The English Country House and Chilton Lodge - Hungerford Virtual ...

HUNGERFORD HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
27*i» February 2002
I thought that I would precede talking about Chilton with a whistle stop tour of the
English Country House. This is a bit like an American tourist 'doing' London in a
morning, but I attempt it because it is difficult to understand how or why places like
Chilton still exist as private houses without looking back into England's history.
#1
THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE
I start from the premise that, alongside the cathedrals, minsters, abbeys and parish
churches of a more religious age, and the extraordinarily innovative structures of the
Industrial Age, the ECH and its attendant park and estate really do define the English
landscape. In literature and, more recently, the cinema, country houses provide enduring,
if sometimes misleading, images of Englishness.
The country house is more established in England than anywhere else in the world.
Christopher Hussey said 'Country houses are England's most characteristic visible
contribution to the riches of European civilization.' France has many chateaux but, where
they remain in private ownership, they are more often than not the second homes of their
owners. The liotels particuliers' in Paris and Italy's palazzos are usually the true first
homes of the rather more cosmopolitan Continentals.
The aristocratic English families did have their splendid houses in London (Devonshire
House, Dorchester House, Spencer House), but I am sure that if you asked their owners
where their spiritual 'home' was, to a man they would name their country seats. The
rural idyll, from jousting knights at Hever Castle to croquet at Blandings, could only really
flourish in England.
It is not that easy to define an English Country House. The only satisfactory definition
that I know of is that that they are houses almost always surrounded by, and supported
by, farms or estates. As a general rule, the bigger the estate, the bigger the house at the
centre of it, reflecting fairly accurately the social and/or economic station of the original
owner. Many also share a close relationship with the town or city to which they are
nearest. Often they were built near to the source of the family's wealth, be it coal, iron
and steel, shipbuilding, or cotton mills. Thus, the ties may be economic, or they may
relate more to the ownership of land surrounding the towns.
Certainly for the individuals and families who built them, the country houses and estates
were expressions of power and taste, historically there being no better demonstration of
one's station in life for an Englishman than the ownership of land. Families that benefited
from the dissolution of the monasteries replaced the smashed religious relics of medieval
England with new palaces, and a new social order.
From the Reformation onwards, it was the ECH, not the fortified castle, that became the
most potent English symbol of power and inherited or acquired wealth. Courtiers,
courtesans, politicians, nabobs, slave traders, agricultural pioneers, industrialists, and
latterly those members of families fortunate enough to marry American heiresses (Dukes
of Marlborough and Roxburghe), all have shared the ideal of owning or creating their own
Garden of Eden.
Country houses come in all sizes, from the grandest palaces and treasure houses (Wilton,
Woburn, Longleat and Chatsworth), through the bigger country houses (Highclere) to midsize
(a comparative term!) houses (Welford and West Woodhay), to manor houses and
smaller houses (Ashdown and Chilton).

They come in all shapes as well. From the fortified manor houses of the 14C, through
Tudor, Elizabethan, Carolean, Commonwealth, Jacobean, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian
styles right up to the modern day, there has been a continuous English tradition of
building and remodelling country houses. Some of them look as though demented
children stuck them together with bits from every architectural style imaginable; others
have a geometric precision and unity that is almost impossible to believe.
Fashions change. Until the 18C, the 'English' vernacular style had dominated, slowly
evolving over centuries and reflecting changes in society away from feudal towards more
enlightened social criteria. As a result of the Grand Tour and increasing continental
influences in English life, the 18C became a century of great experiment both in the
design and alteration of houses, and in the landscaping of parks and estates. Some put
classical facades on older houses (Welford); others built houses (Basildon Park) from
scratch. As we heard in this room last year, the same phenomenon was happening in
urban architecture, in towns such as Hungerford, where older houses were refaced with
grand Georgian fronts.
Vita Sackville-West writing at the end of the 19C best sums up how some traditionalists
felt about the new neo-classical order. 'The great Palladian houses of the eighteenth
century are in England, they are not of England.' I imagine she delivered her stinging
epithet in tones reminiscent of Edith Evans.
