bays wide; and Number 30 is four bays wide on the curve.

The architect stipulated that the exterior woodwork must be painted white in perpetuity. Two centuries later, Annabel Wellesley-Colley broke the covenant much to the horror of her neighbours. In 1972 she painted the front door of her house yellow, and to make matters even worse, hung yellow blinds either side of it. She then took to sunbathing on her balcony wearing a yellow bikini. Naturally, Annabel chose the same hue for the suit she wore to the consequent public inquiry at Bath’s Guildhall. She won. “I am a descendent of the Duke of Wellington whose favourite colour was yellow and I regard it as my duty to uphold the tradition!” declared Annabel Wellesley-Colley. The door of Number 22 is still yellow. Charles Robertson wasn’t impressed: “The yellow door and blinds demonstrate how idiosyncrasy can spill over into bad manners.”

Lunch in Montagu’s Mews overlooking the gardens is an incredibly stylish affair. The delicately decorated ground floor reception rooms of William Bertram’s building flow into each other with grace and charm. Elizabeth Montagu would approve if she ever ventures beyond the staircase hall of Number 15. After the geometric perfection of the famous façade, the rear elevations of the Crescent are a glorious asymmetric jumble best viewed over Cornish day boat fish. “A fascinating disharmony,” observes Richard Morriss (on the architecture not the food) in The Buildings of Bath (1993). “A hodge podge, job lot look, an enthralling muddle,” adds Jan Morris (still on the architecture).

Julia Kent provided a review for House and Garden in May 1987, “The restaurant at The Royal Crescent Hotel is an elegant setting for elegant food, the style of which is contemporary yet classic. First courses have recently included gâteaux of wild mushrooms (a crisp potato galette with creamed spinach and girolles) with timbale of trout with a ragout of shellfish and a rich langoustine butter sauce. For the main course, you might opt for fillet of salmon steamed with cucumber and chive cream sauce. A three course meal from the à la carte menu costs about £27.00.” Lunch is a trifle (or two) more expensive these days.

A lifetime ago, Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, shared her thoughts that interiors can be classified as either cluttered, hot climate, designer decorated, minimal, ancestral, simple, shabby chic or eccentric. Her London home was definitely “shabby chic” (a term she’d invented) while her Canary Islands retreat was of course “hot climate”. Min did admit, “To subdivide all the glories of interior design into a mere eight categories is shockingly presumptuous but they are fundamental.” The original drawing room of Number 16 currently falls into “modern” unlike the “ancestral” interior of the great fun museum in Number 1 Royal Crescent, one of the two five bay fronted end houses. The middle bay of each of the two end houses is defined by a wider gap between the engaged Roman Ionic columns either side of the central first and second floor windows above a pedimented Doric doorcase. This could have been an alternative solution to the central treatment of the Crescent. The corners of the end houses are emphasised by paired engaged columns on the principal elevations.

Who could forget the cartoon amidst the ancestral decoration of Number 1 Royal Crescent sitting room of a gentleman performing the Dicky Dangle Dance? Back at The Royal Crescent Hotel, the modern art of the drawing room recalls The Snob Spotter’s Guide by Philippe Jullian (1958), “Molly was telling me that at the beginning of his career Picasso used a lot of blue in his pictures. She calls it his Blue Period.” Truer to form, Montagu’s Mews is subtly “designer decorated”. Min often commented, “Beautiful interior decoration will always be one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

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The Landmark Trust + Marshal Wade’s House Bath Somerset

Unvernacular

“I can well remember the first time I entered Bath. It was a very hot day in the summer of 1937 … towards the evening I came to the hills which engirdle the Queen City of the West. Tired and footsore as I was, I lost nothing of that breathtaking moment when the eye first catches sight of that lovely terraced city. Lying, so to speak, in a vast amphitheatre, surrounded by hills of enchanting beauty, it seemed like a city out of an Eastern romance, a new Jerusalem built by some magic hand in England’s green and pleasant land.” That is how Tony Smith reminisced on the Pride of Wessex in his 1944 book simply titled Bath. Hyperbole becomes reality in this city.

Four decades later Kenneth Hudson notes in The Fashionable Stone, “The development of the Combe Down quarries at Bath in the 18th century was due almost entirely to the enterprise of Ralph Allen, who went into the stone business immediately after the Avon navigation was completed in 1727. The improvement in communication by water from Bath made it possible to ship stone by barge to Bristol and from there by ship to anywhere in Britain. It was the Avon navigation that broke the virtual export monopoly that Portland had held for so long.”

The Landmark Trust’s central Bath property predates John Wood the Elder and John Wood the Younger’s developments. This remarkable 1720s townhouse built for Ralph Allen’s friend Field Marshal George Wade – swapping his military life in the Scottish highlands for political life as MP for Bath – was rescued by the Trust in 1975. The ground and first floors are retail use. The top two floors of this now single aspect (save for one landing roof window) south facing building are holiday accommodation. Two reception rooms evenly occupy the four bays of the second floor. A freestanding octagonal kitchen (sink, cooker, fridge and cupboards all in one waist height compact unit) in one of the reception rooms is parallel with five of the walls including the chamfered chimneypiece wall. This allows the panelling and bolection mouldings to remain intact. Two bedrooms on the storey above have floors so slanted that walking across them is like being tipsy on a rocky boat.

