https://heritage.directory/Properties Heritage, the app that helps you find history. Featuring properties from CCT, English Heritage, Scottish Heritage Trust, Scottish National Trust, HHA, CADW and many independent sites. en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Founded by the Benedictines in the 11th century, the surviving, much altered buildings date largely from the 14th century. Managed and maintained by the Landmark Trust,which lets buildings for self-catering holidays. Full details of Wilmington Priory and 189 other historic and architecturally important buildings available for holidays are featured in The Landmark Trust Handbook (price £10 plus P&P refundable against a booking) and on the website. https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/wilmington-priory Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:32:03 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=913 Situated towards the north end of the village on the east side of the road which joins the square and the triangular site of the old Market House, there is a group of buildings which because of their medieval form encourage the visitor to take a closer look.It is the house standing at a right angle to the road, presenting its gable and crenellated wall of outstanding workmanship, which attracts attention, and through the secluded courtyard gives glimpses to the field beyond and the heights of Dartmoor in the distance.The Landmark Trust have recently bought this delightful building which formed part of an endowment by Dame Thomasine Percival, the widow of Sir John Percival who was Lord Mayor of London in 1498, and because of its importance as one of the earliest free schools in England to be founded by a woman. It also architectural similarities with Wortham Manor, another of the Trust's properties, which lies about 12 miles away on the Devon side of the Tamar.Thomasine, whose maiden name was Bonaventure, was born in the village of Week St Mary in 1450 and the romantic story of her meeting and eventual marriage with Richard Bunsby, a wool merchant from London, followed by the improvement of her position and fortune by two later marriages has been told by many Cornish writers, including Parson Hawker (in 'Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall', which is on the College bookshelf) But Lady Percival must have been an unusual woman of her time, because we are told that soon after the death of her third husband in 1504 she returned to the village to devote the remainder of her life to charitable work in the neighbourhood. Her will, which is dated 1512, made her cousin John Dinham of Wortham, who had married her niece Margaret Westmanton, the residual legatee and left to his discretion on the chantry and grammar school which she had established in her lifetime, whilst the deed which she settled the foundation stated the stipend of the manciple, the laundress and the schoolmaster, who was also to be a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge and to pray for her soul in the parish church of St Mary.The Commissioners of 1546 assigned to enquire into chantries, hospitals, colleges, free chapels, etc. reported that 'that ye sayde Chauntrye is a great comfort to all ye countries, for yt they yt lyst may sett their children to borde there and have them taught freely, for ye wch purpose there is an house and offices appointed by the foundation accordingly'.Unfortunately two years later another Commission reported that the school at St Mary Week was 'now yn decaye ...' and this was followed with a declaration by the Lord Protector Somerset that the school should be moved to Launceston.(see 'Tudor Cornwall' by AL Rowse, p260ff)We will never really know what happened in the 16th century to turn, within a few years, a flourishing school which was serving the local community well into such an unwanted and unmanageable liability that its assets had to be transferred to the similar foundation of the adjoining town, but it is not difficult to surmise.The buildings which remain of the former College have been partially demolished to suit changing functions but also to provide building materials for other village buildings. Dressed granite jambs, heads and tympani can be seen built into the walls of many neighbouring cottages, although enough survives of the College to give us some idea of the imposing group which stood on the site in the reign of Edward VI.The similarity of the granite dressings of the windows, with the slightly ogee form of the head of the lights and the arch of the porch doorway, to those at Wortham Manor has already been touched upon, but there are other details which suggest that the same designer and craftsman were used on the two buildings, possibly under the direction of John Dinham. The granite plinth with the single course of dressed ashlar in brown sandstone immediately above it and the remainder of the walls in coursed freestone, tympanum over the entrance doorway, the stair turret with its granite quatrefoil window and the lintel of the chimney piece are all features which can be seen in the house that John Dinham enlarged in the first quarter of the 16th century, probably to provide accommodation for his son William on his marriage. There are similarities, too, between the beautiful granite chimney with its scalloped cap on the south elevation at the College and that at Trecarell just south of Launceston which was also built at about the same time.Unfortunately there is nothing to suggest the form of the Tudor roof, floor beams and screen of the original building, but it is