THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 303, 23 December 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND

(Bv FRANCES, COUNTESS OF WAR WICK J As a class, the “stately homes 01. England” are on the market to-day. With a few exceptions, you may have your choice it' you wish to buy or rent, furnished or unfurnished. On sentimental grounds this may be deplored. When a boy is brought, up in surroundings that history has touched and the centuries have hallowed, he may look upon home with a love that comes near to veneration. But when death strikes the teniint-for-lil'e, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has finished with his estate, it is more than likely that the heir will find himself with a choice oi. evils —h c must live in* very restricted fashion in a part, of the old home, or he must dismantle it, or let it to strangers, or even, if it be possible, break the entail and sell at a times price. Now if there is one thing that limits the pleasure of living in an historic house, it is the inability to entertain. Nothing is quite so dismal as a big suite of reception rooms that is kept, closed, nothing more depressing than a long corridor with rooms whose doors are never opened. Small wonder that many great houses to-day arc boarding schools, or that all the leading agents in London have scores of great places on their books. 1 have known many places in which, since the war, a wing has sufficed for residence .and entertainment. I know the widow of a great peer who lived for a while in the little house that had been occupied by her coachman in more affluent times. There is no doubt; but that the English houses will disappear from the map, except where marriage with some daughter of an enormously wealthy Atmerican has re stored the fallen fortunes, or some multi-millionaire manufacturer of our ow n country has married a daughter to the head of an old English house. Changes of Time. I am not sure that the motor has not done, as much as the super tax and the death duties to immobilise the great country places, and the question that I am asking myself now is whether they

serve any purpose that .will be greatly missed. In the old days the chatelaine played the part of Lady Bountiful, as a rule she gave freely of her time and her charity. The sick and the poor looked up to her as a source of “c^olc,” and I think it is fair to say that she was kind at heart and wellmeaning, even in cases where the gods had not blessed her with any special measure of intelligence. But the system she stood for was one that was founded on something akin to serfdom, and the rising tide of democracy has carried it away, unwept, unhonoured and unsung, except by those in whose blood ther c is something of the flunkey strain. When I read to-day of great houses taken over by public authorities, or left with a skeleton staff until some public authority shall come along, I confess that I can find no occasion for self-pity or regrets. If I had had my I own way, Easton Lodge would have been a People’s University by now, a place where the rising generation ol the Labour Parly could study the problems of the Socialist State. I can conceive of no better use to which a great, pleasure house can be turned, lor the times change, and we must learn to change with them, and it is in this •dinging to what is dead, in practice or thought, or custom, that the real danger lies. The “stately homes of England ” have had their selfish day, nothing could b(. better than that they should make atonement in emptiness ami disrepair, if only on their way to nobler uses. Side by side with the great country places tiie town houses have suffered change. What can b e more significant; of the new conditions than a stroll from Hyde Park Corner, by the .Vhillos Statute —once the special rendezvous of London’s elite —to Marble Few Charming Homes. '.rii v trouble of the great, places is that they were far too extensive in the country and far 100 restricted in | the towns. When 1 say restricted, 1 am not, speaking in a general sense. The reception rooms of the big London houses are famous, and justly so, but Even al, Stafford House the bedrooms are insignificant., and at. Spencer House the bedroom accommodation is poor, in St. James', that; great centre of Liberal entertainment, to say nothing of other town houses that might be mentioned, you find that reception has been considered first and comfort has followed. Nowadays, fact.' to face with the difiie.ulty and expense of securing domestic, service, labour-saving devices are imperative, and of laboursaving tin* idd town house knew little and the old country house knew less. They were built when the supply of servants was far in excess of the de maud. There are a few country houses that, arc really charming within reasonable limits. Longleat, for example, belonging to the Marquis of Bath in Wiltshire; Lord Exeter’s home near Stamford. Burleigh House; Major Astor's home in Kent. Hover ('astle. But some ol' the country houses that. I still exist to dav are really so ugly’

that even th e varied treasures they l.old cannot redeem them. They wore either built or enlarged in those, Vic,lorian years when architecture was unspeakable, with just; the results one would expect. Went,.worth, the largest country house in England, belonging io Earl Fitzwilliam and holding something like three hundred bedrooms is anything but attractive; the Duke of Dev onshiie's Chatsworth needed all the hospitality of its hod and hostess and ail the objots d’art. within its walls to atom 1 for its shortcomings; .Eat -i. Hall in Cheshire is a Victorian monstrosity in which you could lose your sell’ very c.o in tort ably. Welbeck \l> bey, Hu' scat, of the. uld Duke of Bortland. whose son and heir married a niece of mine, is one of the most ex.raordinniy of all country houses, because the Duke of L’ort land’s father, who was almost, as eccentric as he was rich, built. Welbeck largely underground the riding school, for example, is subterranean. The present Duke, •on e so well know n on the 'l'urt’, mm < be nearly eighty, find his wife, one of the beautiful women of her time, though many years his junior, is growing old. They both know that, their heir cannot live in Welbeck Abbey. When the next death duties are paid, (he place will be too large to maintain, and recognising this, they arc already building a house of moileralc size in the J’ark at Welbeck for their heir.