Tag: lavender’s blue

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Restaurants

The Salt Room Afternoon Tea Brighton East Sussex + The Duchess of Bedford

Chips off the Old Block 

Henry James: “Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not – some people of course never do – the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime.”

Many silvery moons ago we stayed in the Grand Hotel and were pleasantly surprised by this piece of Mayfair-on-Sea. The hotel’s GB1 seafood restaurant is quite simply the Scott’s of Mayfair Brighton. It even has a stadium shaped bar piled high with oysters encircled by diners perched on stools. A delicious morsel of Edwardian Brighton reinvented for the New Elizabethan age. Another prized stretch of coastal real estate, overlooking the tangled silhouette of the darkly skeletal West Pier, has been snatched up by The Salt Room.

This restaurant has gone all Duchess of Bedford. You guessed. It’s started serving afternoon tea (£24.95). The ultimate meal sandwiched between meals hasn’t been so popular since Princess Catherine of Braganza rocked up with a bonanza of tea in her dowry. The interior might be contemporary but the veranda has a natural turn of two centuries ago feel to it. Will it be full of piscatorial pleasures like the Cosentino party’s oysters with gold leafed carb free caviar? Or the black cod canapés at the Aqua Kyoto shindig?

We know our quirky afternoon tea interiors – think Sanderson and sketch – and quirky afternoon tea treats – think Marriott Park Lane’s beetroot finger sandwiches and Marriott County Hall’s cheesy savoury scones – but in this relatively restrained space there are a few new nutritional novelties even to us. Candy floss is a first! And sure enough, Executive Chef Dave Mothersill’s menu is aptly peppered with piscatorial pleasures. Even the wine list includes a Salt + Shell section: organic wines produced on coastal vineyards from Sicily to South Africa:

“Wines influenced by the sea have a real freshness and purity,” explains Dave, “making them the perfect partner to our local seafood. The soils are packed with fossilised seashells which, when you combine with the salty influence of the sea, helps to create wines of real character. All these wines are coastal with the exception of Gavi di Gavi which is planted on an old limestone seabed. We squeezed it on our list because we love it!” Gotcha. Pier pressure continues with crab rarebit, smoked mackerel paté and, oh good, chocolate pebbles. Even the strawberry jam with the scones is laced with vanilla. Maybe an oblique reference to ice cream? Synchronised idiosyncrasy delivers chive butter crumpet, pumpkin fritter with carrot tartare and a glazed mini doughnut

Abruptly, after overindulging on Jing tea, our rose tinted glasses are lifted, and it all becomes black and white to us. The black bathroom with The White Company accessories. Of course. Monochromatic madness. The Salt and Pepper Room. Aha! We’re in a metaphorical chip shop. What could be more Brighton? Our chips are down. Let’s hope it’s not too many ghostly moons till we return to this innocent pastime.

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Architecture Art People

Trevor Newton + Dartmouth House Mayfair London

The First September

The new year really starts each autumn. As the first golden leaves fall, where is it possible to see The Wallace Collection, Sir John Soane’s Museum and a swathe of Parisian hôtels particuliers in one room? In the Long Drawing Room of Marchmain Dartmouth House, on the same street where Oscar Wilde once resided in Mayfair, but only if you’re on the exclusive invitation list to the EV (Evening View). This house beautiful is not open to the public. Interior Impressions, a major exhibition of drawings by Trevor Newton is presented and curated by Anne Varick Lauder. It’s the first monographic exhibition of the accomplished artist in eight years.

New York born London based Dr Lauder, who has held curatorial positions in the J Paul Getty Museum, the Louvre and the National Portrait Gallery, announces, “We are delighted to be in the Long Drawing Room for the Private View of new drawings by the English topographical artist Trevor Newton. All 60 new works are of grand or highly individual British and European interiors from Versailles to The Ritz, to the Charleston of the Bloomsbury Group and the intimate Georgian houses of Spitalfields. It is therefore appropriate that this invitation only exhibition should take place in one of the finest private interiors in Britain.” She adds, “Interiors within interiors!” A 21st century – and for real – Charles Ryder.

Trevor studied History of Art at Cambridge, later becoming the first full time teacher of the subject at Eton. A present of The Observer’s Book of Architecture for his eighth birthday spurred a lifelong interest in buildings and their interiors. Rather than pursuing modish photorealism, he sets out to capture impressions of a place, often adding whimsical details imagined or transposed from other sources. His atmospheric renderings experiment with the interplay of light and reflection. Dense layers of mixed media – body colour, pen and ink, wash, watercolour and wax resist crayon – evoke a captivating sense of the aesthetic and nostalgic. His framing portrays a theatrical awareness of view: how the onlooker visually enters the room. There’s an enigmatic absence of people yet signs of habitation: a glass here; a magazine there. Trevor says, “My drawings are attempts to convey the emotions generated by art and architecture.” Emotional revisits. Anne considers, “It’s like he redecorates on page.”

Fellow alumnus Stephen Fry recalls, “While many of his contemporaries at Cambridge were Footlighting or rowing, Trevor seemed to spend much of his time drawing and painting. His specialities then were lavish invitations for May Week parties, illustrated menus for Club and Society dinners, posters and programmes for plays and concerts, along with a highly individual line in architectural fantasy drawn for its own sake and for the amusement of his friends. He managed to combine the frivolous and the baroque in a curious and most engaging manner: Osbert Lancaster meets Tiepolo. Trevor is still drawing and painting as passionately as ever and though the content of his work may be more serious, in style and execution it still has all the youthful energy and verve which characterised it over 30 years ago.”

Dartmouth House is something of a hôtel particulier itself. A château-worthy marble staircase and 18th century French panelling in the reception rooms add to the cunning deceit that just beyond the Louis Quinze style courtyard surely lies the Champs-Élysées. The Franglais appearance isn’t coincidental. In 1890 architect William Allright of Turner Lord knocked together two Georgian townhouses for his client, Edward Baring (of the collapsible bank fame) later Lord Revelstoke, to create a setting for his collection of French furniture and objets d’art. Ornament is prime. Dartmouth House is now the HQ of the English Speaking Union. Except for tonight. When it’s utterly-utterly Great Art Central.

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Hotels Luxury Restaurants

Hôtel Plaza Athénée Paris + La Cour Jardin

Up and About in Paris and London 

We fill the lacuna

Lunch where? Paris. C’est le weekend. We’re Ivy’d out midweek although the Soho and Tower Bridge Brasseries’ zucchini fritti and truffle arancini are highly addictive. We’ve been wild about the Century Club’s wild mushroom burger. Hôtel Plaza Athénée Paris. Bows and bows of balconies along Avenue Montaigne. Next door to Christian Dior’s original couture house. The dress code for La Cour Jardin – the hôtel’s exclusive courtyard restaurant – is “elegant”. Ah bien. It’s cheek to high cheekbone with models. Martinets or marionettes? Ask Webb’s Road London resident runway veteran Simon Duke. Poppy red parasols like oversized cocktail umbrellas keep the wrinkles at bay. Virginia creeper clambering up the stone walls, smart trellis chairs among olive trees and acres of linen tablecloth… really the whole place simply oozes Parisian sophistication. The century old courtyard has been pimped and pruned to perfection by designer Bruno Moinard, displaying a talent for resonant juxtaposition. So this season.

We live off our acuity and salutary reminders.

More mirrors than Versailles; more columns than the Coliseum; more pizzazz than Versace: this is the new luxury. Friday Street. Field of freedom. Earned ease. En plein air. A galaxy of culinary stars has aligned to make this restaurant happen. We’re star struck. Le grand fromage himself Alain Ducasse hooked up with Lawrence Aboucaya, owner of legendary Parisian vegetarian restaurant Pousse-Pousse, to concoct a homage to high energy menu. Under the watchful eye of Head Chef Mathieu Emeraud, the menu is fashionably divided into The Garden, The Classics, The Sea and The Shoreline, The Land and The Farm, The Herbs Garden and The Desserts. Just in case you miss the celebrity connection, there’s Alain Ducasse’s own brand Champagne and the menu cover features an 18th century botanical watercolour from his personal collection.

We spend our years as a tale that is told.

Sicilian olive oil accompanies randomly zoomorphic bread rolls, hatching out of folded linen baskets like long beaked ducklings. Artichoke and lemon risotto (€36.00) possesses all the freshness of The Garden. Tomato and pepper amuse bouche matches the red awnings. So does the John Dory, dusted with tomato and fennel (€58.00). Wide brimmed plates generously frame the food. Strawberry and almond (€22.00) come with madeleine on the side. And as an encore, orange and something petit fours. Chef Pâtissier Exécutif Angelo Musa’s efforts might expand waists by a few millimetres, but everyone’s so worth it. The proof is in the pudding. Delish! Us! Service is seamless. Doors magically open, The New York Times deftly appears: minimum fuss, maximum attention. Rooms range from €990 (single) to €28,000 (party time).

Wonders unto many, we are magnified and tainted by elegiac projection, poignancy and beauty.