All seven main windows (one of the windows in the outer bathroom wall is a dummy) of the palazzo façade overlook Abbey Churchyard. Thankfully it’s a car free space unlike The Circus and Royal Crescent. The angels climbing up and down Jacob’s Ladder on the west elevation of Bath Abbey are almost in touching distance. Directly opposite are the roofs of The Pump Room. The best view is from the loo on the top floor. Unusually for this hallowed and documented city, the provenance of Marshal Wade’s House is lost in the mists of time. The architect was certainly familiar with Andrea Palladio’s Libri dell’Architettura of 1570. “The Ionic pilasters are the first in Bath of the giant order,” Richard Morriss confirms in The Buildings of Bath (1993), “rising through two storeys.” Charles Robertson records in An Architectural Guide to Bath (1974), “The attic storey is somewhat different and may have been added or altered at a later date. “The building next door to the east clearly has a later top floor.

Heading downhill and arriving four decades later, Robert Adam’s Pulteney Bridge is a lighter version of neoclassicism in contrast to the virility of Marshal Wade’s House. Richard Morriss ponders, “It is said to reflect Palladio’s proposal for the Rialto Bridge in Venice.” Charles Robertson isn’t so sure: “Walter Ison suggests that the design may be adapted from a drawing in Palladio’s Terzo Libri dell’Architettura but the resemblance is not at all close, and Adam would presumably have regarded imitation of Palladio as old fashioned. There is really no reason to consider this simple but masterly design as anything other than original.”

So who was the first occupant of this house? George Wade’s family had settled in County Westmeath in the 17th century. Clearly at some stage he crossed the Irish Sea to settle in the West Country. Denise Chantrey records in George Wade 1673 to 1748 (2009), “Wade was a man who made and kept many friends who might easily have been his enemies. He was straightforward and honest, and made a point of seeing the other man’s point of view. He was a flamboyant character and he loved cards, wine, women, comfort, good furniture and art. He had friends in high places but gambled in low dives. He was vain and often commissioned portraits of himself which he gave to family and friends.” It would be rude not to continue the established partying tradition then in his not so humble Palladian abode.

Director of The Landmark Trust Dr Anna Keay explains, “Over 50,000 people now stay every year in The Landmark Trust’s buildings and experience the pleasure of carrying the key of the door in their pocket, ‘a stimulus more powerful than a mere ticket of admission’, and the possibility, for which Landmark was founded, that they ‘might go back home with an interest awakened that would grow, and perhaps last them all of their lives’.” An awakened interest it is then but not before afternoon sherry is decanted at a stop off in Corkage. Life is a stage behind the velvet curtains of this intimate restaurant and bottle shop on Chapel Row. “There is a poignancy,” writes Jan Morris in the introduction to Charles Robertson’s Guide, “to this diminutive side of Bath, or if not a poignancy, a wistfulness.”

In The Landmark Handbook (1988) the then Prince of Wales wrote in the forward: “While I am fortunate to be the Patron or President of a great many charities, I have always been a particular enthusiast for the work of The Landmark Trust. Its philosophy accords closely with my own convictions that historic buildings need – indeed deserve – sympathetic and skilled repair and a viable contemporary purpose both to survive and thrive. It is wonderful that the Trust’s restored buildings give much enjoyment, as well as earn the income to support themselves and the charity that cares for them.” Much enjoyment – taking his now Majesty’s advice the toons are turned up! Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, liked to have the last word, “The most successful houses reflect their surroundings.”

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St Augustine’s Grange + St Edward’s Presbytery Ramsgate Kent

All Saints

It’s the 172nd anniversary of the death of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, an important day to arrive at St Augustine’s Grange, Ramsgate, where he died on 14 September 1852. Despite his considerable contribution to architecture, he was only 40. But there is nothing morbid about our sun soaked visit to the Gothic Revivalist’s home and adjoining property, St Edward’s Presbytery, high above the shoreline of east Kent. This Grade I Listed enclave has been pristinely preserved and rationally revived as holiday accommodation by The Landmark Trust, that keeper of follies and other quirks of built heritage.

The interrelationship of the two houses set in the wider context of St Augustine’s Church next door (by Augustus) and St Augustine’s Monastery opposite (by Augustus’ eldest son Edward) is best experienced from the viewing platform of the tower (which houses water tanks and WCs) of The Grange. It’s a complex and clever Gothic jigsaw. Glorious built form, glorious urban scenery. Excitement of architecture is matched by thrill of geography: a sweep of coastline takes in Sandwich Bay and a distant Deal.

In his Introduction (2003) to The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture and An Apology for The Revival of Christian Architecture (1841 and 1843) Dr Roderick O’Donnell writes, “Pugin was to be at his most influential in reforming the practice of the Gothic Revival and domestic architecture of what, in another context, he called the ‘middle class’ home, and his revolutionary influence on its construction, planning and decoration was first demonstrated in his own house, St Augustine’s Grange, Ramsgate (1843). Pugin thus stands at the wellspring of 19th century architectural and design reform, which was to be reflected in the institution that would become the Victoria and Albert Museum, the publications of Ruskin, and the architecture and decorative programme of William Morris … the paternity of the 20th century Modern Movement can be tracked back to Pugin and to True Principles.”