I remember once seeing a quotation from Bosworth or Johnson on the flyleaf of the
Visitors Book at Easton Neston, which is one of Hawksmoor's finest houses. 'Mr.
Hawksmoor has built a new house that commands an offensive view over the town of
Towcester.' Ouch! Anyway, the classicists more or less had it their way for more than
150 years until, first under the Regency and then under Queen Victoria, owners and their
architects started to hark back to the Gothic and medieval ideals.
In the 19C, the Arts & Crafts Movement did much to revitalise craftsmanship in an
increasingly mechanical age and contributed a great deal to the renovation of old manor
houses that had been suffering from benign neglect whilst the Georgians were building
their glittering boxes. However, as fortunes were made so quickly in Empire and Industry,
so grew the demand for ever more ostentatious and extravagant houses. Building new
houses and extending old ones to house collections of paintings, furniture and works of
art, as well as large retinues of servants, laundries, breweries, etc. and to cater for the
enormous house parties that were the vogue, became a sort of mania for both the 'new
rich' and the 'old still rich' as the 19C drew to a close.
Needless to say, the Victorian and Edwardian excess could not carry on forever. Indeed,
owners whose primary income came from agriculture were increasingly under the hammer
throughout the agricultural depression of the 1870's - 1890's. The First World War
changed everything in British society, not least for the country house and its owner.
Many owners faced more than one imposition of swingeing death duties within a few
years, if not directly caused by war, then from the Spanish flu epidemic that followed.
You only have to listen to the Roll of Honour on Remembrance Sunday in any village
church to understand that it would be impossible after 1918 to recruit the domestic staff
that was essential to the running of the largest country houses. It is also easy to forget
that the period between the two world wars was of the same duration as the period from
the Falkland War until today, but the 1930's encompassed the second big agricultural
depression within 50 years.
For many owners, their old houses, often bloated beyond recognition by Victorian
additions, became an intolerable burden. For some, the pursuit of the Turf and the green
baize proved their undoing. The boom in the construction and extension of country
houses that had lasted from the 1840's until the 1910's went into sharp reverse from the

1920's onwards. Out came the demolition crew's ball and chain, dynamite and bulldozer.
The list of country houses in Berkshire that were demolished or destroyed by fire between
1880 and 1960 includes Billingbear, Coleshill House, Holme Park, Hungerford Park,
Lambourn Place, Lockinge House, Sunninghill Park, Yattendon Court and many, many
more. Some counties, such as Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, lost many
more old houses. Scotland, so fashionable for the Victorians who built fairy tale monsters
galore, fared worst of all.
My mother's family house, Sledmere on the Yorkshire Wolds, was completely gutted by fire
in 1912. It was completely rebuilt over the next five years, using the original plaster
ceiling casts found in a warehouse and other wonderful craftsmanship. To the main
house was added a new service wing that was apparently larger than the original house.
This must have been one of the last major country house enterprises at the end of the
boom of the previous century. Luckily for my cousin, the service wing was pulled down
after WWII. He still lives there and the house and gardens are open to the public. The
house is a popular venue for weddings and exhibitions despite its remoteness.
It is hard to believe that, from its foundation in the 1890's until the late 1930's, the
National Trust was almost entirely preoccupied with saving landscapes and coastlines. It
was Lord Lothian in 1934 who really first rang the warning bell about the deepening crisis
facing the ECH. From the late 1930's onwards, the Trust became the saviour of many
important houses that could no longer be maintained by their owners. James Lees-Milne,
in his book 'Ancestral Voices', records the tragic-comic negotiations that went on,
sometimes over many years between the owners and the National Trust, often as not
represented by Lees-Milne arriving on his bicycle. Ham House and Stourhead are but two
examples of important houses saved during this most difficult period.
But the destruction of other houses continued. Between 1920 and 1955 (excluding the
war years) an average of 13 country houses a year were demolished. That is more than
400. Take one example, Cassiobury in Hertfordshire, the seat of the Earls of Essex.
Originally a Tudor house, it was added to by Hugh May in 1674, then re-clothed as a
beautiful abbey by James Wyatt in 1800. It had a splendid Restoration staircase that is
now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The state rooms were all decorated
by Grinling Gibbons. The sale of the contents in 1922 went on for more than a week, and
then the wreckers moved in and razed it to the ground.