The sommelier arrives to explain the wine we aren’t ordering. Côte de Nuits 2000 (Richebourg) and Côte de Beaune 1999 (Corton Les Renardes). Both vins rouge, both Domaine Leroy, both €5,800. The wines are: “A perfect balance of acidity, alcohol, tonic and flavour. They have a controlled, perfect constitution.” We go for the more modestly priced €12 Saint Galmier Badoit Finement Pétillante 1778 (naturally carbonated water, to you). Good for catwalk silhouettes. An early autumnal breeze gently ripples through the courtyard. C’est la vie. La Cour Jardin: such seductiveness; an air kiss; make it a French kiss; a momentary embrace; a dalliance to the music of time. Dynamic magnetised moments. Life’s marginalia. Mise en Seine.

We are not your nebulous want.

Dinner in London? What gives? Let’s do The Arts Club again. Hold the front page! Newspapers: today’s headlines; tomorrow’s cat litter. Business and pleasure handsomely combine at a private dinner with former Cabinet Minister and Chief Whip the Right Honourable Andrew Mitchell MP in the very non plebish Ante Room. Sharing plates can be terribly irksome but it does mean enjoying three puddings or at least dipping spoons in three puddings. Tout suite. Ever dedicated to a story arc, the wine is French de rigueur. Vermentino 2015 (Domaine des Yeuses, Vin de Pays d’Oc) and Légende de Lafite 2015 (Baron de Rothschild, Bordeaux). La vie en rosé. Not so good for catwalk silhouettes. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

As for the menu? Starters: green bean and artichoke salad; Caesar salad; prawn cocktail; Applewood smoked salmon with honey mustard dressing. Main special: grilled seabass, marinated aubergine and tomato. Sides: creamed spinach; gratin dauphinois; glazed carrots Puddings: baked cheesecake with cassis sauce and berries; banana sticky toffee pudding; strawberry tart.

We are the chosen ones.

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Architecture

Deal Town Kent + The Black Douglas Coffee House

East Coast Cooler

It’s the last weekend of summer. As the train meanders past the chalky White Cliffs of Dover we come over all Vera Lynn. Altogether now: “There’ll be love and laughter; and peace ever after…” Although it’s hard not to dream of the cliffs as topography’s answer to Fanny Cradock’s powdered cheekbones. Past Priory (no, that one, although smuggling is involved), our sun kissed naval base looms into view. Maybe not quite looms. Deal isn’t big. Nor raw. Deal meal. Puns (mostly) over, we’re here for the domestic architecture.

A tale of two towns. Kind of. A higgledly piggedly jumble of centuries old topsy turvy Georgian or Georgian faced townhouses squeezed between the esplanade and High Street contrasts with voluptuous Edwardian villas strung out along the coast. Of course that’s a gross oversimplification but wherever there’s pudding to be egged there’s Lavender’s Blue. Britain’s only brutalist pier doesn’t fit our narrative. Nor do the Brightonesque Regency houses. Nor does the tulip shaped Tudor castle. Ours is a binary filtered storyline of sepia saturated prose.

Close of play is more like end of day as a cricket match on the pebbly beach unfolds unabated through an unforgiving sunset. It is, though, a spectacularly balmy evening. We stroll past The Black Douglas Coffee House. Named after a tyrannical 14th century Scottish ruler, the surname is more closely associated with his descendant Bosie. It’s owned by Dalziel Douglas. Her partner is closing shop. “Come for breakfast tomorrow and Lady Douglas will give you the full history! She’s the great great niece of Bosie.” Oscar Wilde called the Douglas family a “mad, bad line”. The aptly black painted shopfront is in a quintessentially Deal block. Four buildings – four window levels – four eaves heights – four colours. All perceptibly lopsided, living in fear of the perpendicular, clinging to each other like tipsy aged fishwives.

We dive into the orb speckled alleyways behind Beach Street. No minimum distances between dwellings; no wonder everybody knows everybody. Tiny windows peep above pavements and a dusting of Dutch gables graces the slit of artists’ sky above. Christmas House; The Paragon; Steadfast; Tally Ho. Some have planchette plundered passageways; others, secret hidden rooms. Collectively, a smugglers’ paradise of the past. And if you didn’t benefit from ill gotten gains back then, there was still plenty of booty to be had. A poster on a wall announces:

“Wreck sale on the quayside of this port at 10 o’clock in the forenoon on the 24th day of April 1796. Part of the cargoes of ships that have recently come to grief in these parts. Consisting of: 56 Bales of Wool | 124 Deer Skins | 37 Cases of Flour | 9 Casks of White Lead | 287 Oak Handspikes | 21 Barrels of Tar | 341 Pieces of Cloth | 67 Articles of Pewter | 23 Barrels of Potash | 154 Pieces of Firtimber | 1 Open Boat | 16 Hatchets | 20 Casks of Cudbear | 112 Cases of English China | 45 Pipes of Linseed Oil | 209 Spills of Cotton Yarn.”

A poster on a bow window advertises the clandestine sounding Dining Club. Temptations listed include potato and mushroom terrine followed by roast mullet and pea fritter. Leaving the twisted grid of ghostly cross lanes behind, we head south. Between the two halves of the town we promenade past an antiques shop named 1815 in a building that looks 1915. The mesmeric shop window displays chandeliers, piers and a stuffed seagull. The art of the deal.

Beyond, the Edwardian villas are unabashedly self important, acutely aware they can be viewed from all angles unlike their narrow northern neighbours. Widows’ and Juliet balconies galore. There are terraces and balconies and verandahs and terraces on balconies on verandahs. One especially memorable house is crowned with a gloriously top heavy coven of witch’s hat roofs. Their inhabitants aren’t self important: they even say hello on the street. Goodness, this really isn’t London-on-Sea. Shame that discovering The Black Douglas was on our last night. But it’s not a deal breaker. We’ve an excuse to descend on Deal again. Not that one’s required. Last pun (for now). It’s a deal.

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Architecture Restaurants

Clifton Bristol + The Doors

Saturday Lunch

So many Ivys, so little time.

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Architecture Country Houses

Colebrooke Park Fermanagh + Golgotha Dining Room

Stag Party

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Luxury People Restaurants

Tate Britain London + Rex Whistler Restaurant Jazz Lunch

The Riding on the Wall

Tate Britain is the quieter relative of the extended family. Tate Modern has Herzog + de Meuron’s sexy ziggurat with its brilliant incidental installation (Watch Rich People In Their Apartments). Tate Britain has James Stirling’s paean to contextual irony. Lost on most, the less said the better. Thankfully, the Rex Whistler Restaurant is located in the basement of the original sturdily neoclassical gallery. Or is it? Entrances at varying degrees above ordnance data dictate an enjoyable disorientation. Lower ground floor? Garden level? Sub piano nobile?

Rex. The name conjures up a dilettantish dandyish raffish character. Definitely a Bright Young Thing. Julia Flyte’s American beau in Brideshead Revisited. Rex Bart Beaumont, chum of Charles Howard Bury, last owner of Belvedere House in Mullingar. Known to all and sundry as “Sexy Rexy”. The pair enjoyed jaunts to Tibet accompanied by a pet bear. No aggressive normalcy there, then.

Paintings are best seen from a seat. The Garrick Club gets that with its dining room wallpapered by in Zoffany. Before Carl Laubin (who completed a capriccio of Castle Howard estate buildings in 1996) and even before Felix Kelly (who painted the Garden Hall murals at Castle Howard in 1988) there was Rex Whistler. His 1937 murals can be admired traipsing through the National Trust dining room of Plas Newydd on the Isle of Anglesey but how much more relaxing to soak in his 1927 murals at the Tate lounging over lunch. At least that was the plan.

Gloriously out of sync with the modernist spirit of the age (more country house than Bauhaus), The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats is a whimsical adventure chronicling a party in search of epicurean delights. Follies and fortresses, temples and turrets… it’s an escapist setting, an ageless fantasy, Chinese wallpaper without the paper. Trompe l’œil gargoyle headed grotesques support the pedimented entrance doorcase. Half moon windows are treated as grottos. All the more remarkable given that Rex undertook this feat as a 23 year old Slade student. Tragically just 17 years later, the artist was killed on his first day of action in World War II. Rex Whistler’s legacy continues to inspire and enthral. His portraits of Lady Caroline Paget and her brother, later 7th Marquess of Anglesey, both recently sold for twice their estimates.

Lunch is served in the leafy garden along the Thames Embankment. Fresco to alfresco. A moveable feast. Fête champêtre. The meal is bookended by bubbly. Isn’t all hydration good for you? That’s a fair enough excuse for flutes of Coates + Seely Brut (£11.50). “Complex citrus infused fizz from one of the UK’s most impressive estates,” reassures the wine list. Hampshire’s finest fizz followed by Hampshire’s finest fish. Arriba! L’Abrunet 2015 (£27.00), “Made from organic white Grenache grapes grown in Catalonia,” adds to the bibulous nature of this indulgent Saturday afternoon. In honour of the founder of the gallery (Henry Tate was a sugar merchant) it would be rude not to have pudding. And it does result in a three course deal (£35.95). “Moderation is overrated,” agree the couple at the next table. The food’s wonderful – aptly British with a nod to the Continent. No buyers’ remorse.