To the early 21st century eye The Grange and The Presbytery may appear to be simply high quality Victorian architecture, but to the mid 19th century eye the elevational subservience to the plan would have appeared as a radical reversal of the neoclassical norm. A striking honesty is at work: no blind windows or screen walls; instead a proliferation of asymmetric window arrangements and visible buttresses. Augustus’ work is the antithesis of the contemporaneous symmetrical Italianate pair of villas closer to Ramsgate Royal Harbour called Vale and likely built by the developer William Saxby.

The Grange, a family house, looks across to the English Channel over the West Cliffs. The Presbytery, a secular priest’s house which came seven years later, is tucked between The Grange and St Augustine’s Road. Both were designed by Augustus; both have light filled additions by Edward. The porch of The Grange and the first floor studio of The Presbytery, each glazed above dado height, are second generation Pugin.

There is weight to the choice of materials: the unknapped flint of The Presbytery symbolically straddles the secular and religious: St Augustine’s Church is built of knapped flint and Whitby stone; The Grange, of London stock brick with Caen stone dressings. Dr Anna Keay, Director of The Landmark Trust, sums up the two properties as “Gothic heaven and available to all of us to book for a stay”. Upon entering through Edward’s gates to be greeted by a pair of heraldic stone lions on top of the gateposts, we’re enjoying Augustus’ oft quoted “delight of the sea with Catholic architecture and a library”.

The internal layout of The Grange was just as quietly groundbreaking as the exterior. A practical arrangement of main rooms clustered around a central staircase hall without any servants’ corridors would prove to be the forerunner of later Victorian suburban housing. Subsequent architects like Sir Edwin Lutyens would be inspired by Augustus’ thoughtful design such as the positioning of windows based on capturing the optimal light and framing the best views.

The family chapel, reception rooms and bedrooms are richly decorated with a wealth of pattern and colour provided by stained glass windows, wallpaper and encaustic tiles. In contrast, the uncontrived simplicity and solidity of the kitchen dresser would herald the honesty of workmanship of the Arts and Crafts movement led by among others Philip Webb and Charles Voysey. Augustus believed features should be decorated but must be functional. According to Stephen Coote in William Morris His Life and Work (1995), “Pugin declared, ‘Ornament should be no more than enrichment of the essential composition.’” This dedication to functionality as a starting point would sew the seeds of Modernism in the following century.

Dr Roderick O’Donnell wrote the entry for Edward Welby Pugin in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004): “Edward Welby Pugin (1834 to 1875), architect, was born on 11 March 1834 at Ramsgate, the eldest son of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 to 1852) and his second wife, Louisa Burton (circa 1813 to 1844). He was trained by his father and at the age of 18 found himself in charge of his father’s practice, which he developed with many pupils and various partnerships, most importantly with his brother-in-law George Coppiner Ashlin in Ireland (1859 to 1869) and his brother Peter Paul Pugin (1851 to 1904) … Edward Pugin’s practice was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. He worked initially in his father’s preferred Decorated Gothic style … From 1856 his style became more elaborate but his church plans simpler by widening the span of the arcades, diminishing chancel arches, and abolishing rood screens, so as to achieve simple sightlines set in shallow apses.”

Edward died unmarried in the arms of his brother Cuthbert Welby Pugin at his home on Victoria Street, Westminster. He was more outgoing than his father, frequenting Turkish baths and attending charitable functions. Roderick argues he was less important an architect than his father yet notes his style and plans became normative for Roman Catholic churches in the British Isles in the latter half of the 19th century. We reckon Edward’s surviving additions provide another layer of interest to The Grange and The Presbytery. The family firm continued as Pugin and Pugin.

Surrendering to the familial draw of Ramsgate, Cuthbert retired to The Grange where he died unmarried on 25 March 1928, outliving the combined age of his father and older brother by five years. The Landmark Trust decisively removed most of Edward’s additions to The Grange including a drawing room extension, conservatory and several chimneypieces. Cuthbert’s 1880s alterations to The Presbytery were also demolished. We depart Ramsgate with a newfound understanding and appreciation of Pugin the Elder and Pugins the Younger.

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Seabird Restaurant + Vale + Valerian Lodge + Liverpool Lawn Ramsgate Kent

Beyond The Vale

The seaside town of Ramsgate in the southeast of England is incredibly distinguished: it has the largest Wetherspoon’s in England. It also has the only Royal Harbour in the country. In a neat linguistic loop the vast tavern occupies the Royal Victoria Pavilion which overlooks the regally moored yachts. Wetherspoon’s verandah is the perfect place to view the golden sands over a preprandial pint. Moving a few blocks inland, Seabird has indoor and outdoor seating – and cooking. Civilised lunch on the terrace is straight from the en plein air grill. Unmissable delights are fennel, feta, cucumber, olive and lemon followed by buttermilk and vanilla pannacotta with brandy soaked Victoria plums.