John Harris, one of the greatest experts on the ECH, pointed out in his book 'No Voice
from the Hall', that 1955 was probably the blackest of all years for the ECH. More than
140 country houses were demolished in that year alone, a staggering number.
He tells the story of Rolls Park in Essex, built for the Harvey family and inherited in 1939
by an impoverished parson called Lloyd. The house was mostly seventeenth century and
Georgian, with a saloon credited with being one of the most beautiful rooms in England.
An important collection of family portraits was set in wonderful Rococo plasterwork.
The house was requisitioned by the Army for the duration. When the parson's son
returned in 1945 from service overseas, he discovered that no fewer than 18 regiments
had occupied the house at one time or another. The occupying forces had completely
trashed the house. They had torn out the Tudor back staircase for firewood, and had
started on the Grinling Gibbons front staircase. The portrait of Emma Harvey by Allan
Ramsay had been used as a dartboard and she had gained a moustache. A VI bomb had
blown off part of the roof. Repairs were estimated to cost £50,000 in 1946, an enormous
sum. Mr. Lloyd was offered £7,000 by a grateful government. He eventually threw in the
towel in 1953 and the house was demolished.

As early as 1945, some owners of large houses (Thynnes at Longleat, the Russells at
Woburn and the Montagus at Beaulieu) had seen that the way ahead was to throw open
the doors of their stately homes and welcome an increasingly interested, educated and
mobile population. A very few families, such as the Cavendishes at Chatsworth, had
always made a virtue of allowing and encouraging access to their houses. However, the
originators of the accessible country house were the exceptions rather than the rule. Not
only were they endowed with plenty of entrepreneurial flair, but also their houses were
also mostly very large and were stuffed with treasures. They also had the resources to
develop other attractions.
The turning point for the ECH probably came in 1974 with the exhibition at the V&A The
Destruction of the Country House'. Penal taxation, rampant inflation and increasingly
bureaucratic intervention had been making life impossible for owners for two generations.
However, prosperity was slowly returning to Britain and with it, the first glimmerings of a
more enlightened attitude to taxation. The old order was well and truly dead, and Britain
was becoming less socially divisive. 'Heritage' became the buzzword, tourism was
increasing, and the owners of ECH's finally started to behave in a cohesive and concerted
manner. Perhaps there was room after all for the country house to survive.
CHILTON LODGE
#2
A few statistics.
• The main accommodation areas in the house cover 1,996 sq.m., with a further 1,358
sq.m. of attics and cellars. The outbuildings that form part of the property extend to a
further 1,320 sq.m. and include three self-contained flats, a total of 4,673 sq.m. of
buildings, all listed Grade 2 or 2*.
• The house has five principal bedroom suites, two dressing rooms and three children's
bedrooms.
• We have a full-time housekeeper and a lady who comes in every weekday and a fulltime
gardener.
• We use about 30,000 litres of heating oil a year.
There was certainly a house called Chilton Park by 1595, when it was owned by Sir
Thomas Hinton, Sheriff of Berkshire and Commissioner of Wool. The original house was
in Wiltshire, just to the east of where Park Farm now stands. I am afraid I have been
unable to locate a picture of the original house.
By the mid-17C, the property was owned by the splendidly named Sir Bulstrode
Whitelocke, a Parliamentarian and diarist. He is notable for having had three wives and
13 children, and for having survived the Restoration, apparently changing sides with the
same ease as he changed wives. However, his management of his personal affairs was
somewhat erratic and Chilton was eventually sold to Mr. Holwell, a nabob who was a
survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
It was later sold to John Pearse, MP, who was making a fortune from gun cotton in the
Napoleonic Wars. It is with him that this story of Chilton really starts. Last week I
discovered (on the Internet!) that a man of the same name was the Governor of the Bank
of England between 1810-12. I wonder if it was our Mr. Pearse.
#3
In any event, he seems to have been a man of considerable means and was already a
client of John Soane when he bought Chilton. Immersed in classicism, but extremely
radical in many ways, Soane was one of the most important architects of his generation.