The jazz ensemble strikes up. Maybe Tate Britain isn’t so quiet, after all.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses

Lavender’s Blue + Castle ffrench Galway

Fortissimo

Anglicisation from Gaelic is to blame in some instances (The Argory is a case in point) but quite a few Irish country houses have intriguing names. Jockey Hall and Shandy Hall (the latter in Dripsey) sound fun. Whiskey Hall sounds like too much fun. Bachelors Lodge and Hymenstown are presumably miles apart. Mount Anne or Mount Stewart anyone? The mildly unnerving Flood Hall, Fort Etna, Spiddal Hall and The Reeks. Is Sherlockstown worth investigating? Zoomorphic zaniness: Fox Hall, Lizard Manor, Lyons, Mount Panther and Roebuck Hall. Elphin – Castle? Place names too. Bungalo begs the question: is it full of single storey residences?

Lots of houses without so much as a battlement are called castles: Beltrim Castle, Castle Coole, Castle Grove, Castle Leslie. Castle ffrench joins this list although there are ruins of a tower house on the estate. The double consonant lower case doesn’t disguise the fact the name originated somewhat unsurprisingly in France. The ffrench family were part of a Norman landing in County Wexford in 1169. In time, they became one of the 14 Tribes of Galway. Their single consonant upper class case cousins owned French Park in County Roscommon.

Castle ffrench is a star of Maurice Craig’s seminal work Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size. He notes its plan is virtually identical to Bonnettstown’s in County Kilkenny, despite the 90 mile 40 year gap. A notable feature of both pretty Big Houses is the pair of staircases side by side, like slightly asymmetric Siamese twins. A thin wall between the pair once segregated the classes’ ascent and descent (for richer, for poorer). One is dressed in plasterwork; the other bare. Landings pressed against the four bay rear elevation provide interesting mid storey variations in window positions. Both stairwells are lit by tall fanlight topped windows identical on the outside – only the family one has internal panelling.

The front elevation is more conventional, the grouped middle three bays of a five bay composition gently projecting. Urns and finials sprouting from a solid parapet dot the horizon. A three storey over basement (hidden to the front | semi exposed to the sides | for all to see to the rear) limestone block, this house is the epitome of Irish Georgian style. It even has an archetypal fanlight set in the entablatured triglyphed pilastered fluted rosetted doorcase. Conservation architect John O’Connell calls the building “very accomplished” and recognises the influence of the architect Richard Castle. A niche in the entrance hall is marginally unaligned with the ceiling plasterwork above. A signal that the house is the work of a builder with a pattern book or two at his disposal? Or simply plastered on a Friday afternoon?

Castle ffrench rises above an unruffled patchwork quilt, a landscape of interlocking greens, quieter than Pimlico Tube Station on a Friday evening (are Pimlocals like Peter York too posh to push onto public transport?). So silent. Rural aural aura. Within the vale beyond The Pale. A mile long drive and 40 acres keep the populace at bay. Augustine days of yore aren’t so distant… Indoors, there’s a hooley! The plasterwork, at any rate. The stuccodores’ genius charges towards zenithsphere in the entrance hall and landing (of the family staircase). Neoclassicism and rococo blend and blur in mesmerising jigs and reels of fables and foliage ribboned round Irish harps and ffrench French horns. Wreathes and sheaves and sickles, the whole shebang.

Lady Fifi ffrench (stutteringly fitting phonetics or what?) and her husband John were the last of the original family to reside at Castle ffrench. Sheila and Bill Bagliani, the current owners, have sensitively restored this knockout property, subtly preserving its patina of age. Bertie the Labrador and Sally the Westie run amok through the grounds. Sheila, a talented artist, has a top floor studio to kill for. No really. All stairs lead to a second floor central corridor spanning the full width of the house. This corridor might not have the ornate plasterwork of the spaces below but it’s very much defined by a series of blind and open arches like abstract vaulting. A forerunner to Sir John Soane’s streamlined style. At one end, a door opens into a softly lit corner room with views to die for. There are flowers and canvases and a ghost – a previous owner refuses to leave and who could blame her? – in the attic.

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Art Design Fashion Luxury

Masterpiece Art Fair London Preview 2017 + Iván Navarro

Defining Moments

Everyone is here, every age is represented, from now to antiquity. The Oxford Dictionary needs to update its current definition of masterpiece: “a work of outstanding artistry, skill or workmanship”. Add an upper case M and it becomes, “150 galleries exhibiting works of outstanding artistry, skill and workmanship”. Or more succinctly, “a microcosm of London, New York and Maastricht society”. Tonight the red carpet’s rolled out for an augmented vernissage.

While now it’s all about Perrier-Jouët Belle Époque, there’ll be a familiar conundrum in the forthcoming days. The Ivy Chelsea Brasserie, Le Caprice, The Mount Street Deli or Scott’s Seafood and Champagne Bar? Potted brown shrimps on crispy slivers of toast at Scott’s will inevitably win most days. Feet dangling from stools below the neverending silver bar, there is nowhere better to satisfy a craving for crustacea. What about The Ivy’s HLT (halloumi, lettuce and tomato)? It’s a wrap.

Burberry is this year’s official preview partner with an exhibition The Cape Reimagined. Collector’s pieces on show are inspired by the work of Henry Moore. It’s a wrap. Cross category | low delineation | wearable sculptures | augmented visibility. Expect to see a feathery flurry of Chelsea ladies donning couture capes this autumn.

Masterpiece Presents sadly isn’t the goody bag but excitingly is an annual entrance installation project. The inaugural immersive by top Chilean artist Iván Navarro was commissioned by newcomer Paul Kasmin Gallery. Fluorescence. Incandescence. Quintessence. Definitive newness. An instantly recognisable piece from the past is displayed at Agnews of St James’s Place: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s haunting image of Proserpina, the Roman goddess, enjoying a pomegranate. Proserpina’s luscious auburn hair contrasts with the flawless pale skin of her augmented visage. A definite icon. Year on year hitting the zeitgeist while celebrating the past, Masterpiece 2017 could be defined as an “augmented vision”. It’s a wrap.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Hidden Ireland + Clonalis Roscommon

The Portrait of a Lady and Gentleman and Artists as Young Men

Dia dhaoibh ar maidin. There really aren’t many left. A study of the 39 (what an odd number, why not 40?) country houses featured in the book Irish Houses and Castles with its strangely coloured plates, published in 1974, reveals just 13 remain in the hands of the same families. So which ones have been so lucky? Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath | Bantry House, County Cork | Beaulieu, County Louth | Birr Castle, County Offaly | Dunsany Castle, County Meath | Glin Castle, County Limerick | Kilshannig, County Cork | Lismore Castle, County Waterford | Lough Cutra Castle, County Galway | Mount Ievers, County Cork | Leixlip Castle, County Dublin | Slane Castle, County Meath | Tullynally Castle, County Westmeath. Like Hen’s teeth.

Not so much “Where are they now?” as “What are they now?” They’re not all sob stories. Some have never looked better. Sir David Davies has brought a new lease of life to Abbey Leix. Crazy but true. The London launch of a book by William Laffan celebrating the estate’s rebirth was held with great pomp and happenstance at Lindy Guinness’s Holland Park villa mansion. Nancy Mitford’s cousin Clementine Beit’s old house Russborough looks in pretty good nick, even if restoration comes at the price of paintings disappearing. And nobody’s blaming terrorists this time… John O’Connell has worked his magic at Fota Island, the first residential restoration of the Irish Heritage Trust. And there are high hopes that the Hughes brothers, the new owners of Westport House, despite contending, conflicting lights, will preserve one of the last Richard Castle designed houses for the nation. It’s hard to keep up with Bellamont Forest: it’s seriously serially for sale. Luttrellstown Castle might be corporately owned but Eileen Plunket’s ballroom would still give Nancy Lancaster’s Yella Room a run for its money. Christie’s recently told us Stackallen, which appears in later versions of the book, has been “enriched” since it was bought by the billionaire Naughtons in 1993.

Although Clonalis in County Roscommon doesn’t feature in Desmond Guinness and William Ryan’s book, it has been associated with the same family for millennia rather than centuries. Clonalis is the ancestral home of the O’Conors, Kings of Connacht and erstwhile High Kings of Ireland. The most ancient royal family in Europe, no less. Just to be sure, their ancient limestone inauguration stone dating from 75 AD stands proud outside their front door. While the O’Conors’ possession of the land can be traced back over 1,500 years, the house is relatively recent. No surprise they call Clonalis the ‘New House’. In the very grand scheme of things it’s practically modern. Construction was completed in 1878, the year its English architect Frederick Pepys Cockerell (yes, a descendant of the Clapham diarist and a friend of the O’Conor clients) died aged 45. Like most Victorian practitioners he was versatile, swapping and entering epochal stylistic dalliances with ease. Eclecticism ran in Fred’s blood: his grandfather Samuel Pepys Cockerell did design the batty and bonkers Indocolonial Sezincote in the Cotswolds. A rummage through the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography one evening in the O+C Club reveals the architect’s Irish connection: he married Mary Mulock of King’s County (Offaly). “A genial, charming, and handsome man, knowledgeable in literature and the arts, his premature death was widely regretted,” records author David Watkins.

