Notes on a House
The treasure houses of England are slick tourist operations. On a midweek day, 300 visitors have descended on Holkham Hall, one of Norfolk’s great estates. Even a house of these vast dimensions (all three million bricks) with no fewer than four wings feels busy. A one way system is in operation. There’s a café and shop in the stableyard of course. Otherwise no gimmickry is required (children’s playgrounds etc): build good architecture and design great gardens and they will come. Not in Ireland though where chances are it will be you and two nuns (Castle Leslie, County Monaghan, before it opened as a hotel) or four locals and an Audrey Hepburn lookalike guide (Russborough, County Wicklow).
A plaque in the Marble Hall of Holkham states: “This seat, on an open barren estate, was planned, planted, built, decorated, and inhabited the middle of the XVIIIth century by Thomas Coke Earl of Leicester.” Mid 20th century architectural historian John Cornforth advised removing the large pane windows with elegant brass frames and mechanics that were installed in the piano nobile portico rooms of the main block to frame uninterrupted views of the Victorian gardens. This reflected the fad for returning houses to a moment frozen in time, in this case 1750. Taste moves on and it’s impossible to not appreciate plate glass windows at houses like Curraghmore in County Wateford (just us and the butler). 
Baths in former bedrooms are all the rage in country houses. The Cokes (pronounced “Cooks”) inserted one into the middle of a former corner bedroom of Holkham in the 1980s. Four decades later, before they sold Wolterton Hall just down the road Keith Day and Peter Sheppard turned a bedroom into the State Bathroom for the adjoining State Bedroom. Something that hasn’t quite caught on is dressing your staff to match your interior. In 1910, the manservants of Holkham got frock coats and waistcoats to coordinate with the silk brocade wallcovering in the redecorated North State Bedroom.
“I studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art but did everything – welding, painting, jewellery and so on. I enjoyed casting in fibreglass. I remember meeting Henry Moore,” explains the artist and art restorer Denise Cook. “You build up a visual memory in life. You are your own personal library.” Her mother’s family came from Lowestoft in Suffolk, 100 kilometres southeast of Holkham. “My great grandfather was a sailmaker.”
“The 7th Earl of Leicester died in 2015. He was known as ‘Grumps’ by his grandchildren. The funeral was amazing. It was all handled by the estate. His son drove the old Earl’s favourite Fergie tractor attached to a trailer which carried the coffin made by the estate’s joiners from Holkham oak.” Denise continues, “The route to the church was lined by over 200 employees and the cortege was followed by family and friends. The estate cooks prepared the funeral tea and children of estate employees served the food for everyone.”