Gosh so many houses so little time. The domestic architecture of Ramsgate is a rich melange of all the best bits of the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of it is frayed round the edges – this town is genteel rather than gentrified, chilled instead of cool, warm and friendly not hot and trendy. Away from the scale and grandeur of the cliff houses, selected highlights, and not just on an alliterative nomenclature basis, are Vale, Valerian Lodge and Liverpool Lawn.

Close to Seabird, Vale is an impressive triple fronted end of terrace square building split into two semi detached villas. The three storey (with attic and basement) pair share a five bay end elevation: the middle bay is a blind window. A vast scrolled pediment concealing the setback top floor has the word Vale (in upper case) raised on a central panel. The two unshared elevations comprise three wider bays. Rather charmingly, the stucco to the ‘front’ house is painted bright grey; the ‘back’ house is in its natural darker grey pigment free stucco state. Like twin girls but one is wearing makeup. Vale was most likely built by the developer William Saxby in the 1840s.

Valerian Lodge on Grange Road is further up the hill from Seabird on the way to Ramsgate Railway Station. It’s a rather elegant Regency or very early Victorian house set in a miniature 0.2 hectare walled estate filled with holm oak, turkey oak, horse chestnut and sycamore. The house is a long low two storey (over basement) rectangular block: one of the short two elevations faces the road. A tented balcony with trellised piers linking two of the five first floor bedrooms peers over the brick and flint boundary wall. Except for render above the balcony, walls are pale brown brick. In 2015, a single storey garden room in matching style linked by a glazed lobby was added to the short elevation facing away from the road. It was designed by Margate architects Duncan and Graham. Valerian Lodge has the tallest chimneypots in Kent – or at least on Grange Road.

Not far from Wetherspoon’s, Liverpool Lawn was built by James Crisford between 1827 and 1836. A crescent and various straight terraces face a triangular green (that Lawn!). Liverpool Villa and Liverpool House are a pair of three storey brown brick houses: flat fronted facing the Lawn and two full height bow windows on the other principal elevation. These townhouses are aptly of a scale and appearance (especially the painted ground floor lintels) popular in Liverpool. Numbers 20, 21 and 23 form a stuccoed two storey terrace. Number 20 has a three bay façade on the short elevation and is just one bay deep facing the Lawn. Numbers 21 and 22 have identical three bay façades (actually three and a bit bay: they share a central first floor blind window) facing the Lawn. Liverpool Lawn is developer led residential use at its finest.

In 2013, Liverpool Lawn was extended by seven townhouses next to Liverpool Villa and Liverpool House. Built by developer Kentish Projects, designer Anthony Browne of Chelsea Consultants explains, “The houses were designed to mimic neighbouring bow fronted Grade II Listed Georgian properties, while also adapting interior contemporary elements. The houses at the end of the terrace were finished in a contrasting white castellated style. The development utilises hand cut Flemish bond brickwork, lime mortar and stone Gothic window arches. The bespoke wooden windows, doors and railings were crafted to original standards.”

Harriet Kean writes in the October 2024 edition of Tatler, “Wetherspoon’s are the cornerstones of society where everyone comes together. These days everybody’s at the pub. Why go to The Surprise in Chelsea when there’s an Earl of Mulgrave approved Wetherspoon’s: The Montagu Pyke? Everyone who’s anyone is currently mourning The Asparagus: the famed ’Spoon’s in Battersea that to the despair of socialites everywhere closed this year and then reopened as a bougie pub with craft beers. But The Asparagus did have its heyday, attracting everyone from the Morgan-Gileses to Old Marlburian Charlie Girardot.” Fear not: Ramsgate Wetherspoon’s is but a Tube and train ride away from Sloane Square.

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Jody Breese + Jim Breese + Penelope Wine Bar Ramsgate Kent

Sipping Like Dowagers Dancing Like Dervishes

One block back from the sea breeze, there’s a beat in the air. Architect William George Osborne’s tall sliver of a building with its ornate late 19th century façade couldn’t be more different than designer Peter Chadwick’s pared back early 21st century ground floor interior. Penelope is the creation of Jody and Jim Breese – the latter is also the resident DJ. The pair have brought natural wine and vinyl and a party spirit to their hometown. Saturday nights in downtown Ramsgate are all about shooting the breeze at Penelope.

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Montmartre Museum + Renoir Garden Paris + Auguste Herbin

Room for Love  

Mees Salomé’s Higher is playing while we enjoy cheesy omelette on the terrace of Le Deli’s on Rue du Mont-Cenis watching the competitive joggers beat the gradient. It’s all about being above and beyonders, top performers, brand champions, role models, best of the best, on the frontline. We’re getting high. A spiritual high. A romantic high. A physical high. A Paris high. Adoring Montmartre. Sleaze (Boulevard de Clichy) turns to class (Rue Cortot) in direct correlation to altitude. So it’s onwards and upwards to the Montmartre Museum which is so much more than its name suggests. The museum is a summit situated collection of spaces set in the shadow of the towering roofscapes of Sacré Coeur and Château d’Eau de Montmartre. One a monument to spiritual health, the other a monument to physical health. This urban composition at the highest topographical point of Paris oozes up at heel bohemian charm.