Tráthnóna maith daoibh. Fred’s 1 South Audley Street, 1870, the Embassy of Qatar for donkey’s years, is an eclectic Queen Anne-ish Mayfair house with just about every ornament imaginable thrown at its burnt red brick and terracotta façade. Arabesques, brackets, corbels, friezes, masks, niches, putti… he really did plunder the architectural glossary… augmenting the deeps and shallows of the metropolis. If, as architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi pontificates, the communicating part of architecture is its ornamental surface, then the Embassy is shouting!

His country houses show more restraint. Predating Clonalis by a few years, his first Irish one was the neo Elizabethan Blessingbourne in County Fermanagh. Clonalis is loosely Italianate. Terribly civilised; a structure raised with an architectural competence, spare and chaste. Happens to be the first concrete house in Ireland, too. A few years earlier he’d a practice run in concrete construction at Down Hall in Essex. A strong presence amongst the gathering shades of the witching hour, a national light keeping watch. Every house has a symbolic function, full of premises, conclusions, emotions. Clonalis rests at the far end of the decorative spectrum from 1 South Audley Street. Venturing a Venturesque metaphor: it talks smoothly with a lilt. Symmetrically grouped plate glass windows, horizontal banding and vertical delineation are about all that relieve its grey exterior. An undemonstrative beauty. Rising out of the slate roof are high gabled dormers, balustraded parapets and tall chimney stacks. The central chimneys are linked by arches – whose identity lie somewhere between function, festivity and topography – creating a two dimensional Vanbrughian temple of smoke. Clonalis isn’t totally dissimilar albeit on a grander scale to another late 19th century Irish champion, Bel-Air in County Wicklow. Especially the three storey entrance towers (campaniles, really) attached to both buildings.

Pyers and Marguerite O’Conor Nash accept paying guests (heir b+b?) under the auspices of Hidden Ireland. Furnishings read like a chapter from Miller’s Guide to Antiques: Boulle | Limoges | Mason | Meissen | Minton | Sheraton. If painting and art measure the refinement of sensibility, as Isabel Archer believes in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, we’re in good company. Who needs money when you know your Monet from their Manet? Ding dong dinner gong. Variations of Valkyries veer toward Valhalla. Suavity bound by gravity. A patrician set of gilt framed ancestral portraits, provenance in oil, punctuate the oxblood walls of the dining room. Plus one (romantic dinner). Plus three (communal dining). Plus fours (we’re in the country). Plus size (decent portions). “Farm to fork,” announces our hostess. A whale of a time. Tableau vivant. Our visceral fear of dining on an axis is allayed by a table setting off centre. Phew. Triggers to the soul, spirit arising, the evening soon dissolves into an impossibly sublime conversation of hope and gloss in the library, while at arm’s length, Catherine wheels of a pyrotechnic display implode and disintegrate like embers in the fire. Beyond the tall windows, a flood of summer light had long waned, and the heavy cloak of dusk, to quote Henry James, “lay thick and rich upon the scene”.

“Yes, that’s the bore of comfort,” complains Lord Warburton in The Portrait of a Lady, “We only know when we’re uncomfortable.” We’re happy to embrace boredom in that case. Like the other three guest bedrooms, ours is light and airy thanks to a cream carpet, summery colour scheme and deep penetrations of natural light. Touches of 19th century grandeur (a marble chimneypiece reassures us this was definitely never a servants’ wing) blend with 21st century luxury. Our bedroom would meet with Lord Warburton’s chagrin: carefully curated completely accomplished comfort. Actually, the niches for turf set into the marble fireplaces of the dining and drawing rooms suggest the O’Conors always had one eye on grandeur, the other on comfort. “Blessingbourne has similar fireplaces,” shares Marguerite. “This season is opulence and comfort,” Kris Manalo, Heal’s Upholstery Buyer, informs us at a party in 19 Greek Street, Soho. Clonalis is bang on trend, then. “And £140 Fornasetti candles to depocket premium customers.” They do smell lovely. We’re digressing.

Donough Cahill, Executive Director of the Irish Georgian Society, reminded the London Chapter of the recent fire at the 18th century villa Vernon Mount in Cork City. “’A study in curves’ is how the Knight of Glin described this classic gem,” lamented Donough. “A great loss. The community are heartbroken and we too are heartbroken.” It’s a reflection on the rarity and fragility of Irish country houses and makes the flourishing survival of Clonalis all the more remarkable. A former billiard room is now a museum of letters and papers from family archives, one of the best collections in private ownership in Ireland. Correspondence from the likes of William Gladstone, Samuel Johnson and Anthony Trollope is displayed in mahogany bookcases next to the harp of Turlough Carolan, a renowned 17th century blind musician. Oh, and a pedigree of 25 generations of The House of O’Conor Don hangs on the wall, starting with Turlough Mor O’Conor, High King of Ireland, who died in 1150. One ancestor brought a certain captive named Patrick to Ireland. And the rest, as they say, is history. Our patron saint. A Catholic chapel is discreetly located to the rear of the house. “There are only three such private chapels in Ireland,” remarks Marguerite. “The other two are at the Carrolls’ house in Dundalk and Derrynane, Daniel O’Connell’s house . Tread carefully. Thin places. “There is really too much to say.” Henry James again. Tráthnóna maith daoibh.

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Architecture Country Houses People

The Earls of Rosse + Birr Castle Parsonstown Offaly

Offaly Grand

It’s funny how many Irish terraced houses are painted jolly colours (their quoins often highlighted in even brighter hues) while country houses are usually grey. Even though Birr Castle is cheek by jowl with William Street, it’s no exception, being faced in ashlar. The building appears hewn out of an escarpment like architectural topography. Perhaps that’s what happens when built form has weathered 350 years. There is more stone on display in Birr than most Irish towns, particularly on the houses lining Oxmantown Mall.

It’s a Georgian garrison town,” suggests Marguerite O’Conor Nash, châtelaine of Clonalis in County Roscommon. “Birr is really a planned town, a bit like Castlepollard in County Westmeath or Westport in County Mayo.” The Hillsborough of the south. “Birr is a very good town indeed,” offers conservation architect John O’Connell. Why is it not better known? Where are the coachloads of architectural aficionados? The answer lies in a comment uttered by the late Ivy Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duchess of Portland. She complained on a visit to Birr, “It’s not on the direct line to any other place!”

Lost in the heart of Ireland, Birr nonetheless has royal connections. Anne Parsons, 6th Countess of Rosse and mother of the current Earl was also the mother of the royal photographer Tony Armstrong-Jones (half brothers) and consequently mother-in-law of Princess Margaret. Her London home in Holland Park is now the Linley Sambourne Museum. A coffee table book about set designer Oliver Messel is in the library of Birr Castle. On the coffee table. He too was a relative – Anne’s brother.

There was decorating drama when Princess Margaret and the newly titled Lord Snowdon honeymooned in the castle. The 6th Countess enthusiastically wallpapered a bedroom for their arrival. Unfortunately she chose a room above the boiler. Imagine HRH’s surprise to be woken in the dead of night by sheets of wallpaper sliding down the walls before collapsing over the four poster. “Tony…!”

Lord Rosse, the 7th Earl, may have turned 80 last year but his standards, unlike the wallpaper, haven’t slipped. Dining at Birr Castle is still a formal affair. Lord R sits at the bay window end of the long table opposite Lady R. Female VIPs sit either side of the Earl; male VIPs, either side of the Countess. Overseen by Damian the Butler, Lady Rosse is served first, then female VIPs, then male VIPs, then whoever’s stuck in the middle and finally, a hungry Lord Rosse. Presumably guests brush up on Debrett’s.

The dark room of the pioneering photographer Mary Rosse, 3rd Countess, was only discovered in the castle in 1983. Hidden in a maze of corridors and tunnels with three metre thick walls in places, it’s not that surprising the world’s oldest dark room in existence lay untouched for 100 years. Across the parkland, beyond the star shaped moat cum haha, stands the world’s largest telescope (or at least it was for a century) built by her astrologer husband. Birr Castle is full of record breakers (Ireland’s oldest cookbook; Ireland’s tallest treehouse; the British Isles’ tallest tree before it came a cropper) and it’s not even Guinness owned!

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Design People

Angela Jupe + Bellefield House Gardens Birr Offaly

Lavender’s Blue in Conversation with Ireland’s Leading Garden Designer

“I’ve been at Bellefield House 12 years now. Everything was derelict except the house. When I arrived, you could only get 10 feet through the walled garden. Only the dog could go further! It’s a simple two storey house with no basement. You can’t live on three floors – that’s impossible!

It appears as a tiny house in the middle of a 1790s map. Bellefield House was the hunting lodge of the infamous Duke of Rochester. He’d have only used it occasionally – for hunting, shooting and fishing. The estate was 1,000 acres apparently. The house was later enlarged and became a stud farm. Two Grand National winners were bred here in the 1980s.

My dad died when I was seven but he would’ve made a great gardener. My aunt was good at gardening. My mother believed plants should either be edible or picked for vases! For a lifetime, I’ve been interested in the way things grow. I don’t want everything to be pristine. I’m not interested in serious formality.

I like relaxed gardens. You never know what you can find. Two Bee Orchids recently appeared on my lawn! They’re very variable. Some years they grow: other times they won’t come back for six years. I don’t know why. I planted dark to pale blue irises along the water feature and pink have popped up in the middle of them!

This is my second garden. My first garden was Fancroft Mill nearby. About 20 years ago I designed the formal gardens at Birr Castle. There are just under two acres of garden at Bellefield. The estate is 28 acres. The tallest trees are ash and I’ve also willow trees. To the side of the house is an area I keep wild this time of year.

There are dahlias from Mexico and I’ve a lot of the wild species of rosewater. They were used for dessert in medieval times. In spring there are thousands of snowdrops. They’re the first flower of the year. February is such a miserable month – maybe that’s why I like them. Something to do with that. Winter is over and life begins again.

When you walk into the walled garden you catch glimpses of the folly between the apple trees. You don’t see the folly fully till you’re up on it. What happened was I found the roof in a salvage yard in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire. They weren’t sure where it came from. Is it the vent off a building? Or with its ornate woodwork, is it Indian?

The roof sat on a pallet for 18 months. Then when I was recovering from an operation in hospital I said to the doctor, “Get me a pencil and paper!” That’s how it was designed. I found the doors and windows in a local auction. They were fire damaged. They came from a convent.

You’re best watering plants in the evening to allow them to soak overnight. If you water the foliage during the day, it might burn. Buy a tin of yacht varnish and paint the inside of your terracotta pots. It stops evaporation when you water them. Mix chicken manure pellets in a plastic bucket and fill with water and leave for a day or two. It stinks like hell! But it’s the best fertiliser of the whole lot. You could get a few jobs here if you’re not careful, now.”

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Architecture

Birr + The Doors

Making an Entrance

Fans of fanlights take note. It’s not always cold in Birr.

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Architecture Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Lavender’s Blue + Ashford Castle Mayo

King Cong | More Mayo Please | Glory Days

Aunt Margaret’s maxim was, “Never stay anywhere not as grand as your own home.” And she’d an Asprey account and Trüggelmann dressing room. Lavender’s Blue’s take is, “Life’s too short to go four star.” The last time we did lunch at Ashford Castle was a third of a century – a generation – ago. With Aunt Margaret (she approved). Six hour round trip back then (walk in the park compared to her regular 12 hour return journey for breakfast at Sheen Falls). Seafood and lobster chowder starter. Other courses forgotten in the mists of time. Return visit slightly overdue.

Thankfully a leisurely two hour return trip this time. We’re staying nearby (in a country house). Deep breath. Will it live up to our wildest expectations? Repetitiousness joyousness of well spent youth to come? Terrific news! Ashford Castle has just been revamped with huge chutzpah. An all-guns-blazing-shoot-the-prisoners-full-turbo-heel-to-the-steel £40 million revamp at that. The Irishman’s home really is his tartaned up castle. As long as he earns a king’s ransom or has a two comma bank balance. The bill’s arrived. Chowder €13.50 this time. Now there’s commitment to a story arc. As for Ashford Castle 33 years later? It more than meets the hopes held high borne in hazy memories. Sepia transformed into technicolour. Aunt Margaret would still approve. She never did do faded grandeur.

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Architecture People Restaurants

Danson House + Danson Stables + Danson Park London

Danson Abbey

This Palladian style villa may have originated as a bolthole from London but there’s nothing provincial about it. While suburbia has crept round Danson Park over the last two and a half centuries, miraculously the house, stables and park have survived virtually intact. Now owned by Bexley Council, a registry office makes for a decent unobtrusive use for the historic building. And lunch in the courtyard of Danson Stables is a winning combination of good food and architecture.

Serendipity – and a £4.5 million restoration by Historic England – has saved Danson for the next two and a half centuries. In 1995 the house was falling to pieces. Jump a decade and the Queen is cutting the ribbon. “It’s smaller than I thought,” Her Majesty observes upon her arrival. Understandable – there are optical illusions at play. Two fenestration tricks make the building appear larger than it is: (internally) not expressing the architraves and (externally) shrinking window sizes on the upper floor.

“Very Miss Jane Austen!” declares John O’Connell, climbing the serene sweep of steps to the entrance door. Unusually there are two large panes of glass in the beautifully aged mahogany door. Good for catching northern light but also an 18th century display of wealth. The walls are equally blessed by the patina of age. Portland stone given a lime wash has a mellowed texture and, set high up on a ridge, the house turns golden yellow in the sun. If you’ve got it flaunt it. And Sir John Boyd had it. Before he lost it.

Freshly beknighted with a 19 year old bride to serenade, the 40 something client commissioned Sir Robert Taylor to design him a home worthy of his station in life. The 1st Baronet Boyd owned Caribbean sugar plantations and was Vice Chairman of the British East India Company. “It really is a most skilful plan,” observes John O’Connell, and as Ireland’s leading conservation architect, he should know. “With the summer sun Danson House could be a villa along the Brenta Canal!” A double blow of the American and French Revolutions wrecked Sir John’s businesses. He died in debt in 1800. His son chopped off the wings, reclaiming the building materials for stables designed by George Dance. Five years later, the house was sold.

The entrance hall, in Palladian terms, is really a closed loggia so relatively simple with a plain marble floor. Opulence follows. Why employ one starchitect when you can get two? Sir John Boyd got Sir William Chambers to jazz up Sir Robert Taylor’s design, adding fireplaces and doors and other decorative touches. A rare cycle of Georgian allegorical wall paintings by the French artist Charles Pavillon stimulate after dinner conversation in the dining room.

A Victorian daughter of the manor, Sarah Johnston, helpfully painted watercolours of the interiors. Historic England used her paintings as inspiration for the carpets. A painting by George Barret hanging in the Chinoserie wallpapered octagonal Ladies’ Sitting Room illustrates the house with its wings. Incidentally, an exhibition of this Irish born artist is planned for the newly reopened National Gallery of Ireland.

The plaster roundels in the Gentlemen’s Music Room cum Library were found in cupboards. Imprints on the walls for the surrounding swags allowed them to be accurately reinstalled. That ingenious layout – interlocking rectangles and polygons around a dream of an oval stairwell – adapts well. Modern services are tucked into servants’ corridors wedged between the reception room shapes. The butler’s pantry contains a lift.

The landscape has erroneously been attributed to Capability Brown. Where hasn’t? It’s like every church carving must be Grinling Gibbons. Capability may have visited Danson, but the setting is the work of his associate, Nathaniel Richmond. Danson House (tour) and Danson Stables (lunch) and Danson Park (stroll). “It really is a place apart and invokes the Veneto,” John O’Connell lyrically waxes. Danson with the stars. The day is so singular, a true joy.

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Art Design Luxury

Drummonds Bathrooms + Chelsea Design Quarter Party London

Summertime

King’s Road Chelsea is bookended by kings of retail. At the Sloane end is Peter Jones, considered “the most civilised place in London” by Sir John Betjeman. At World’s End is Chelsea Design Quarter where Drummonds Bathrooms resigns supreme. Christopher Jenner designed the stylish showroom with its fretwork mirrored panels.

Party time. Balloons fill the freestanding baths. A metallic menagerie of dolphins, herons, zebras and a gorilla fills the showers. A pair of Egyptian cats stare each other out across a marble table. Partygoers mingle between Elisabeth Frinkish statues, topping up on Château d’Aix en Provence rosé. Prawn sticks do the rounds. Masseurs add a relaxing touch. A brass band bursts in as bubbles float through the air. A bowler hatted juggler and top hatted fire eater bemuse passengers going by on the Number 11. Bathroom reputations are made in Chelsea.

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People

The Violet Hour + Eves

The violet hour. That time for reflection. Duality of role emerges as a theme. Lavender’s Blue have interviewed an hotelier + MD | a Chairman + social campaigner | a publisher + artist. Isn’t it about time to feature an opera singer + chef? Swedish born Eves’ early promise was recognised by the celebrated conductor Richard Cooke and Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble. World renowned soprano Birgit Nilsson noted Eves’ “talent and glimmering tone”. It wasn’t hard to miss. She is a beautiful lyric soprano. She sang the national anthem at Mora Ice Hockey Arena while still in her teens and was soon a regular voice on Swedish radio and appearing on television. Eves studied classical music at the prestigious Falun Conservatory of Music. Winning a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama brought Eves to London. She currently performs at high profile venues across the city; one of her next engagements is at the Royal Albert Hall. Her recordings include an online promotion for The Guardian’s Opera Guide and a global Christmas video for Scarlet Entertainment. In March 2017 Eves sang for the celebrated conductor John Andrews, receiving compliments for her interpretation of the Puccini repertoire. She is also in demand as a singing chef, combining her culinary and musical talents for events. Eves is sponsored by City Music Services, an innovative and vibrant company bringing music into workplaces, and Giannasso Hair and Beauty on St Martin’s Lane. Her hair and makeup is by leading stylist, colourist and makeup artist Sergio Giannasso.