He had designed a substantial house for Mr. Pearse in Lincoln's Inn Fields, complete with
stables, and was subsequently commissioned to design a new villa at Chilton on the site
of the 16C house. Construction started in 1789 and was still in process in 1793. The

shape of the Soane villa at Chilton follows closely his design for Saxlingham Parsonage in
Suffolk.
#4
We know that Soane was unhappy that he had been obliged to use substantial materials
from the previous house in constructing his villa, about which he was somewhat tetchy.
Whether there was some severe constructional defect or whether Mr. Pearse just wanted
to spend more money on a bigger house is not clear.
Extraordinarily, within 5 years, Mr. Pearse commissioned the current house, which was
completed in 1800 to the designs of William Pilkington. Part of the very first cargo to
travel down the newly opened Hungerford stretch of the Kennet and Avon Canal in 1798
was 'a wrought Portland stone staircase for J. Pearse of Chilton Lodge.' The new house
was built on a different site across the county boundary in Berkshire, some 600 yards
from the earlier houses. The Soane house was demolished when the new Lodge was
completed.
#5, 6
Pilkington was not an obvious choice for someone wishing to make a splash. His other
large commissions were relatively limited and included Folkestone Gaol and Portsmouth
Customs House, as well as alterations to private houses at Wick Hill near Calne and
Calverton House near Stony Stratford. The classical design of the new house at Chilton
apparently follows the style of Pilkington's mentor, Sir Robert Taylor. Nonetheless, his
design was fashionable and impeccably situated, and we think Pilkington did a pretty
good job!
#7, 8
Humphrey Repton laid out the park around the new house for John Pearse as it was built.
He was one of the greatest and most innovative landscape designers of the late 18C-early
19C. As far as we know, no detailed account of his plans for Chilton (called a Red Book)
survives, but there are ample references to his scheme in his other works. The river,
which he had widened to provide a 'flash' vista from the house, has been narrowed again
to improve the flow for fishing, but elements of the Repton design for the park, such as
earthworks to the east of the house, and much of the planting, survive to this day.
#9
Although I do not yet have all the proof, I believe that John Pearse really shaped the estate
as it exists today. A number of the farm houses seem to date from this period and an
estate map that we have from 1810 already has many of the names that are still
associated with the estate.
[Some farmhouses have been sold, and some land as well, but other bits of land have
been bought and two new houses and some cottages have been built, so that the
estate now is almost exactly the same size as it was 200 years ago.]
The house went through various hands during the middle of the 19C. and was offered for
rental on an annual basis in the Times from 1858, a copy of which is still in the house.
The mid-19C does not seem to have been a happy period, for the house at least.
The estate was bought by Sir William Pearce, 2 nd Bart, of Cardell in Renfrewshire in 1890.
His father, the first Sir William, had made a fortune from shipbuilding at Govan on the
Clyde. His heir inherited the title, and one assumes the chequebook, in 1888 at the age of
27.
#10
Sir William immediately employed the eminent architect Sir Arthur Blomfield ARA. He was
a an enthusiastic proponent of the Gothic revival, and most of his career was taken up
with building and altering London churches, a suitable occupation for the fourth son of a
one-time Bishop of London. All of which made him an odd choice for a neo-classical
house such as Chilton. Both men were educated at Rugby, albeit 30 years apart, so

perhaps that was the connection. Interestingly, Blomfield was also a Trustee of the Sir
John Soane Museum.
#11, 12
Starting in 1892, Blomfield made fundamental alterations to the interiors of Chilton as
well as adding a second storey to the mansion with ten maids' rooms; a most attractive
porte cochere to the east; a large bachelor wing to the west; the coach house that forms
the north wing of the stable block (in the Wrenaissance' style) and various garages and
machine shops. I suspect that it was he who ripped out every piece of Georgian
plasterwork in the house, replacing the ceilings with rather boring Victorian coving.