“Modern Paris exists largely because of one man – Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, otherwise known as Emperor Napoléon III, nephew of the more gifted Napoléon I. It was he who conceived a compact Paris tied together with wide boulevards, and hired the man who made it reality,” explains John Baxter in Montmartre Paris’s Village of Art and Sin (2017). “To create these thoroughfares and the buildings that lined them, the Emperor appointed ‘Baron’ Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a town planner sufficiently far seeing to visualise a modern Paris and ruthless enough to realise it.”

Montmartre, or at least the hill itself, was never quite Hausmannised and developed more organically in picturesque clusters of development. This peak of the 18th Arrondisement was of course the pinnacle of civilisation in the 1920s. “Paris. No word sounded sweeter to me!” the artist Marc Chagall recalled in his 1957 autobiography My Life. Artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Maurice Utrillo, Raoul Dufy, Émile Bernard and Suzanne Valadon all worked in the collection of buildings that is now the museum. The former’s garden with its iconic swing and the latter’s studio with its used paintbrushes have both been recreated. The composer Erik Satie lived next door.

The Master Revealed is the current exhibition celebrating the life work of Auguste Herbin (1882 to 1960). Occasionally whacky, always brilliant, this painter embraced all the main art movements of the 20th century. Auguste moved seamlessly between Fauvism, Cubism, Abstract, Post Impressionism, Realism and Musicalism. He was very much a man of his time. Curator Fanny de Lépanau opines, “Given that he produced work for such a long period and of such high quality, it is surprising that Auguste Herbin has never had an exhibition in a Parisian museum.” She laments his undeserved descent into relative obscurity despite a successful career across Europe spanning six decades. Perhaps this exhibition will act as a catalyst to resurrect his reputation and establish his deserved place in the history of 20th century art.

The exhibition illustrates the artist’s versatility and includes portraits, self portraits, still lifes, townscapes, landscapes and even his plastic alphabet. One of the standout townscape works is the intensely mysterious Paysage Nocturne à Lille (1901). Another wintry painting is Toits de Paris Sous la Neige (1902), an atmospheric snowstorm scene captured at eyre level. The standout landscape Paysage Méridional (1924) reveals such a sunny disposition. La Vieux Pont à Bruges (1906) and La Place Maubert (1907) are explosions of vibrant colour. Auguste Herbin believed, “The more abstract art is, the more it expresses personality. The more abstract art is, the more it identifies with a thousand and one personalities.” Nature Morte Aux Feuilles  (1917) does just that.

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Murlough Country House + Dundrum Down

The Business of Heaven on Earth

County Down, the east coast riviera of the north of Ireland, is blessed with large Georgian houses. The five bay two storey variety with all the upright prettiness of a doll’s house is especially prevalent in the southern half of this county. Woodford House, Dromara; Milltown House, Lenaderg; Beech Park, Leansmount and Kilmore House, all in Lurgan; Tullymurry House, Newry; Cabragh House, Rathfriland; and Annaghanoon House, Waringstown are just a few examples.

Murlough Country House (formerly known as Murlough Farm) on Keel Point betwixt Dundrum Bay and Murlough Bay looks earlier than most. The roof is higher; the wall to window ratio greater; the window boxes deeper. It firmly falls into the category ‘middling sized houses’ (a phrase originally adapted by Sir Charles Brett from Maurice Craig’s 1976 Classic Houses of the Middle Size) in Philip Smith’s 2019 guide to architecture in South County Down, a continuation of Charlie’s series. The windowsills and entrance door are painted peach to match the colour of the jagged brick eaves.

We spoke to leaders in tourism and the arts to garner their views ahead of staying at the house and experiencing the local village of Dundrum. Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, observes, “Murlough Country House is indeed a rather fine house, charmingly Irish and looking very good newly harled and painted.” Charles Plante, international tastemaker and former Art Advisor to Sir Hardy Amies, Queen Elizabeth II’s dressmaker, remarks, “This house brings together neoclassical and provincial architecture in an appealing vernacular – the Georgian style at its best and rarest in Ireland.”

David Roberts, Director of Strategic Development at Tourism NI, elaborates, “Northern Ireland’s heritage is a cornerstone of our tourism offering. For more than a decade, Tourism NI and our partners have been working closely together to drive investment in high quality heritage experiences and accommodation which are attractive to visitors. Our research has shown that the ‘culturally curious’ segment of visitors represents great potential for being attracted to Northern Ireland in the future.”

He tells us, “Historic buildings can provide exciting, place based visitor experiences which can encourage longer stays in one location and more local exploring. Promoting connections between places and a more regionally balanced tourism sector are key objectives for the emerging Northern Ireland tourism strategy. The visitor brand for Northern Ireland ‘Embrace A Giant Spirit’ embodies and draws inspiration from the area’s heritage. Tourism NI is delighted to have Murlough Country House as a provider of high quality visitor accommodation. It provides a fantastic base for visitors to explore the Mournes and the wider area.”