My Favourite London Hotel… Brown’s Hotel Mayfair.

My Favourite London Restaurant… Harrods’ Pizzeria.

My Favourite Local Restaurant… The Standard Balti House Spitalfields.

My favourite Weekend Destination… My daydreams.

My Favourite Holiday Destination… Florence.

My Favourite Country House… Cottage with a panoramic view over the sea.

My Favourite Building… Stonehenge.

My Favourite Novel… I have not finished one for the last five years.

My Favourite Film… Saraband, a 2003 Swedish drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman.

My Favourite TV Series… Call the Midwife.

My Favourite Actor…  Judy Dench.

My Favourite Play… Little Red Riding Hood.

My Favourite Opera… Tosca by Giacomo Puccini.

My Favourite Artist… Maria Callas.

My Favourite London Shop… Harrods.

My Favourite Scent…  Skint.

My Favourite Fashion Designer… Giorgio Armani.

My Favourite Charity… Suited + Booted, a London based charity which helps vulnerable, unemployed and low income men into employment by providing interview clothing and advice.

My Favourite Pastime… Singing opera.

My Favourite Thing… Food.

Categories
Architects Architecture

Sonneveld House Rotterdam + Dutch Functionalism

Holland Lark

Image | Dutch Functionalism is in one sense a continuation of the positivistic traits of 19th century thought. That is, architecture holding meaning as a reflection or symptom of a particular stage of historical development. This interpretation of history imposes meaning on architecture and does not depend on the memory of its own past. The spirit of the age demands its architecture is absolutely new.

Music | In another sense Dutch Functionalism is far removed from the rhythm of the 19th century. It is part of a wider movement linked to avant garde art as a whole, rejecting any sense of historicism. The architecture rejects the past’s tendency to consider buildings as legible texts of moral and didactic ideas, ignoring their ability to be forms of artistic portrayal.

Text | This formalist architecture does not deliver neutral structures on whose surfaces are displayed representations of ideas but is an opaque reflexive reality obeying its own internal laws. Sonneveld House is a 1930s villa in the centre of Rotterdam designed by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt. It is not a dogmatic example. Rather, this house is a personalised interpretation of Dutch Functionalism. Form follows function; and comfort; and luxury.

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Architecture Hotels Restaurants

Hotel New York Oyster Bar + Wilhelmina Pier Rotterdam

The Big Pip

If oysters are your world and squid rings rock your boat, Hotel New York is for you. It’s not in New York but it is in the former Holland America Line offices on the banks of Rotterdam’s River Mass. Turn of the (21st) century buildings tower over this turn of last (20th) century building but it holds its own among the newer crowd. Distinctive pineapple shaped copper topped clock towers herald the Jugendstil presence on Wilhelmina Pier. Hotel New York’s Oyster Bar is inspired by Parisian bistros, adding to an international ambience. Industrial chic: the real ahoy.

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Architecture

Rotterdam + The Doors

Route Canal

Rotters, the new Amsters. What lies behind?  Worlds unknown.

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Architects Architecture Developers Fashion Luxury

Mainport Hotel Rotterdam + Delfshaven

Haven is a Place on Earth

Middag. To the beautiful south of Churchillplein lie the four inlets of Wijnhaven, Bierhaven, Rederijhaven and Scheepmakershaven. Due west of the latter haven along Leuvehaven is our destination. Seemingly giving up on multisyllabic Dutch mouthfuls, our hotel is simply and logically called Mainport. Inanimate nominative determinism. Top notch natch. This could be Liverpool or Rome, anywhere alone. Except it’s not. It is where it is, overlooking Oude Haven, Rotterdam’s oldest harbour.

Nacht. A civic commitment to the new is adhered to by architects MAS architectuur in this 215 bedroom hotel.  All five stars of it. Lowland high life. The windows are massive as they should be, nodding to Dutch tradition and framing such envy inducing vistas and views and perspectives. Owner Karin Geurts has enlisted the help of designer Feran Thomassen to make the interior something to home tweet home about. The bedrooms are all blocks of pattern and enigmatic shadows. Enough monochrome madness to mask afterhours clandestinity.

Ochtend. As we hit contemporary architecture overdrive, overwhelmed by the scale of Rem Koolhaas’s De Rotterdam – Manhattan on the Maas, it’s time for a diversion due further west along the water via Coolhaven to Delfshaven. This intimate remnant of historic Rotterdam, missed by the Luftwaffe, is Dutch fridge magnet heaven. We’ve swapped stilts, pilotis, cantilevers and hangovers overhangs for crow-stepped gables, oversized sashes, canal bridges and – dada! – a windmill. All we need is blonde and beautiful clog clad locals and the cliché is complete. To quote Nicky Haslam as he serenaded the select audience in The Pheasantry Chelsea recently, “This has gone by rather too quickly!” We’re spinning with the stars above.

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Architecture Art Country Houses Design Luxury People

William Laffan + Abbey Leix Book Launch

Holland Days Source

Neither a Monday evening nor (apropos to an Irish shindig) drizzly weather could possibly dampen spirits. Not when it’s a party hosted by the dashing Sir David Davies and the lovely Lindy Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava the artist otherwise known as Lindy Guinness. And it’s probably worth mentioning the setting: the mid Victorian splendour of Lindy’s Holland Park townhouse city mansion.

International banker and businessman Sir David is President of the Irish Georgian Society. In between rescuing companies and country houses, Sir David leads a high profile social life (he counts Christina Onassis among his exes). Like all the greats, he once worked at MEPC. This party is all about the launch of a book on his Irish country house Abbey Leix. And Averys champers served with prawns and pea purée on silver spoons.

Two vast bay windowed reception rooms on the piano nobile of the Marchioness’s five storey house easily accommodate 100 guests. One room is hung with her paintings. Renowned Anglo American fine art specialist Charles Plante is an admirer: “Lindy Guinness brings forth abstraction in painting that mirrors the cubism of Cézanne and Picasso. Her works are irresistible.” It’s hard not to notice the staircase walls are lined with David Hockney drawings. Lucien Freud was Lindy’s brother-in-law and old chums included Francis Bacon and Duncan Grant.

The party’s getting going. Interior designer Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill is admiring the garden. Sir David’s glamorous sister Christine and her son Steffan are chatting in the hall. They’re from Ballybla near Ashford County Wicklow: turns out they’re big fans of Hunter’s Hotel. Writer Robert O’Byrne is talking to designer, artist and collector Alec Cobbe in the drawing room. “I still live in Newbridge House when I’m in Ireland,” confirms Alec. BBC3 Radio broadcaster Sean Rafferty is busy playing down his former illustrious career in Northern Ireland where he’s still a household name. “You must visit my cottage in Donegal.” A party isn’t a party without Nicky Haslam. Perennially topping Best Dressed Lists, the interior designer extraordinaire smiles, “I didn’t realise I was such an icon to you young guys!”

Fresh off the treadmill finishing the definitive guide to Russborough, a mighty tome on another Irish country house, Abbey Leix was erudite architectural historian William Laffan’s next commission. Sir David Davies bought the estate from the Earl of Snowdon’s nephew, Viscount de Vesci, for £3 million in 1995. William’s book celebrates the restoration of the house and its 1,200 acre estate.

“Thank you to Lindy for inviting us to her home,” he announces. “It’s very much a home not a museum. Someone asked me earlier was this my house. I wish it was! The only thing better than a double first is a double Guinness! Lindy is a Guinness by birth and a Guinness by marriage. And thank you to William for all the hard work. I asked him to write 100 pages and three years later he’s written hundreds of pages! The photographs are beautiful but do make sure you all read a bit of William’s great text too!”

The Knight of Glin’s widow Madam Olda Fitzgerald, mother-in-law of the actor Dominic West, is present. Sir David continues, “Desmond Fitzgerald was a great inspiration to me. Bless him, bless the Irish Georgian Society. I feel very honoured to follow in his footsteps as President. There are three other people I wish to thank without whom the restoration of Abbey Leix wouldn’t have been possible. John O’Connell, the greatest conservation architect in Ireland. Val Dillon, the leading light of the antiques trade. John Anderson, former Head Gardener of Mount Usher Gardens and Keeper of the Gardens at Windsor Great Park. I had to prise him away from the Royals!”

“Bravo!” toasts the Marchioness. She also owns Clandeboye, a late Georgian country house in Northern Ireland. Its 2,000 acre estate is famous for yoghurt production. The party is a resounding success: the launch is a sell out. A (fine 18th century) table stacked high with copies of William Laffan’s Abbey Leix book at the beginning of the evening is laid bare. Fortunately a few copies are available at Heywood Hill, Peregrine ‘Stoker’ Cavendish 12th Duke of Devonshire’s Mayfair bookshop.