#13, 14, 15
Pearce was also responsible for a major investment in the water supply for the house and
the estate. The pump house on the Kennet below the house dates from 1891. Turbines
powered by the Kennet pumped water to the 40,000 gallon water tower built on the
highest point of the estate, and thence to the main house and the outlying farms. All the
water for the domestic supply at Chilton Lodge was fed through a building that acted as a
giant water softener, filled with brine tanks. To give you an idea of the extent of this civil
engineering, the water works cost Sir William £10,000, at a time when the whole estate
was valued at £80,000. We are currently upgrading the system and our engineers
constantly marvel at the quality and sophistication of the materials and workmanship
used by their Victorian predecessors.
#16
Over the next few years, Sir William made other substantial additions to the housing
stock on the estate, notably in Chilton Foliat and the dairy (now the estate office) and
lodges at the eastern and southern entrances to the park.
I have great admiration for what Pearce achieved at Chilton. Certainly, he followed the
fashion for enlarging the house, and its staff, but everything was done to a very high
standard. We know from the Fire Brigade roster for the house that there were three
footmen as well as a butler, two resident engineers, two odd job men, and two grooms, not
to mention all the maids and housekeepers, gardeners and other estate employees.
The tragedy is that, having been an MP for Plymouth (1892-5), and a JP for Berkshire and
Wiltshire, and having finally married in 1905, Sir William died in 1907 at the age of 46
and without heirs.
#17
The house and estate were offered for sale in 1908. The particulars, that put modern
estate agents' efforts to shame, show that the estate extended to 2,330 acres and had 73
separate dwellings, including 8 farms. The rent roll from the let farms produced an
annual income of £1,800!
#18, 19, 20
The estate was purchased in its entirety by The Right Hon. Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid
for their daughter Jean and her new husband, John Ward. Whitelaw Reid was the United
States Ambassador to the Court of St. James at the time, and his wife, Elizabeth, was the
daughter of DO Mills, a prominent and very successful banker who had made his pile in
Northern California. DO Mills and his two brothers were originally from Buffalo, New York
but moved west in the California Gold Rush of 1849-51. His brothers sold mining
equipment, whilst DO contented himself with running a counting house at the back of the
store. It eventually became part of the Bank of California.
John Ward was the second son of Lord Dudley, whose family fortune had originated in the
coalfields of the Midlands, and who lived in considerable style at Witley Court and at
Dudley House in London. As a younger son, John Ward's financial expectations would
have been pretty slender but, thanks to a fortuitous marriage, he and his wife managed
pretty well adding to Chilton and their estate in Scotland over the next few years, a villa
set in 40 acres at Cap Ferrat, a large flat in Paris and a house in Belgrave Square.
Together, and one imagines with the help of Jean's mother, they indulged in some serious

etail therapy, and put together the collections of furniture, paintings, silver, books and
ceramics that mostly remain at Chilton to this day.
#21, 22
They also built a substantial new dower house at Park Farm on the site of a former
farmhouse for their son Jackie, starting in 1938 and finished after the war had started.
Gerald Ward, the Colonel's only son, has lived in the house more or less since it was
finished.
They obviously lived in considerable style. Harry Dodson has told me that, according to
the wage books in his office, there were 24 men employed in the garden up until WWII.
When Mr. Dodson arrived at Chilton in 1947, the garden staff was down to 8, but this
increased to between 12-14 soon thereafter.
[Lady Ward's collection of oriental artefacts was left to the Fitzwilliam Museum during
her lifetime and some of the other contents were sold in the early 1960's to meet a
substantial estate duty liability. Nonetheless, the house still contains the most
important collection of paintings and drawings by James Ward RA (no relation), and
other interesting pictures, as well as a fine collection of Georgian furniture and
English silver.]
John and Jean Ward had two sons, whom some of you will remember well, as they died in
1987 and 1990. Col. Jackie Ward was the elder, Reggie his brother. I am sure they cut
quite a dash in their youth as the family photograph albums suggest, but they also had
their serious side. Reggie was fascinated by engineering, and developed the Chilton
monoplane in 1937, when he was only 22. It was described as a gentleman's touring
aeroplane. A factory was set up in the Coach House at the house under the name Chilton
Aircraft, and four examples were built. One has recently been restored. When WWII broke
out, the factory was given over to war production, specialising in electrical components for
the aircraft industry.
At the same time, Lady Ward, by now a widow, loaned Chilton to the American forces for
the duration. At various stages of the war, the 502 nd Parachute Infantry Regiment and
101 st Airborne Division were camped in the park, which was soon covered with Nissen
huts. The Jump School was established near the house, and the officers lived in the
house. Flying from Ramsbury and Welford aerodromes, they took part in D Day and the
Spring Garden landings at Amhem.
Lady Ward kept a room in the house, supposedly locked, but it was used on at least one
occasion by a lady who was lodging in the village to improve Anglo-American relations.
After the war, the firm, now Chilton Electrics, continued to develop new electrical
products, including a rechargeable torch of which I remember my own father was
inordinately proud, a multi-voltage shaver socket that became an industry standard, and
specialised electrical circuitry.
By the time that Chilton Electrics outgrew the premises in the late 1950's, there were 180
people working in the offices and outbuildings at Chilton. Jack Williams, whose father
had worked in the gardens at Chilton between the wars, was amongst them, and
remembers everyone streaming down the drive on their bicycles and across the hatches
on the Kennet on their way home. The company became an even more important
employer in Hungerford after moving to its new factory, and thrived until it was taken over
by Westinghouse in the late 1960's and closed down, despite assurances to the contrary.
#23
When Lady Ward died in 1962, her son, Col. Jackie Ward and his wife Susan decided to
move into Chilton from Park Farm. There was a tremendous problem with dry rot in
Chilton, particularly in the Victorian additions, and the house was anyway much too large

for their requirements, so the decision was taken to make substantial modifications to the
house.
#24, 25
The architectural services of Mr. Griffin of Sutton, Griffin and Sweetnam of Newbury were
retained and the building contractors were F. Rendell & Sons of Devizes. Griffin was well
known locally and already had added an attractive conservatory to West Woodhay House.
All the Blomfield accretions to Chilton were removed including, sadly, the splendid porte
cochere. A new roof was constructed over the main house and the rear of the house was
remodelled to provide kitchens and staff (now children's) bedrooms. A new breakfast
room was built on the site of the old Bachelors' Wing. Various changes were made to the
internal layout including moving the dining room from its original location to a much
smaller room, and the installation of guest bathrooms and hanging cupboards of
Olympian size.
Mr. Griffin's designs for the northern elevation of the house are not attractive. The
execution by Rendell's also left something to be desired. However, we have every reason
to be extremely grateful that the work was undertaken when planning regulations were
minimal and the house could be reduced to a more manageable size. The family would
not be living here now if that radical and far-sighted surgery had not been carried out at
that time.
POSTSCRIPT
[The Historic Houses Association was founded in the 1970's and now has 1,500
house owning members. It's owners have more properties open to the public than
the National Trust and English Heritage and their counterparts in Wales, Scotland
and Ulster combined. Since more than 75% of 'built heritage' (a horrible term much
used by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) in this country is in private
ownership, those responsible for its upkeep are now more readily heard in the
corridors of power. 10,000 are employed directly by these houses and they generate
more than £1.2 billion in revenues a year.]
In 1974, in his essay for the book accompanying the exhibition at the V&A, Roy Strong
wrote "Country houses are artefacts created for a system of society which has vanished,
...The paternal system of the great house and its dependents stretching over the countryside
has gone. But we are left with the superb visual apparatus. Our difficulty lies in divorcing
the one from the other."
I am glad to say that over the last 28 years the divorce has been pretty successful and just
about everyone is much happier as a result. What has saved the ECH is its desirability
and its flexibility. Whenever a family dies out or gives up the ghost, a queue of new
owners usually forms to take their place.
[Some will be private families who have made or inherited their wealth. Other
country houses will find themselves skilfully filleted into apartments that are
snapped up by those who love the country but whose pockets do not stretch to
owning the whole thing. Other houses become country house hotels, with varying
degrees of success. Still others become corporate headquarters such as Benham
Valence. Some houses, that had been given over to institutional use one or more
generation ago, have come back into private ownership. For example, Farleigh House
near Basingstoke, for many years a preparatory school, is now once again the home
of the Wallop family, with new restoration and wonderful craftsmanship much in
evidence.]