probable that they were as those at Wortham, Trecarrell and Cotehele, all buildings in the locality which were extended at the end of the 15th century or beginning of the next. The present roof trusses are not difficult to date and are of rough carpentry which the builders always intended to conceal above the ceiling, but it is probable that the first floor was inserted and the roof replaced in the late 17th or early eighteenth century when the windows on the north elevation were also changed to wood casements and a culm oven built into the medieval fireplace.The Landmark Trust intends to remove the more recent partitions and staircase, to repair and reinstate those features of the early buildings which survive, and to alter the accommodation so that people may come and enjoy the atmosphere of the College. It will consist of a large sitting-room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor with a bathroom and three bedrooms on the first floor. The first floor will be replaced slightly below the 17th century level, so that the heights of the first floor window sills on the north side will still be convenient, but because the original turret stairs were dangerously steep it has been decided to lower the landing which will be about 2' below the bottom of the granite jambs of the mediaeval arched doorway at the head of the stairs. And lastly the roof timbers are to be repaired and the roof covering of used rag slates will be laid to continue the colour, texture and scale of other roofs on the neighbourhood.The early history of The College and how it came to the Landmark Trust is described in the Landmark Handbook. The four hundred and twenty odd years in between are an almost total blank. From 1549-1725 it was owned by the Prideau family and was part of the Manor of Simpson. A rental of Week St Mary dated 1709-1728 mentions 'Scholler's Parl' and 'dwelling house Schollar's Park', presumably referring to the College.At the beginning of the 18th century the Prideaus sold up to Thomas Pitt, first Lord Londonderry, and a first cousin to the Earl of Chatham. His sister Lucy married the first Earl of Stanhope, one of the most distinguished soldiers in the reign of Queen Anne, and the property came through her to the Stanhopes.The 7th Earl of Stanhope sold it in 1910, together with his Holesworthy estate. Mr Colwill, from whom the Landmark Trust bought it, had lived at the College all his life and so had two generations of the Colwills before him https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-college Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:25:15 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1921 The China Tower was built in 1839 by Lady Louisa Rolle for John, Lord Rolle, a charming surprise birthday gift from a young wife to her much older husband. The Rolles were an ancient Devon family who amassed vast acreages in the county through marriage and purchase. Their main seats were at here at Bicton, and at Stevenstone, where we have another Landmark, The Library. Lord and Lady Rolle were passionate gardeners and together they created fine botanical gardens and a famous arboretum at Bicton.Lady Rolle built this octagonal, four-storey belvedere tower secretly on a knoll wooded with conifers, to surprise her husband on his 89th birthday. It is said that he has to be carried up the winding stairs to the roof terrace in his bath chair – from where he was rewarded with a view of Bicton House with the sea beyond. The tower gets its name from Lady Louisa’s collection of china which she displayed in one of the rooms. J C Loudon was impressed: he called it ‘the best piece of architecture at Bicton’ when he visited the gardens in 1842.A new life as a LandmarkThe tower was standing empty and at risk of vandalism, and Landmark took it on after an approach by its owners, the Clinton Devon Estates, who are paying for its refurbishment as a Landmark. Work is well underway and we have no doubt it will prove a wonderful and secluded place to stay on an ancient estate. The China Tower will join our collection in spring 2013 https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-china-tower Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:19:11 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1918 The Château was built in 1747–8 for a prosperous lawyer from Gainsborough named Thomas Hutton. Mr Hutton and his father before him had looked after the local business affairs of the Earl of Abingdon who owned two small estates nearby (Gate Burton and Knaith) which had come into his family through an earlier marriage and were some distance from the rest of his very large property.In 1744 the Earl was advised to sell the two estates and Hutton, seeing the chance of a bargain, purchased that of Gate Burton. (The neighbouring Knaith estate was sold to a Mr Dalton, and in the early 19th century Hutton’s grandson bought it and brought it back to the Hutton family.) Gate Burton at that time had no hall or manor house and rather than go to the expense of providing one Mr Hutton built the little Château on its wooded knoll above the river, with its garden and plantations around it, as a weekend cottage. There, according to his son, “he could retire from the Business of his office at Gainsborough, from a Saturday evening until the Monday Morning”. He would have had his rooms on the first floor, with a kitchen and servant’s room below.The architect of the Château was John Platt, and it must have been almost his first work, designed when he was only 19. Platt came from a family of mason architects and for 50 years and more he practised as a builder and statuary mason as well as an architect, all with equal success. He worked almost exclusively in Yorkshire; the Château is almost his only building outside the county. His many works include Mount Pleasant, near Sheffield; Thundercliffe Grange, Ecclefield and Page Hall, Eccleshall. He added a wing to Tong Hall, designed a fireplace for Renishaw and staircases made of marble from his own quarries for Aston Hall and Clifton Hall.Thomas Hutton finally began to build Gate Burton Hall in about 1765, and it was mostly complete by 1768. The Château came to be used simply as a summer house, an agreeable destination for picnics or the odd night “in rural seclusion”. Towards the end of the century, however, alterations were carried out, including the addition of balconies at either end of the building. In the 19th century new windows were inserted, but they were on the wrong scale being two panes wide instead of three; the exterior above the rustication was rendered and the roof was renewed.In 1907 the Hutton family sold both Gate Burton and Knaith to the Sandars family, wealthy maltsters from Gainsborough. In the sale particulars the Château is described as a shooting box, so the upper floor had probably been kept for the use of the family for shooting lunches and other such entertainments. After the War it was not lived in again and was left stranded without natural users. Gate Burton Hall, with its park, was sold again in 1974, but the strip of land along the river where the Château stands was retained and became part of the Knaith Hall estate, which had been inherited by a connection of the Sandars family.The work of neglect and natural decay inevitably continued, accelerated as so often by the activities of vandals, until the building was approaching the point of collapse. In 1982 the owner, concerned for its survival but unable to afford the cost of repair himself therefore offered it to the Landmark Trust https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-chateau Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:18:15 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1917 Bible Christian services were first held in Lettaford in 1860, when it seems that permission was given to use the day school for Sunday prayer meetings. For about two years before this a small number of people had been meeting in cottages in hamlets nearby, but with a more regular meeting place the membership quickly rose to about twenty.The move must partly have been due to the influence of the schoolmistress, Mrs Susan Walling, and it may also have been due to her that a new building was erected to serve as both schoolroom and chapel. The work was actually ordered by a Miss Pynseat, however, who may have become the Mrs Splatt who is later referred to as the owner of the building. The record of the work exists in a book of “Tenders and Estimates for the building of Chapels and church extensions". The entry is undated, but presumed from its place in the chronological order to be for 1866:"I hereby agree to build the walls of Schoolroom with Granite stone 20 inches thick and of the dimensions shown in plan, and to cover the roof with best Coryton Countess slate 20 by 10. To lath the Battering of Back and South end and the Ceiling with Good stout laths. The plastering of same and remaining part of Wall to be three Coat Work. The External face of Walls to be pointed. To provide Granite Cills for Windows and Door and find all Material and Carriage for the sum of fifty eight Pounds ten shillings."This almost certainly refers to the existing building, which would thus have opened in 1867 or 1868. This ties in with the list of active members of the congregation; the number had sunk to only six in 1866, but rose to seventeen in 1867 and twenty three in 1868. It was not a wealthy community, consisting almost entirely of small farmers and farm labourers. Out of these the group of preachers would have been selected, who took it in turns to lead services in all the twelve chapels making up the Chagford Circuit.In 1872 a change occurred in Lettaford. On September 5th a resolution was noted in the Chagford Circuit Book:"That as we learn with deep regret that sister Susan Walling and her daughter are about to be removed from Lettaford we hereby desire to express our high appreciation of assistance they have rendered us in entertaining the preachers, conducting prayer and class meetings, in supporting the cause of God financially and in carrying out the discipline of the society generally and we earnestly pray that their valuable lives may long be spared and that the choicest of Heaven's blessings may rest upon them and that ultimately they may gain their full and permanent reward in the home of the sanctified where change and disappointment may never come.That this meeting desires to express its most cordial and hearty thanks to Mrs Splatt for her great kindness and liberality in allowing us the free use of the schoolroom at Lettaford in which to preach the Gospel. We believe many souls have derived much good therefrom, some of whom we trust are now joining their songs of praise with that of the redeemed in glory.We learn with deep regret that Mrs Walling who has rendered us good service there is shortly about to remove but notwithstanding her removal and the consequent closure of the school we shall be very pleased with the kind permission of Mrs Splatt to continue public services as heretofore and we trust many precious souls may yet find a birthplace there and may Heaven's blessing be hers through life, after which may Heaven be her eternal home".At some date, probably not long after this, the ownership of the Schoolroom passed to the Bible Christian Church, so that it became a fully fledged chapel, vested in trustees drawn from the congregation. The late Mr Wallace Perryman of Yeo Farm, Chagford, who played the harmonium in Lettaford Chapel from 1914 until the 1960s, and whose father had been a preacher on the Chagford Circuit, remembered in a newspaper interview given in 1960 that at this time, or perhaps when services were first held in the school, the Bible Christians encountered strong opposition from a local landowner who even went to the lengths of padlocking the door on Sundays to keep them out. A law suit followed in which the landowner tried to prove that the building stood on his own land, so that he had the right of control. The Bible Christians won the case however, by establishing that the chapel was in fact on common land.Mr Perryman remembered a period when cattle drovers who used the old Way through the hamlet fixed a chain across the door of the chapel to prevent their animals from straying inside.The Rev. L.H. Court in "The History of the Bible Christian Methodist Church in the Chagford Circuit" in 1904 states that the congregation at Lettaford never properly revived after Mrs Walling's departure and that numbers began to decline from then on. The agricultural depression of the late 19th century, causing the gradual depopulation of the area, would have contributed to this trend.For the twenty years from 1897, when he was made a trustee, the chapel was cared for by a Mr William Chammings. In winter he would light the open fire to warm the chapel before meetings, and the oil lamps by which the building was lit. He would have overseen the installation in 1913 of a harmonium given by Hittesleigh Methodist Chapel.During Mr Chammings's trusteeship, in 1907, the Bible Christians joined with the Free Methodists and the New Connexion to form the United Methodist Church. This foreshadowed their final unification in 1932 with the Wesleyans and the Primitive Methodists to become the Methodist Church of Great Britain.In 1917 a new group of trustees was installed. In the 1920s there must have been a rise in the congregation and in the number of children locally, for in 1922 a schoolroom was added "at the rear of the chapel", with a doorway leading through in the corner of the south wall. It was made of galvanised iron lined with wood and was lit by oil lamps like the chapel. On the other end or "front" of the chapel a garage was added, also made out of galvanised iron.At some time after this, although possibly not until after the War, the old entrance in the east, or side, wall was blocked up and a new entrance pierced through the chimney breast in the north end, reached through the garage. At the same time the pulpit was moved from the north to the south end.This, with the installation of a new organ for Mr Perryman, and gas-lighting in 1943, followed by electricity in 1962, completes the account of alterations to the building in its time as a place of worship, since by the latter date the congregation numbered only four, and they found it difficult even to maintain the building. Mr Roger Thorne, who has made a study of the history of the Methodist Church in Devon, preached at Lettaford on three occasions and remembers the warmth of their welcome however.By 1977 the number of active members in the whole of the Chagford Circuit had dwindled so low that it was decided to amalgamate it with its neighbours. Lettaford was incorporated into the Exeter Circuit, and soon afterwards the decision was made to close the chapel altogether. The Landmark Trust, having already restored the long-house, Sanders, in Lettaford, were keen to preserve the chapel, feeling that it was an integral part of the character of the place, and so it was conveyed to them in 1981 https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-chapel-2 Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:16:07 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1915 This appears on the 1840 tithe map as standing on land belonging to John Tape, a carpenter then living in Ford Cottage (Tapes lived in Coombe for generations, the last only leaving in 1968). Its roughly dressed stone and flat brick arches are typical of the early 19th century. The windows, with vertical bars and overlapping glass, are of the kind found in many workshops and industrial buildings.The first known reference to Coombe is in 1520, but the mile of sheltered valley running inland from Duckpool has been lived in continuously from very early times. A decayed earthwork in Stowe Woods at the head of the valley is an Iron Age fort and the hidden site of the hamlet is typical of ancient habitations in Cornwall. Although the earliest of the existing houses date only from the 17th century, they are likely to stand on older sites. The hamlet stands lies on the southern edge of the parish of Morwenstow. It was until recently divided between two landowners. The land west of the stream belonged from the 1540s until 1922 to the Duchy of Cornwall, as part of the manor of Eastway. The land east of the stream was originally part of the manor of Northleigh, or Lee, which until the Elizabethan period was owned by the Coplestone family, but soon afterwards passed to the Grenvilles of Stowe on the hillside above. It remained part of the Stowe estate until 1949.Coombe is listed as one of the ‘principal villages’ of the parish of Morwenstow by Daniel Lysons in Magna Britannia Vol. III, published in 1814. This makes it sound quite big and indeed it was once much larger: in the middle of the 19th century there were between twelve and fifteen households here, but by 1891 these had shrunk to just three. By the beginning of the 20th century Coombe had become a favourite stopping place for walkers, gaining a mention in most Cornish guidebooks from the 1890s onwards. Official recognition of its landscape came in 1930 when the Council for the Protection of Rural England recommended that the whole Coombe Valley, along with the coastal path, should be preserved as a place of outstanding natural beauty. It was another thirty years before this hope was realised, but in 1960 the National Trust acquired the first of several holdings, on the south side of the valley. Between 1966 and 1969, the hamlet itself was bought by the Landmark Trust, as part of a joint scheme with the National Trust to preserve it and its exceptional setting https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-carpenters-shop Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:41:39 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1904 You will no longer find a village called Porthmeor on a map and the name has passed instead to one of Cornwall’s most famous surfing beaches, a few miles round the headland in St Ives. Lower Porthmeor, in its grouping and siting and the forces that have gone into its continuation, is representative of many other hamlets on this northern shelf of Penwith, and is also among the most attractive of all the groups of buildings along a visually staggering stretch of coast.Apart from the fact of its existence, we know nothing for certain about the hamlet’s appearance before 1600, at the earliest. The likelihood is that the settlement would have been laid out in a similar way to today, but on a much smaller scale, with tiny yards and enclosures. The earliest houses would have been little different from the humble single storey building on the north of the site, with a single door and two tiny windows. The cow-houses and other agricultural buildings would have been like that next to it.Houses excavated at Mawgan Porth near Newquay of the 8th or 9th century were found to have been of this kind, although there the walls were constructed in the same manner as Cornish hedges - two skins of stone, with packed clay or earth between. Sometimes there would have been a sleeping loft, sometimes they may have conformed to the "long-house" pattern, with the outer room acting as a byre for animals.We shudder with discomfort at the thought of living in such structures today, and certainly, as soon as wealth permitted, they were improved on. Yet they were solid and well-insulated, providing warmth as well as shelter. As a building type they endured for over a thousand years, well into the 17th century.It was not until then that the prosperity that had brought about the boom in vernacular house construction known as Great Rebuilding reached this westernmost peninsula, a century later than other parts of the country. Then the older houses started to be rebuilt, with an additional storey, or new windows perhaps, and another room built on the end. As with their predecessors, few of these survive, having vanished when they themselves were rebuilt, unless put to new use as a farm building, or kept on as the dwelling of a labourer or poor relation. A garden wall at Higher Porthmeor is in fact part of another such house, of quite a substantial kind. The Upper House at Higher Porthmeor also bears witness to its 17th-century origin, with a lintel carved with the date 1682. No doubt other fragments have been reused in later buildings, such as window lintels, and dressed stone quoins.The other great improvement by the 17th century was the chimney. None of this date survive, as such, at Porthmeor, but a method of construction was developed which endured into the 20th century, with very little change apart from the disappearance after 1700 of a chamfered edge on the great stones of the fireplace surrounds. Both the Captain’s House and The Farmhouse has one of these huge projecting chimneypieces, and they occur in most of the other farms along the coast. Matthews in 1892 remarked of them: "Here may still be commonly seen the immense open chimney, with dried furze and turf piled up on the earthen floor of the kitchen".None of the houses at Lower Porthmeor dates from before the end of the 18th century. Even then few houses in Penwith were built with two full storeys; the pattern remained that of a single storey with a now rather more spacious loft. So the house nearest the road – now known as The Captain’s House - contains within its larger end a smaller and lower house, the roofline of which was found in the walls when plaster was stripped off in 1988. This could date from 1800 or even a bit before. However the Tithe Apportionment Map for Zennor of 1842, although it lists a house and garden here, only shows what seems to be a smaller building again, hardly even a house. The National Trust's Vernacular Buildings Surveyors have suggested that this was because the house was only then being built - and such are the difficulties of dating, a range of fifty years either way is quite acceptable.The house that almost certainly does date from soon after 1800 is The Farmhouse, which is clearly marked on the Tithe Map of 1842. It also appears in the first edition of the 1" Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1805, although not published until 1813. The leap in terms of civilisation from the earlier houses is immense.The Farmhouse has been little altered, but The Captain’s House, has gone through a number of different stages. First there was the small house already described. Then a building was added onto its lower end, blocking a window in the gable. It is thought that the new building began life as a cow-house, because a drain runs out of it directly under one of the sides of the fireplace, which must therefore be a later addition, to convert this end into a house as well. A house it certainly was in 1860 when Arthur Berryman (known to family tradition as Captain Arthur) was born there. Soon afterwards, however, the upper end was enlarged, with a full second storey added. The family moved in there, and the lower end became a cow-house or stable again, and has remained so. This had happened by the time of the 1881 census, when an uninhabited house was recorded.The other farm buildings at Lower Porthmeor are all 19th century. The long cow-house, running uphill from The Farmhouse, is marked on the 1842 Tithe Map. It already had a granary (locally called a barn or chall-barn) at the top end. On the upper floor of this the grain was stored, while cows lived below. Another cow-house, known as the Four-house for obvious numerical reasons, was added in the later 19th century by Robert Berryman, Captain Arthur's father. Robert Berryman also built the very charming, and rather grand, barn (i.e granary) immediately next to the Farmhouse, probably in about 1880. Its cambered lintels may, perhaps, have been reused from another building. It had a pig-house on its lower end, and there was another pig-house, now roofless, at the other side of the yar https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-captains-house Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:38:41 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1903 'The stucco... is meant to represent a wall worn by water drops, with icicles sticking to it. The festoons of shells are additional ornaments; or how could they come in that form unless some invisible sea nymph or triton placed them there for their private amusement? I should not wonder, indeed, that so pretty a place allured them.' Mary Delany 1754.The Bath House was built about 1748 for Sir Charles Mordaunt of Walton Hall. Like many of his contemporaries, Sir Charles enjoyed making alterations and improvements to his house and estate and took a fashionable interest in architecture. He was one of the local circle of gentlemen connoisseurs and amateur architects, which included Lord Lyttleton of Hagley, Sir Roger Newdigate of Arbury and not least, his good friend Sanderson Miller of Radway.Almost certainly it was the last of these, Sanderson Miller, who provided designs for the Bath House. The building bears a close resemblance to his known works, such as the Shire Hall in Warwick; and he had a particular fondness for rooms of octagonal form, as here. No drawings exist, but in October 1749, Miller noted in his diary that he was settling 'accounts with Hitchcox about Sir Charles' Bath.' William Hitchcox was both Miller's stonemason and his valet. Since he seldom worked for anyone else, his involvement at Walton provides some firm evidence for attributing the design to Miller.Since Classical times, exotic buildings have formed an important part of garden design. In the landscape gardens of the 18th century these were carefully placed to appear unexpectedly in the course of meandering walks, sometimes chanced on close to, sometimes glimpsed from a distance, adding interest and variety to the scene. On a practical level, such buildings provided shelter, and a place to enjoy the view, take a rest and have picnics. Along with temples and towers, bath houses were also popular, having strong associations with the Classical past, and the baths of Ancient Rome. They served moreover a double purpose.At that time people took a bath mainly for medicinal reasons. We know Sir Charles suffered from gout and his doctor would certainly have advised him that a cold dip would be beneficial for this ailment. A cold bath was also held to calm the nerves, improve digestion, invigorate the spirits, and even help to retain 'an equal bodily weight.' Lengthy immersion was not advised, in case it resulted in a 'Horror!'The elegant octagonal room above the bath chamber is dominated by the plaster icicles, or stalactites, and the shell-work festoons, a refinement of the cave-like grotto below. It seems that this decoration was the idea of Mary Delany, whose sister Anne Dewes lived at neighbouring Wellesbourne Hall. Mrs Delany is better known for her paper flower pictures, but she also excelled in shell-work. She decorated her own home near Dublin in this way, and also possessed an impressive shell collection. She sent a barrel of shells to Walton in 1754, and probably helped in their arrangement, supervising her sister and Sir Charles' daughters.Having served as the setting for many picnics and tea-parties, and even a Victorian dinner to celebrate a christening, the Bath House finally fell out of use after the Second World War. Efforts by its owners to keep it in repair proved unequal to the destructive energy of vandals. Eventually it was brought to the attention of the Landmark Trust and a lease was signed in 198 https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-bath-house Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:55:34 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1890 Various farm buildings were built on Lundy by Sir John Borlase Warren in the 1770s, and a barn was mentioned in the letters written by the Irish steward, Mr Mannix, to Sir Aubrey de Vere Hunt in the 1820s.A barn is marked, too, on a map of 1820, in roughly the same position as the present one. It is curious, therefore, that it does not seem to appear, or at least not in the right place, in Mary Ann Heaven's drawing of the village in 1838. It may be that the 18th century barn became ruinous and was rebuilt by Mr Heaven after 1838. His agent, Mr Malbon, does in fact refer to a new barn in 1839. The present Barn is constructed of granite and was converted to a threshing house when the round house was added. This provided a circular walk for a horse or donkey, harnessed to a gin to provide motive-power for the machinery in the adjacent threshing room. Later when engines replaced animal and man-power, the Barn housed one of the few mechanical contrivances on the island: the ancient 4½ horsepower Blackstone stationary engine. It ran on paraffin and powered the threshing box, chaff-cutter, grist-mill, circular saw and subsequently a sheep-shearing machine for which purpose it never really had sufficient speed.On October 4th 1944 Lundy suffered a violent gale and the roof of the Barn was lifted off in one piece, falling near the entrance to the stables and the dung heap https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-barn Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:53:59 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1889 The Banqueting House is one of several buildings added between 1730-60 to the remarkable landscape garden at Gibside for its owner, George Bowes. In the course of his lifetime, besides improvements to the house itself (the home since 1540 of his mother's family, the Blakistons) and James Paine's magnificent chapel begun just before his death in 1760, Bowes built a Palladian stable block, an Orangery, a bath house (vanished), a Column of British Liberty, a Gothic tower (vanished and perhaps never built) and the Gothic Banqueting House itself.This was built during the 1740s. An inventory of 1746, listing the furniture of its Great Room (six Windsor chairs, one large Windsor chair with four seats, prints of Shakespeare, Milton, Swift), shows it to have been in use by then. Its interior decoration was as elaborate as the exterior, its ceiling and walls covered with an intricate papier maché design, for which the original architect's sketch exists. A 19th-century description records mirrors at either end of the Great Room, so that 'the company when seated appears almost endless in length.' Here the family and their guests would come for picnic meals, perhaps laid out as a surprise feast to be discovered in the course of a long tour of the grounds. Afterwards they might refresh themselves with music, or stroll on the lawn around the building, enjoying the view of the lake and the grand panorama beyond.The architect for most of the buildings at Gibside was Daniel Garrett, a former assistant of Lord Burlington's who developed a thriving practice in the North, which he handed on, in about 1753, to Paine. Garrett had a particular gift for Gothick design, a decorative style inspired by what was then taken to be the native British architecture, but which had not at that time acquired the scholarly character of the later Gothic Revival. The Banqueting House, with its bowed front and soaring pinnacles, is one of the most extraordinary, and brilliant, buildings of the style.George Bowes was an extremely talented man who, besides being a successful landowner and coal-owner, a keen sportsman and a Whig MP, almost certainly planned the alterations to the landscape at Gibside himself. He was one of those, like John Aislabie at Studley Royal in Yorkshire, who under the influence of designers such as Stephen Switzer, broke away from the intricate formal designs of parks and gardens popular in the 17th century, to favour a more natural scheme, in which the whole estate, with its abundant woods and hills, fast flowing river and rich pattern of cultivated fields, was brought into relationship with the old house at its centre, to create an ideal world in miniature. There is still a formal framework of avenues and vistas, and a geometrically shaped lake, but between there are irregular woodland plantations, encircling rides and walks that follow a meandering course, with frequent surprise views of the countryside and, of course, of the carefully sited buildings which play so important a part within it.George Bowes' daughter married the Earl of Strathmore, whose family name then became Bowes-Lyon, and whose descendants still own most of Gibside. The house fell empty before 1900, however, and was dismantled in 1920. Later, the park was leased to the Forestry Commission. The Banqueting House began to disappear beneath the undergrowth, and its roof fell in. Fortunately several people took photographs of it before this happened.New hope arose for Gibside as a whole when in 1965 the chapel and the avenue were given by the 16th Earl to the National Trust, which has therefore been able to reinstate two of the most important elements in the gardens. Then, in 1977, the Landmark Trust, a charity which specialises in the rescue and reinvigoration of buildings at risk, offered to take on The Banqueting House, to restore it and pay for its future upkeep by letting it for holidays. The Forestry Commission generously gave up their lease of the building, so that in 1981 the Strathmore estate was able to sell Landmark the freehold https://heritage.directory/properties/the-landmark-trust/the-banqueting-house Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:50:05 +0100 https://heritage.directory/index.php?pcat=2&item=1888