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Architecture People

City of London Guildhall Breakfast London + Tall Buildings

Towers of London

The collection of buildings that make up Guildhall could hardly be more eclectic. The Festival of Britain inspired Members’ Club by Sir Richard Gilbert Scott. The (rare) pseudo gothic Art Gallery also by Sir Richard. The medieval Great Hall with George Dance the Younger’s (rarer) Moghul gothic entrance. Sir Christopher Wren’s baroque St Lawrence Jury Church. The Private Dining Room of the Members’ Club has great views of these low rise buildings against a backdrop of skyscrapers.

Guildhall is his office and – it transpires – his midweek home. Chris Hayward, Chairman of the Planning and Transportation Committee of the City of London as of 2016 is clearly a busy man. There are more cranes piercing the horizon of the City now than in the 1980s. When the Elizabeth Line opens there’ll be more people, more pressure, more planning applications. “There’s nowhere like this in the world,” he believes. “The City is a major financial centre with medieval streets. It’s the powerhouse of Britain, the heart of economic growth, whatever they say in elections. Do you want to live in Frankfurt? I don’t!”

Chris refers to an extension of the ‘Eastern Cluster’ as the only part of the City suitable for more tall buildings, in order to preserve heritage elsewhere. “We could fill in the gap between the Walkie Talkie and the Cheesegrater. The skyline works. In the Square Mile we can only go up, not out. I’m a strong advocate of clustering.” He acknowledges others’ mistakes of the recent past. “I want the new generation of tall buildings to be more outward looking, more approachable. For example, the ground floor of the Leadenhall Building is very permeable. They should also have world class public spaces in between. I don’t want the City to be the new Manhattan: too many skyscrapers in Manhattan interact poorly at ground level.”

Contrary to most media missives, London’s skyline isn’t changing in a haphazard way. The City has developed a complex viewing model and is undertaking world class wind modelling work. The future isn’t only about offices scraping the sky. “There’s a forgotten area of the City along the riverfront near the Tower of London,” he explains. “It’s pretty awful but I have a vision of an amazing mixed use scheme of tallish – not ultra tall – buildings. It would need a change of planning policy to allow for residential use. I’ve asked my officers to look at it. Hot off the press! That’s your scoop!” Chris is also keen to see retail planning applications coming forward as well. Rumour has it that Selfridges and Harvey Nics would jump at the chance of opening in the City.

Categories
Architecture

Selly Manor Bournville Birmingham + Cadbury

Chocolate Box Architecture

Categories
Architects Architecture

Soho House Birmingham + Samuel Wyatt

Nightclubbing

No, not that Soho House. Really. There’s life beyond Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, Miami, New York and so on and so forth. Just so happens Birmingham’s very own Soho House is a museum not a members’ club. Not any old so so museum though. Soho House Birmingham was designed by two of architecture’s most oh so famous brothers. Wrong again, not the Adam family. Samuel and James Wyatt both revamped this Georgian gem.

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Architecture Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

The Hilton Park Lane London + Galvin at Windows

The Londond’ry Arms

Pie in the sky. In the property industry, for every floor you go up, a premium is added. Room with a view with a price tag. Presumably there’s a surcharge in the hospitality industry for a table with a view. The Hilton on Park Lane isn’t a universally beloved feature of London. Even the Queen has complained about its architecture (usually she leaves that to her eldest offspring). One way to guarantee the hotel doesn’t blot your horizon is to eat on the 28th floor. There you can see just about every other landmark from Battersea Power Station to Buckingham Palace (at Her Majesty’s displeasure). We’re looking down on The Lanesborough. We’re looking for Isabel. A frenetic excursion in Gurskyism.

The interior of Galvin at Windows by designer Keith Hobbs (who did up Nobu and Shoreditch House) is unfussy retro luxury: all husky creams and musky greens and dusky greys. A galvianised bronze ceiling sculpture unfurling like a giant Christmas cracker across the ceiling towards the view is the only bow to bling. That, and the chunky golden sculpture in the adjacent bar. More of that shortly. In this most English of settings, Chef Patron Chris Galvin has created seasonally inspired menus focused on modern French haute (no pun) cuisine. Head Chef Joo Won caters for an international audience. All Michelin starred of course(s). We opt for the menu du jour. Chris was, as you may know, the opening head chef of The Wolseley five or six years ago.

With a sense of abandon, we can but only reach for rococo hyperbole, revel in baroque pleasure and roll in art nouvelle cuisine. A radical polychromatic dream of texture and flavour. And that’s just the operatic note striking the end of the afternoon: passion fruit and dark chocolate truffle petit fours. Lady Londond’ry would approve. Mourne Mountains of diced and sliced and spliced squid, celery and seaweed come hither, as crisp as a County Down spring day. More than the title deriving mere pie, a main of vegetable tarte fine, cauliflower purée, roasted mushroom and onion juice is a distinctive essay in deconstructivism. That sculptural disruptor in the bar next door – all circles in metallic squares – transcends spheres as pink (think Diana in Savannah) praline mousse, chocolate ganache and (oh, our favourite!) marzipan ice cream. Sometimes, there’s art in simply eating.

Ok, so we’ve nabbed the best table in Galvin at Windows. Good. What’s the opposite of social Siberia? A bay window practically levitating over Hyde Park. Well, it feels like California till the auto blinds descend and the air con turns up a notch or 12. Actually the three pronged propeller shape of the Hilton, gloriously inefficient to build, does generally afford delicious views (who said the hotel’s architecture was crap?). The Thames is invisible, hidden in a sea of greyness and greenery, a chaotic urban mosaic. Wait a minute! What’s that shimmering reflection? We glimpse a pale sapphire pool cradled between the catslide roof of Montevetro and the witch’s hat roof of Chelsea Harbour Tower. There you go, the Thames reduced to a jewel. And, as it turns out, all for no extra than the table stuck next to the kitchen. It’s Good Friday. The Bishop of Stepney, who promotes the reenchantment of society, says, “Live well | Live life to the full | This life is not the end.”

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Architects Architecture Country Houses

Colebrooke Park Triumphal Arch Lodge Fermanagh + William Farrell

The Miniaturist

Over dinner at Ashbrooke House, the very neoclassical dower house of the very neoclassical Colebrooke Park, the notable Fermanagh architect Richard Pierce remarks that, “Of course, William Farrell designed Regency gothic buildings too. St Patrick’s Church of Ireland in Monaghan is an example of his Regency gothic work.” Stylistically versatile, in other words.

Next to the triumphal arch is Colebrooke Park’s principal gatelodge. Kimmitt Dean gives it a mixed review in Gatelodges of Ulster, 1994:  ‘In stuccoed brickwork with its fair share of Tuscan pilasters rather a poor relation of the chaste example at Ely Lodge. Single storey building on a T plan, its three bay front elevation dominated by a bow shaped hall projection. With its high ceilings and entablatured parapet concealing a hipped roof, it is truly an ungainly design. All the openings have classical surrounds but inexplicably the front door head does not line up with the rest. To compound an already unworthy design the pair of chimney stacks rise together diagonally in the most incongruous Picturesque manner. These chimneys are located at the junction of the back return and the main block, a favourite ploy of Farrell’s which he first employed in the two lodges for Ely Lodge…’

Stylistically eclectic, in other words. With a bulbous porch bursting forward to enthusiastically greet guests, this microcosmic mansion has a Grecian air save for the jolly Tudorbethan chimneys which met with Emmett’s consternation. Batty and delicious, Colebrooke Park Triumphal Arch Lodge is now an Irish Landmark Trust holiday home. John O’Connell – architect of among many other things the Montalto restoration, The Carriage Rooms and The Wallace Collection – calls it, “A very special holiday let.” And then some. The gatelodges of nearby Ely Lodge might still be there but the main house suffered a rather ignominious fate. It was blown up in 1870 to ensure the 4th Marquess of Ely’s 21st birthday went with a bang (demolition for structural reasons was the alternative less amusing excuse).

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Hotels Luxury Restaurants

Sunborn London Yacht Hotel + Royal Victoria Dock London

Deep Calls Unto Deep

Ship ahoy! All aboard! It was only a matter of thyme (with Botanist Islay gin and lemon wheel) until we joined The Haves and The Have Knots. Sunborn great. Others … actually make ours a mocktail (fresh kiwi, green tea syrup, ginger ale, apple and pineapple juice). On deck. Caesar salad with warm prawns too. Leaving our landlubberliness behind, we’re chillaxing on London’s only docked yacht hotel. Sunborn is bombastically blingtastic as yachts ought to be. Not plain sailing. All that glitters is gold, Franki’s incense and mirror. Busy topping up our tans, this one’s picture heavy and scripture reliant. Make waves. Oceans arise.

“You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water.“

“Like cold water to a thirsty soul; so is good news from a far country.”

“Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.”

“But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

“For I will pour out water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.”

“He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you: and through the rivers, they will not overflow you.”

“He sent me from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.”

“Therefore you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.”

“We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up.”

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Architects Architecture Country Houses Luxury People

Ashbrooke House Fermanagh + William Farrell

The Spring of Content

Dr Roderick O’Donnell, author and Country Life contributor, considers Ashbrooke House in County Fermanagh to be “a very successful Regency country house”. Kimmitt Dean notes that “this seems to have formed part of a lucrative commission for the architect, there being many buildings of similar form in the vicinity…” Such a shame the late Sir Charles Brett didn’t come west of the River Bann in his riveting series on the buildings of Ulster. It would have been interesting to hear what Charlie thought of Ashbrooke. Would he have classified it as middling or large? The front elevation stationed above a grass bank is simply divine. Aha, a haha. Five bay bliss. Formality | solidity | proportionality | materiality.

A study by Queen’s University Belfast confirms Ashbrooke’s walls are of buff pink sandstone: Ballyness Sandstone and Fermanagh Carboniferous Sandstone to be precise. This material has a lovely coloured textured finish. Just like the enigmatic standing stone on the estate. No pale smooth featureless Portland stone here. Ashbrooke House is the substantial dower house of an even larger property, Colebrooke Park. There’s an experiential reduction in scale and grandeur (yet no diminution of quality) as befits the generational decline from Viscountess to Dowager. They’re both by the same architect: William Farrell. The commodious Portaferry House in County Down is also by Will. His work has a sturdiness: an antidote to Adam style frippery. He was one of several early 19th century Dublin architects (others that spring to mind are John Bowden and John Hargrave) with country house practices. Writing in Buildings of North West Ulster, Professor Alistair Rowan summarises Ashbrooke as:

“A five bay, two storey front with big windows and a projecting solid porch with Tuscan columns. Above, a tripartite sash window. Shallow hipped roof, like the big house, but here supported on an eaves cornice with projecting stone mutules. The house has only one regular front, with a long wing behind. A plaque, in the stable yard behind, has the legend, ‘Built by Sir Henry Brooke Baronet, for the use of his tenants in the year 1830’.”

The 3rd Viscount and Viscountess Brookeborough have restored and revived and rejuvenated and reinvigorated and refurnished Colebrooke. “The house was cement rendered in the early 19th century,” notes the Viscount, Lord Lieutenant of Fermanagh and Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen. An 1891 photograph shows the south elevation in that state: the polygonal conservatory has since gone; the sunken garden was yet to come. An unpeeling revealed the rugged reddish sandstone underneath. Vast (seriously large – if anything, William Farrell got scale) reception rooms with Victorian wallpaper (and umpteen bedrooms) make it the ideal setting for shooting parties. Two paned sash windows frame uninterrupted views across the parkland.

In 1974, the executors of the 1st Viscount Brookeborough instructed Osborne King + Megran to auction the contents of the big house to cover death duties. Basil Brooke had been Prime Minister of Northern Ireland for two decades. The 2nd Viscount was also a politician. The 3rd Viscount’s brother the Honourable Christopher Brooke and his wife Amanda live in a new baronial style house on the estate. The Brooke family has been in Fermanagh since Sir Henry (High Sheriff, Governor and MP for County Donegal) was granted lands by Royal Patent in 1667. Military and public service have been something of a family tradition ever since.

In the family plot in Colebrooke Church of Ireland graveyard (a cornerstone dates the church 1765), one tombstone reads, ‘Here lies the body of Brigadier General Henry Francis Brooke eldest son of the late George Frederick Brooke of Ashbrooke and of the Lady Arabella Brooke born 13th August 1836 killed in action 15th August 1880 aged 44. He fell while commanding the sortie against the village of Dehkhoja during the siege of Kandahar, south Afghanistan, in the noble endeavour to save the life of a wounded brother officer Captain Cruikshank R.E. Greater love hath no man that this. That a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15.13.’

Amanda, a talented ceramicist who has exhibited at the Royal Ulster Academy, has turned her artistic hand(s) to decorating Ashbrooke House. It is available for parties or as a holiday let. All four reception rooms, eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and one kitchen (with Aga). The tack room and rabbit man’s cottage, outbuildings behind the main house, are now artists’ studios.

Hidden from the public for almost 200 years, now is the time for Ashbrooke House to be revealed. Literarily, not literally. Nestling in the 1,000 acre Colebrooke estate, it’s always going to be exclusive. The building is T shaped: a drawing room and dining room on either side of the entrance hall in front of an older lower wing. This arrangement allows for lots of light and airy dual aspect rooms. “I don’t like subdivided rooms so en suites are in former dressing rooms and other minor rooms,” explains Amanda. With typical 19th century disregard for convenience, the kitchen was originally located at the tip of the return. That is, as far as possible from the dining room. Not anymore. The new kitchen is next to the dining room and the old one is now a bright sitting room with exposed stone arches. Guests who can’t cook won’t cook never cook can rely on catering by French Village.

“The house had barely changed in 40 years,” she records. “But in restoring it we haven’t gone for the ‘interior designed’ look.” A more organic approach was taken: relaxed country house chic. With a few family heirlooms thrown in for good measure. A portrait of Eugene Gabriel Isabey dominates the drawing room; Reverend James Ingram guards the dining room. Architectural detailing is restrained in keeping with the exterior. The drawing room timber and marble fireplace was salvaged long ago from the ruinous Corcreevy House in Fivemiletown. Vintage fire extinguishers and milk churns marked ‘Colonel Chichester, Galgorm Castle, Ballymena’ are recycled as lampstands. There are one or two inherited colour schemes. The last Dowager’s choice of mustard walls in the dining room for instance. “That’s my late mother-in-law’s wallpaper,” smiles Amanda pointing to the trellis design zigzagging across the walls and ceiling of the blue bedroom. “Not the best for hangovers.”

Over dinner, distinguished Fermanagh architect Richard Pierce waxes lyrical about Ashbrooke: “The proportions are beautiful. The scale is beautiful. The setting is beautiful. You approach Colebrooke from above. You first see Ashbrooke from below. It’s very austere except for the porch. There’s a tremendous counterpoint between the centre and the rest. I like the fact it’s not showy. It’s quiet good taste but very good taste. What I feel about Ashbrooke is that it has a sense of neoclassicism you’d find in a St Petersburg dacha.” Amanda agrees, “There’s a purity to the design.”

“These houses aren’t museums,” Christopher believes. “They have always been sources of employment. They need to be run like businesses to survive.” He should know. He has turned Galgorm Castle outside Ballymena, another family property, into a thriving enterprise employing around 300 people. Gatelodges on the Colebrooke Park estate are holiday lets. Historically, the triumphal arch, still the main entrance to the estate, was a less successful venture. It was built for the arrival of Queen Victoria but at the last minute, she pulled a sickie. The Baroness was not amused.

It’s spring at Ashbrooke House. Dewy drumlins sprinkled with a dusting of daffodils and bluebells by day. And lambing by night: after dinner a midnight jaunt beckons across the estate to a barn full of Zwartbles sheep and lambs gambling amok. “Zwartbles sheep are very friendly and make great mothers,” observes Christopher. This Dutch breed has a distinctive blackish brown fleece and white forehead streak. Sure enough, in the wee small hours one gives birth to twin lambs. “It’s a far cry from Clapham Junction,” observes Amanda. She used to live near Lavender Hill.

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Art Design Luxury People

Lee Broom + Wedgwood

Breakfast at Harrods

Ever since he started pottering about in 1759, aged 29, Josiah Wedgwood’s surname has been synonymous with feats of clay. Just 11 years later the self proclaimed ‘Vase Maker General to the Universe’ wrote to his business partner Thomas Bentley about a “violent vase madness” afflicting the Anglo Irish aristos. Trust the West British to have a weakness for garniture. Americans have subsequently assumed the mantle.

The last time we dined at Harrods we were plonked on a banquette next to the late Lady Lewisham (aka Raine Spencer) sporting the grandest bouffant since Marie Antoinette. Her Ladyship was promoting Le Grand Atelier. Today it’s breakfast and launch. Generations come and generations go. Now it’s the time of the talented designer Lee Broom to shine. He’s a tastemaker and a man of taste (Kitty Fisher’s is one of his favourite London restaurants).

The stats are impressive. In less than a decade Lee has: released 75 furniture and lighting products under his own label | designed 40 commercial and residential interiors | created 20 products for other brands | opened two eponymous showrooms (London and New York) | won 20 awards including British Designer of the Year 2012 | received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2015. Having collaborated with iconic brands such as Christian Louboutin and Mulberry (he has a fashion degree from Central St Martin’s), it was only natural that Wedgwood would come knocking on his door. He may have products in 120 stores worldwide, but there’s only one Harrods (complete with Wedgwood concession).

In person, Lee is charming and polite. “I was inspired by Wedgwood’s historic black and white Jasperware,” he explains. “It already has a contemporary feel. I’ve taken the classical elements and silhouettes and stripped back the ornamentation for an even more modern look. I love the charcoal colour and biscuit texture of Jasperware which I’ve injected with neon high gloss details!” Priced from £7,500 to £12,000, the bowl and vases are handcrafted in Wedgwood’s Stoke-on-Trent factory. Josiah would approve.