[The private owners who live on in these big houses are a determined, if somewhat
dotty, group. The temptation to move to a small cottage from their rambling and
8

draughty piles can often be tantalising. By and large, the owners share a love of their
homes that usually overcomes the not inconsiderable odds stacked against them.
Some are able to keep their houses as purely private homes, others open their doors
to corporate entertainment, to weddings and parties, and to a host of other
commercial activities from four wheel drive courses to art classes. Many are open to
the public all year round. Some are open for part of the year as required if they
contain chattels exempted from inheritance tax, or if they have accepted grants for
renovation.]
#26-27, 28-29, 30-31
The balance will always be a delicate one. The ECH is a phenomenon that has evolved
and changed to meet the circumstances of each age and to reflect the people who have
lived in them. It is often said that people who visit country houses spend more time
looking at family pictures and photographs, and evidence of habitation, than they do at
the historic contents. In other words, it is the personalisation of the houses, not the
bricks and mortar, that is a most important consideration, and worthy of sustaining.
Those houses that fall into public ownership, be it National Trust or English Heritage, and
lose the connection with the family that previously lived there, often become mummified.
Their curators have little option but to preserve the fabric, as Kenny Everett would have
said, in the best possible taste. Magnificent though many of them undoubtedly are, the
spirit and soul has gone from them, and is most unlikely ever to return to them.
Chilton is not a particularly important house in national terms, but its relatively short
history reflects the ability of successive owners to take responsibility for, and to manage,
change. John Pearse really put it all together back in the 1790's, and his patronage and
foresight have proved pretty durable. Sir William Pearce again lavished his fortune on
Chilton and its estate a hundred years later. Within a further 20 years, the first
generation of Wards at Chilton were embellishing it to their taste. Very importantly from
today's perspective, in the 1960's Colonel Jackie Ward and his wife took Chilton back to
more or less its original form and brought the house up to date. I suspect that the
current hordes of bureaucrats would not have allowed that necessary surgery to happen
today. Without a doubt, preventing such evolutionary change at Chilton would have one
day sentenced the house to institutional use.
If I see one danger greater than all others for the continuing health and development of
the ECH and their occupation by private families, it is the exercise by central and local
government of ever increasing authority without responsibility. Change can be frightening,
so it is often discouraged. The costs of complying with listed building planning processes
even just for repairs are so great as to be prohibitive for some owners. There is a backlog
of repairs on many privately owned houses (estimated by one authority at more than £125
million) that must be addressed if they are to remain viable as houses. Some relief, for
example from VAT or from income tax paid on the repairs and upkeep of the houses,
would go a long way to enabling more owners to maintain and improve their houses
properly.
[Quite rightly, if public money is provided by way of cash grants for renovation of
country houses as for other parts of our heritage, then the department providing the
resources should have a powerful say in the standards to which the work is done.
Further, most owners would agree that there should be at least some public access
where the public purse has been involved to any great extent. However, it would do
no harm for the bureaucrats to put more faith in the owners and to allow them
reasonable latitude to adapt, expand or contract their houses to the requirements of
the current generation. If change is discouraged, then houses will lose the interest of
their owners and the vitality that is such an important part of their evolution.]
#32
Christopher Hussey wrote in the 1930's 'The English home, while not laying claim to
supreme artistry, yet represents to our sight a complex of facts and traditions and

aspirations that are the very essence of our consciousness as Englishmen. The home is a
'work of Hiring', an expression of the deepest instincts of our forbears through the ages.'
That may sound a bit highfalutin nowadays, but the fact is that the ECH remains an
intrinsic part of English life, and one which I believe few would like to see disappear or
become institutionalised, and separated from the families that built and nurtured them
through generations.
Those of us who live in and are responsible for such houses have to face many challenges,
but we are also extremely lucky to be stewards of such important elements of our
country's heritage.
#33
From the time when the houses and estates were first created, each successive generation
that lives in them can only try to ensure that the houses, parks and estates in their care
will be left in ever better condition for future generations to enjoy.
Thank you very much.
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