Philip Smith writes, “The first Murlough House was not the large Victorian era Italianate style villa built by Lord Downshire but this smaller less formal yet in many respects more interesting house about one kilometre to the east. It is a charming unpretentious two storey over high basement block with a steeply pitched hipped roof, large multiphase but relatively homogeneous triple pile return and two sturdy centrally positioned chimneystacks.” Mourne Farm started out as a slim rectangular block with a central staircase return wing. An extension either side of the return enlarged the building: the blocked up rear elevation windows of the 18th century house became cupboards. Horn free sashes give way to the later horned variety.

He notes that the long straight tree lined avenue is a good indicator of age and is likely to be early 18th century despite not appearing on Oliver Sloane’s Down Map of 1739. The present house is marked on Kennedy’s Map of 1755. The Centre for Archaeology Fieldwork at Queen’s University Belfast completed an Excavation Report of Blundell’s House at Dundrum Castle in 2009. Included in this report is a 1758 ink, graphite and wash drawing by Mary Delany titled The Ruins of Dundrum Castle. In the background it appears to show Murlough Farm albeit three rather than five bays wide. The Delanys rented Mount Panther three kilometres to the north of Dundrum around that time.

Philip continues, “Since the mid 1600s, the Blundells had been absentees and thereafter their house may have been occupied by their agents; but by 1748 the ‘slate house by the castle of Dundrum’ was reported to be in ‘disrepair’ and not long after this ‘Murlough House’ begins to appear in the record; it may well, therefore, have been built as a replacement.” The hillside and hilltop ruins of the 12th century Dundrum Castle form a spectacular backdrop to the village and the perfect vantage point to survey the Ancient Kingdom of Mourne.

Dr Ciarán Reilly records in The Evolution of the Irish Land Agent: The Management of the Blundell Estate in the 18th century, 2018, that the career of father and son Henry and John Hatch as agents of the 5,600 hectare Blundell Estate lasted over 50 years. The Dublin based Henry Hatch, taking up his position in 1747, would have housed property managers at Murlough Farm. The 3rd Marquess of Downshire, a Blundell descendant, would deliver a 91 metre long pier for Dundrum in the early 19th century. The Downshire family still retains a house in Murlough.

The Armstrong family lived in Murlough Country House from 1991 to 2023 before selling it to the current owners. Belfast architect Dawson Stelfox advised on heritage matters. “We restored the blue slate and copper nail roof,” Elaine Armstrong confirms, “and added hipped roofs over the two flat roofed extensions to the back. We also added the authentic orangery style Conservatory. When we got the front door lock restored, the craftsman said the key dates from 1730. It’s a special building and we fell in love with it. We’re so thrilled to see it being brought back into life as holiday accommodation.”

Like many Belfast citizens, Clive Staples Lewis developed an early love of the Mourne Mountains. Or the Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as it’s now known: all 57,000 protected hectares. The novelist, theologian and mathematician wrote, “I have seen landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains and southwards which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge. I yearn to see County Down in the snow; one almost expects to see a march of dwarves dashing past. How I long to break into a world where such things were true.”

The restoration of Murlough Country House and its 2.4 hectare estate – a little piece of Narnia – is an essay on correct conservation, surpassing any former glory. The courtyard facing elevation, or southeast front, is different in character to the entrance front. All three storeys are on full display and the series of hipped roofs lends it the delineated air of a château. The white painted harling of the house so admired by Tim Knox contrasts with the grey rubblestone and cut stone of the outbuildings. This is holiday accommodation at its finest.

On the lower ground floor, the large southeast facing Shield’s Conservatory with a dining table for 12 people projects into the courtyard. Agar’s Snug, a cosy room with a wood burning stove leads off the professional chef’s standard Shield’s Kitchen fitted with Shaker style cupboards. Blundell is an accessible bedroom and shower room suite. No 18th century house is complete without a Boot Room.

At ground floor level, the elegant Entrance Hall terminated by a flying dogleg staircase is flanked by Maitland, a drawing room, and Downshire, a cinema. Formerly a dining room, a dumb waiter still connects Downshire to the lower ground floor. The Entrance Hall spans three metres and three centuries of living (from 18th century elegance to 21st century technology). An abbreviated enfilade. Mitchell is the king size ground floor bedroom with a shower room next door. It’s impossible to tell it was once the kitchen. Four first floor bedrooms look out across the gardens to Murlough National Nature Reserve and onwards to the Mountains of Mourne. A tasteful roundelay.

Annesley is the principal suite and faces northwest with views onto the side lawn. The walls are painted ‘clover’ in the Edward Bulmer range. A vintage Louis de Poortere rug adds even more vibrancy. Dual aspect super king size Armstrong bedroom occupies the full depth of the 18th century main block. Two shuttered northwest facing windows set into the thick walls frame the front lawn and paddock; a third window overlooks the driveway. The king size Macartney also overlooks the front lawn and paddock. Lore has it that the handblown glass in the two sash windows of this room was salvaged from a Jacobean house. Magennes is a northeast facing king size bedroom. A former nursery, this sunny yellow room was featured in a Farrow and Ball book. We recognise Nina Campbell and Christopher Farr curtains and cushions.

“Oh I do love a bit of T ‘n’ G,” our friend Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, told us over coffee one time in her nursery floor apartment above the treetops of Brompton Square in London. There’s plenty of tongue and groove panelling in these bedrooms. Naming rooms is very much a South County Down tradition: think Mourne Park House. At Murlough, the rooms are called after families associated with the house and area. No 21st century country house is complete without a Sauna.

The abutting estates of Murlough Country House and Murlough House share a coastal landmass of great natural beauty attached to mainland all protected by the National Trust. Wetlands on one side, sandy beach on the other. Designated in 1967, Murlough is Ireland’s first National Nature Reserve and has the country’s best and most extensive dune heath. We stroll through its 280 unspoiled hectares. Wildflowers, wildfowl, wild ponies (everything is wild); unbothered living, forever steeped in Sunday stillness … it’s hard to believe Belfast is only 50 kilometres away and Dublin 150 kilometres. We care to disagree with Clive Staples Lewis, “Adventures are never fun while you’re having them.”

Now London based, artist Anne Davey Orr shares her reflections with us from across the water on Murlough. As Founding Editor and Publisher of Ulster Architect magazine, former Board Member of Belfast Civic Trust, Arts Council, National Trust, Design Council and Chair of The Lyric Theatre Belfast she is well placed. “Murlough or Muirbolc in Gaelige means ‘seabag’ or ‘inlet’. The modesty of this title hides its importance on a number of levels.”

Anne continues, “These heartlands of the MacCartan and MacGuinness clans were forfeited to John de Courcy when he marched on Ulster in his attempts to conquer Ireland. MacGuinness Castle was renamed Dundrum Castle. Donal Oge MacCartan, a MacGuinness cousin, surrendered the castle in 1601 to Lord Mountjoy, in Irish terms renowned for the gaol named after him in Dublin. In 1605 it was made over to Lord Cromwell and sold to Sir George Blundell in 1636.”

Maurice Craig states in The Architecture of Ireland, 1982, “John de Courcy set out from Dublin and took Downpatrick in 1176. He married the daughter of the King of Man and kept princely state himself, founding Inch Abbey and (through his wife) Grey Abbey, and beginning the castles of Carrickfergus and Dundrum.” The layering of the centuries. The entrance to Murlough Country House encapsulates the duality of its character: simple square capped pillars heralding a farmhouse; a stretch of walls attached to either side suggesting something grander. On the far side of the main road, the Slidderyford Dolmen – a megalithic portal tomb – makes Dundrum Castle look positively modern.

Neighbour Edward ‘Ned’ Cummins calls by for coffee in Shield’s Conservatory. We get chatting: “I’ve lived here all my life. My dad came to work here with horses on this farm when he was 14 years of age. I own the retired racehorses in the field next door. If I hadn’t accepted them they would’ve gone to France to be eaten. The proper way into this house was down my lane before what they call the ‘Downshire Bridge’ was built. Before that there was a wooden bridge. Where would you get a causeway like that going to a private house?”

Coffee and conversation are flowing. “The Yanks stayed here during the War. The trees down the driveway are all big trees but you come to a place that is nice and flat and they’re very small trees. The Americans cut the trees down and brought aeroplanes into that field there. They took over this whole farm too. There’s a strip out there for the planes to land. There was a load of Nissan huts round the back. They’re all gone now. The Annesleys bought this place for £12,000 I would say shortly after the War. They built the bathroom extension in the 70s. It’s block not stone. The buildings behind the house are the Coach House, Middle Barn, Piggeries and Woodworker’s Barn. The one roomed Bothy was the gamekeeper’s house.”

Ned ends, “Brunel designed SS Great Britain and it ran aground in Dundrum Bay in 1846. The captain got drunk and ran it straight into the sand bar. Brunel came over and stayed in the Downshire Arms Hotel for about a year. He orchestrated strapping the ship and hacking it up to get it seaworthy again. SS Great Britain was the first iron hulled screw propelled steamship.”

Peeling ourselves away from Murlough Country House, we wend our way into Dundrum, the gourmet capital of South County Down. Thrice. Colour seeps into Irish village architecture and Dundrum is no exception. Lunch is in Mourne Seafood Bar (the exterior is painted duck egg blue on the ground floor, goose grey on the upper floors and the northeast wing is sorbet yellow). Dinner in The Buck’s Head (painted olive green). Drinks in The Dundrum Inn (pineapple yellow and blackcurrant purple). The striking house with a gable clock and weathervane opposite Mourne Seafood Bar is salmon pink. Next morning coffee is in Cúpla with its damson blue signage – its name comes from the Irish for twins after Dominque and Shane Gibben who own the café.

But first there’s a visit to Dundrum Coastal Rowing Club. Andrew Boyd and Robert Graham proudly show off two boats they’ve built: Danny Buoy and Mystic Wave. “It started off as a community project to reconnect people round this coastline with our boat building heritage,” explains Robert. Traditional St Ayles skiffs were built by locals along the County Down coast from Donaghadee to Dundrum. “It took us six months to build Danny Buoy. We finished it the night before the 2016 Skiff World Championship Rowing Race. We just got it out into the bay to give it a test that it floated and then went straight into the race and won! We generated lots of interest and so we ordered the second kit and built Mystic Wave.”

Andrew is the founder of Kilmegan Cider. He relates, “I started about a mile away from Dundrum. It was my parents’ orchard and every year when we were younger we had to gather up the apples and store them in boxes. Waste not! We’d make a wee bit of apple wine and there was one year I went down and all the apples were lying on the ground. The fieldfares and redwings were having a field day. I decided to try a batch of cider with an old winepress. So it started as a hobby and grew from there. I registered it in 2014.” Kilmegan Cider has been winning national and international awards ever since.

It’s time for lunch in Mourne Seafood Bar which is in the former Downshire Arms Hotel, a grand three storey building dominating Main Street. Owner Chris McCann joins us. “Bob McCoubrey launched Mourne Seafood Bar in Dundrum in 2005 and in Belfast a year later. We took over the Dundrum restaurant seven years ago. Chris Wayne is our Head Chef. We stick to what the brand is – it’s in the name – and just have one meat dish on our menu. Our mussels come from Strangford Lough. Our oysters come from Carlingford – they have a sweetness and there’s a consistency of quality and supply. Wednesday night is lobster night. We’ve 10 guest bedrooms too.”

Samphire, known as ‘sea asparagus’, is a popular garnish foraged from Murlough Beach. Nowhere in Ireland is further than 85 kilometres from the coast. In Dundrum, make that one kilometre. Reisling served has the surprising label ‘Donaghadee’: the German winemaker married a County Down lass. Platters arrive – this is tasting on an epic scale! Cracked crab claws, langoustines and mignonette oysters. We devour the entire starters menu.

“All our food is farm or sea to plate,” welcomes Bronagh McCormick who took over The Buck’s Head with her business partner Head Chef Alex Greene in April 2024. He’s a regular on the TV programme Great British Menu. The pub was built in 1834. She records, “We’ve 75 covers in our dining room and we’re opening rooms for guests to stay over. We’re kept pretty busy with dinner reservations at least four weeks in advance.” Wheaten bread made with treacle sums up the menu: local with a twist. Pan roast salmon with gnocchi and charred broccoli continues the Dundrumesque seafood theme. Alex tells us later they also own the Fish and Farm Shop in nearby Newcastle. They’re custodians of produce.

“There’s nothing we’re not trying and there’s nothing we’re not doing,” Alex shares over coffee and cakes in Cúpla. “It’s very much an evolving product. We’ve a lot of repeat business, especially on a Sunday. We run Sunday lunch up to 7pm. We’ll add a couple more vegetarian options but if you put too many dishes on the menu the quality starts to drop. It’s better selling 30 of one dish in a day than three of 100. But you don’t want to make the menu too small either with not enough choice for people. Our meat mostly comes from my family farm three miles up the road.”

The Dundrum Inn, a few doors down from The Buck’s Head, is the perfect place to pull a late night Guinness and order a nightcap (make that a round of Kilmegan Ciders) in the large beer garden while being entertained by live music. The Dundrum Inn has been going for 190 years so far and is still a social hub. “Dundrum Village Association organises the Summer Festival,” says Community Leader Alan Cooley. “It brings everyone together. Food stalls, bands, circus performers and a raft race fill a Saturday each July.”

“Let’s go out on our boat!” is a thrilling suggestion by our hosts upon leaving Cúpla. Soon we’re riding the waves fantastic. Leaving behind Dundrum Bay to enter the Irish Sea, looking back, the castle has vanished under a cloud and gradually landmass fades to grey and disappears. Splash, crash, splash, crash! We’re now in the midst of the vast grey sea which has merged with the vast grey sky. There’s no horizon; everything’s grey. A grey seal swims by giving us side eye.

We recall Andrew Boyd telling us, “When you get the high tide running out of the bay and you have a bit of a southerly wind, there’s a roar of the sea known as Tonn Ruairí. This is the ‘Wave of Rory’ named after a Viking who drowned in Dundrum Bay from the forces of a mystic wave. It makes a crashing roaring sound. As much as the sea round here is beautiful you need to respect it.”

Brian de Breffny, writing in Castles of Ireland, 1977, breaks away from conventional architectural historian mode to wax lyrical, “Something of Dundrum’s distant Celtic past seems to cling mysteriously to the castle and its wooded hillside. Perhaps more than any other place in Ireland, it suggests too the world of the Norman adventurers and mercenaries – conquerors and Crusaders who fortified a castle in Ulster and talked there of the palace castles of the Seleucid rulers they had seen in the East – the world of the overmighty barons and Plantagenet kings.” Almost half a century later, his words still ring true.

There was a sense of crossing a border when we went over that triple arched causeway for the first time … we’d crossed a line into a slight otherness. And when Murlough Country House appeared, there was a sensation of arrival, of distant belonging. We would succumb to the enchantment of days spent passed in South County Down. Later, much later, unfurling thoughts and images of Dundrum, we realise anew it’s a place to experience the serious business of joy. And to parrot Clive Staples Lewis, “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” And visit no ordinary places.