Altamont House + Gardens Tullow Carlow

The Other Side of Eden

Imagine 16 hectares of gardens teeming with character lying between an empty country house and a lake on a 40 hectare estate. Welcome to paradise. The gardens are open all year round save Christmas Day for free. It’s November 2014 and there”s nobody around. The journey to Altamont Gardens past country houses, the smart Ballykealy Manor (hotel) and the very smart Sherwood Park House (takes guests), is a reminder that County Carlow is as horse and hound, or at least horse and lurcher, as a centrefold in The Field. Ireland for the Anglo Irish.

Annabel Davis-Goff one of them, writer in her novel The Dower House, “I was thinking of people. You import a fairly large number of English people into Ireland. The strongest, richest men and the prettiest women tend to get first choice of who they’ll marry. From the strongest, richest, prettiest pool they look for other desirable characteristics: a good seat on a horse, wit, nerves of steel about unpaid bills, the ability to hold large quantities of alcohol, a way with words, good enough circulation to live in large, cold houses, and the ability to eat awful food. Pretty soon you’ve got the Anglo Irish. They’re not exactly not English, but they’re different.”

Altamont House boasts a cosmopolitan doorcase with a half umbrella fanlight worthy of St Stephen’s Green in Britain’s former Second City, Dublin. The joy of the entrance front lies in its eccentric gothic trappings on an otherwise straitlaced 18th century Georgian building. The first case of eclectic postmodernism in Ireland? Curious stepped gables with curiouser traceried blind windows rise from the eaves on either side of the canted entrance bay. The two wings to the right of the main block are topped by more stepped gables. Oddest of all the frippery is another stepped gable to the left cut into to make way for a balustraded balcony. This leftfield naïveté suggests an enthusiastic owner got a bit carried away following a visit to church or read an Augustus Welby Pugin tract and thought, hey why not? I’ll give gothic a go! Let’s hope the Office of Public Works gets some dosh to do it up. Clothed in Wisteria sinensis, the house is a little frayed round the edges at present.

Green, green, oh so very green fields rolling in front of the house past a pair of 150 year old weeping ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior) give no clue as to the natural, botanical, cultural and horticultural wonders that lie behind: the Arboretum, Bluebell Wood, Bog Garden, Ice Age Glen, River Slaney Walk and Temple of the Four Winds, much of them inverted in reflections in the lake. The landscape was first developed by Dawson Borrer, son of William Borrer of West Sussex, an early 19th century naturalist, botanist, culture vulture and horticulturalist. This Anglo Irish landlord employed 100 men for three years during the 1840s famine to create pleasure grounds adjacent to an existing walled garden and the late 18th beech avenue called Nuns’ Walk. A wet meadow was dug out to form the lake. But the present form of the gardens is largely due to its last private owner Corona North who died in 1999. She introduced seas of azalea and scores of rhododendron specimens like augustinii and cinnabarinum. Ever so aptly, Corona was named after her parents’ favourite hybrid rhododendron.

Von Essen Hotels + Cliveden House Hotel Berkshire

The Conservative Party

At one time they owned some of the best hotels in Britain. The portfolio of the two Andrews – Messrs Davis and Onraet embraced 30 odd mostly historic hotels included Ston Easton Park in Bath, Sharrow Bay in Cumbria, and most famously of all Cliveden in Berkshire. They knew how to throw a good party – we didn’t need an excuse to jive away an evening at their stuccoed Belgravia mansion. The Sunday Times restaurant critic Michael Winner was a close friend; Raine Countess Spencer was too. You never knew who you’d share a bottle of Moët with by the indoor basement swimming pool.

So when they suggested we visit Cliveden, there was only one response: when can we go? It was the heady summer of 2010 when we went south to Berkshire’s best. Our review for Luxury Travel Magazine at the time contained the prescient line, “Notoriety and Cliveden go hand in hand.” Sadly, little did we know that two years after our visit Von Essen would go out of business. A certain Meghan Markle and her mother would later spend the night before her wedding to Prince Harry at Cliveden. The National Trust continues to own the grounds while the hotel has changed hands several times since.

Another forte of the two Andrews was PR. Von Essen sponsored The Sunday Times’ Rich List and regularly appeared in the glossies. An article predating their tenure was written by Jo Newson and Dorothy Bosomworth in Traditional Interior Decoration, February / March 1988. They state, “Country house hotels are a relatively recent phenomenon. They have sprung up with a demand for something more than comfort: a wider appreciation of style without streamlining, and a recognition of the value of old buildings in our brave new world. Cliveden is one of the most recent – and important – examples.”

Here goes. At a bend in the Thames a house has twice risen from the ashes: welcome to Cliveden. Have you ever stayed at an historic hotel and yearned to learn more about its past? Von Essen Hotels have the answer. Throughout 2010 they are rolling out Heritage Concierges at all their properties. Guests can discover the history of the hotel they are staying at through a dedicated member of staff. Tours are free but must be booked upon arrival. First to offer this innovative concept is Cliveden (drop your E’s to pronounce “Cliv’d’n”) in Berkshire.

And what a task. Cliveden has been the scene of riotous living by the rich and infamous for almost three and a half centuries. Spies, call girls, billionaires, dukes and queens have all partied hard here. The name is so synonymous with presidential league entertaining that even the Sugar King Julio Lobo referred to his bolthole for holding court in Havana as the “Cliveden of Cuba”. But Michael Chaloner, Cliveden’s Heritage Concierge, is well up to the job. He jokes that he’s been at the hotel forever. Michael explains, “Surprisingly the house has never been the principal seat of any of its owners. It’s always been a holiday home if somewhat on a grand scale. When it was converted to a hotel in 1985 barely any changes needed to be made.” Some things really haven’t changed. Sue Crawley, Hotel Manager – actually the staff never refer to “hotel” but rather “house” – comments, “All the food still comes up on trays from the cellar kitchen. This involves navigating four twists of the narrow staircase!”

The present house is an impossibly palatial affair erected in 1852 to the design of Sir Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland. This starchitect practised his penchant for all things Italianate a decade earlier at the Reform Club on Pall Mall, London, before being let loose at Cliveden. It’s hard not to feel important, sitting on plumped up cushions in the Great Hall under the disdainful eye of Lady Astor in a Sargent portrait, while on the other side of the tall sash windows a gaggle of National Trust tourists gawk and traipse past (Von Essen lease the building from The National Trust).

Each of the 39 bedrooms is individually decorated and named after someone connected to the house, from the Tudorbethan panelling of the Mountbatten Room to the sloping ceilings of the Prince Albert Room. In the Asquith Room you can lie back in the bath and watch the limos pulling up in the forecourt three storeys below. Thankfully there’s not a modern extension in sight. Fancy a fourposter bed? No problem, try the Chinese Room. A coronet bed? That will be the Sutherland Suite. A polonaise bed? Not sure, but there’s probably one somewhere. Cliveden doesn’t do second class. No wonder Queen Victoria stayed here for six weeks.

Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt and George Bernard Shaw have also enjoyed stints at Cliveden. In 1893 the hideously wealthy American tycoon William Astor, who’d bought the house 13 years earlier for a staggering $1.25 million, presented it to his son as a wedding gift. Halcyon days beckoned as Astor junior and his glamorous wife Nancy hosted society. The government of the day was broke (sounds familiar?) and so ministers were only too glad to meet visiting dignitaries at Cliveden. But it is the fall of a later government that keeps Michael’s tour especially lively. Almost half a century ago, on a balmy Saturday evening in midsummer the Secretary of State for War Jack Profumo clapped eyes on Christine Keeler, a 19 year old demimondaine, larking round the outdoor swimming pool. The rest is history as immortalised in the 1989 film Scandal starring John Hurt, Ian McKellen and Joanne Whalley.

“Lord Astor had persistent backache,” says Michael, “so he allowed his osteopath Stephen Ward use of Spring Cottage on the estate as payment in kind. That fateful evening the party staying at Spring Cottage included Ward’s acquaintance Christine Keeler and Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet assistant attaché who was also a spy. Meanwhile Profumo and his wife, the beautiful Northern Irish actress Valerie Hobson, were guests of the Astors. After dinner they strolled out of the house to the pool area. Profumo in a dinner jacket; Keeler emerging from the pool in a dripping towel. Their clandestine affair began the following day. When Keeler sold her story to a tabloid it was revealed she’d been sleeping with both Profumo and Ivanov at the same time.” A case of Reds in the beds.

Jack Profumo baldly denied any impropriety in his relationship with Christine Keeler in a statement to the House of Commons. “Well he would, wouldn’t he?” tartly snapped Mandy Rice-Davies, Christine’s best buddy and co accused of prostitution, later at the subsequent court case. He finally confessed although not before suing Paris Match and Italian magazine Il Tempo for libel. Stephen Ward was tried on trumped up charges relating to immoral earnings and committed suicide before the case concluded. Jack’s career lay in tatters and the furore brought down the then Conservative government in 1964. The swimming pool is now Grade I Listed in its own right.

Notoriety and Cliveden go hand in hand. Its first owner, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London. It was said of the Duke that “a young lady could not resist his charms … all his trouble in wooing was, he came, saw and conquered”. He challenged his mistress’s husband to a duel in 1696. And lost. A cross sword emblem set into the East Lawn commemorates his gory death. Even the luscious interiors, manicured to within a square centimetre of their lives, aren’t quite all they seem. Look closely and you’ll find the unexpected, from blood spattered soldiers lurking in the Great Hall tapestries to rabbits mercilessly trapped behind balusters in the gruesome plasterwork of the French Dining Room.

Once a full day’s coach ride from London, