COUNTRY HOUSES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 5

COUNTRY HOUSES

OWNERS SELLING UP

ENGLAND'S LOSS

THE TAXATION BURDEN

In the autumn of 1929 I stayed lor a few days in a country house in the Wye Valley near Chepstow, writes Harold Hobson in the "Christian Science Monitor." It was a small place, as such houses go, with some twelve or fifteen bedrooms, and a garden of 139 acres on the banks of the river. It was maintained by a staff consisting of a butler, a chauffeur, several maids, and half a dozen gardeners. Not a very large establishment, certainly, but undeniably pleasant.

In 1932 I happened to be at the Mai- , vern Festival, and, with an afternoon to spare, I decided to drive the 50 or . so miles down the Valley to look up , the place where I had stayed. When ; I arrived I found a notice to the effect that the house was for sale, and in- ■ quiry showed that a few months before \ there had been a sale of furniture, j The garden, which had been trim and ] neat, was now rank and overgrown. : The butler, chauffeur, maids, and gar- • deners were out of work. The owner ; had gone to another part of the coun- . try. Why had all this happened? For a very simple reason. Income tax in : 1928-29 was four shillings in the pound; in 1932-33 it was five. Let us suppose that the owner of this small country house possessed £25,000, which would, if well invested, produce an income of £2000 a year. The tax on this, in 1929, would be roughly £330, and in 1932, £440. Not a very great difference, perhaps', but enough to make the maintenance of the house in question an impossibility. Hence the notice board, the unemployed servants, the vanished owner, and the general air of forlornness and dilapidation. CRUSHING DEATH DUTIES. I All over England, and in many cases on a much vaster scale, that kind of story is being enacted. The weight of taxation is crushing out of existence the kind of country house life which has been a characteristic feature of Britain for the last 400 years. The most serious aspect of this taxation is not the income tax itself, but the taxation levied on capital in the form of estate or death duties. In Britain, when a millionaire passes away, 40 per cent, of his wealth is taken by the estate. It is no wonder that his heir is often forced drastically to reduce his standard of living in face of a capital loss of some £400,000 in £1,000,000. The sequel to these conditions of taxation may be read in almost any issue of the daily Press. Not long ago, for example. Lord Breadalbane was compelled to sell 50,000 acres of land beneath the shadow of that fine Scottish hill, Ben Cruachan, whilst, somewhat earlier, taxation forced him to part with 150,000 acres, including the famous Blackmount deer forest. In the last few years, such celebrated country houses as Wycombe Abbey, Stowe, Cranford, and Bryanston have ceased to exist as such, and have become schools. Many others have been turned into hospitals, whilst yet others stand empty and almost derelict. FEUDAL REMNANTS. If it is becoming gradually more difficult to maintain a large country house, the inducement to do so is rapidly diminishing. Families, for example, are smaller than they used to be in Victorian and Edwardian times, the heyday of country house life, when it was by no means unusual for a man to have 40 or 50 first cousins, all of whom he might have to entertain at the same moment. A mansion would not be too large for such occasions, but would be ridiculously excessive for the smaller gatherings of today. Moreover, the country house expresses a way of life that is now almost obsolete. Farms on the estate would in the past be handed down from father to son exactly like the estates themselves. This order of existence was suited to a static and feudal society, but is unfitted to an age in which labour is mobile, in which all mer\ are ambitious, in which everybody has the urgent desire, not to do as his father did, but to "better" himself. A NOBLE HERITAGE. Nevertheless, these great houses are a noble part of England's heritage. They express much that is grand and gracious, and form a great part of the country's architectural wealth. Even j those who approve the social changes that are ending their existence regret to see them etnpty, lifeless, and deserted. In consequence, the beginnings of a movement to preserve them may now be observed. The leader in this-movement is the National Trust, an organisation that is the mainspring . of most of Britain's efforts to maintain her ancient beauty. Several big country houses are in the possession of the trust, and will be maintained and protected as the property of the nation until the end of time. One of these is East Riddlesden Hall, near Keighley, in the heart of the lovely dales of Yorkshire, which has been presented to the trust by Mr. J. J. Brigg and Mr. W. A. Brigg. It is a typical seventeenth century manor house, with fish pond, ts.'O very fine barns, and about 11 acres of land, and is open to the general public on payment of a small charge. HOMES—NOT CASTLES. The era of country houses proper began roughly about the Elizabeth. It was towards the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century that Englishmen became home-loving people. It is significant that about this time Thomas Heywood wrote "A Woman Kill'd With Kindness,'' which is England's first domestic drama. For the first time in history the object of house builders was to keep the family in, not other people out. In other words, men began to erect homes, not fortresses. Every variety of house, from the huge palace of Hatton to the small forty-foot square house of Sir Walter Raleigh, designed for St. James's, was planned. Many of these houses are still lived in. Their recep-tion-rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens continue to meet modern requirements. Only in sanitary arrangements do they fall short of current ideals. In the eighteenth century, notions of grandeur gained the ascendancy. The whole of the houses then erected was not lived in, the greater rooms being set aside for state receptions. With justice did Pope write of Blenheim, the superb palace at Woodstock built by Vanbrugh for the Duke of Marlborough, ■' 'Tis very fine. But when d'ye sleep, and where d'ye dine?" This passion for magnificence sometimes led to acts of great folly. For example, Alderman Beckford, father of the author of "Vathek," built Fonthill House in Wiltshire for £250,000, and his son sold it for £9000, building another house, at a cost of a quarter of a million, which began to collapse at the end of thirty years. The National Trust possesses residences which go back long before such days ns these. For instance. Lord Curzon gave to it. Bodiam Castle in Sussex. built in the style of an almost, impregnable fortress by Sir Edward Dalyngruge in 1386. This castle bc-

longed to the heirs of Sir Edward in 1 the female line until the Civil War in ; the seventeenth century, and ultimate- j ly became the property of the Marquess Curzon. Sir Edward secured a moat by excavating a rectangular basin 540 feet long- by 352 feet wide. In the centre he heaped up the excavated earth to form a mound, on top of which he established his castle. Some of the National Trust's properties are occupied by tenants; others are museums. The- Trust, as an official told me recently, welcomes ten- ! ants, for a house that is actually being 1 lived in is altogether more vivid in ] personality than one that is empty. Most satisfactory of all is it when the house is inhabited by members of the 1 family which has owned it for gen- £ erations. To secure the realisation of this ideal the National Trust has now t brought forward two carefully thought-out plans. OPENED TO PUBLIC. ( The first of these is similar to that ] sponsored in France by the organisa- ( tion known as La Demeure Historique. ( This is a society of chateau owners ; who pay an annual subscription of j about 15s, and are given funds to maintain and repair their castles, ( which in return they throw open to , the public at certain times. The Trust proposes to establish a fund for the , maintenance of houses of historic in- ] terest, provided the owners will allow visitors to go over them on not fewer than 30 days each year. Ten per cent, of the admission fees would be remitted to the Trust, which in return make known to the public the historic or architectural features of the houses by the issue of pamphlets and guidebooks and by other advertisement. The second plan is still more farreaching in its effects. It is that owners of such houses shall bequeath them to the Trust, knowing that it is the Trust's settled policy to maintain them as residences, and to let them to suitable representatives of the families by whom rhey were previously owned. In these circumstances the British Government has undertaken to remit taxation, provided that the details of the first plan are also put into operation. SIB C. TREVELYAN'S GIFT. In connection with the second plan, it is interesting to "observe that Sir Charles Trevelyan, president of the Board of Education in a former Labour Government, has announced his intention of bequeathing to the Trust his family home of Wallington, in Northumberland, which his family has owned since 1777. As a Socialist, Sir Charles desires Wallington and its 13,000-acre estate no longer to remain in private hands, yet he does not want it either to be broken up, nor the connection of it with his family severed. In present circumstances, the only way of satisfying these conditions is presentation to the National Trust, and this is what Sir Charles proposes to do. It is hoped that other owners will follow his example, and so help to retard the tide which is rapidly engulfing British country houses.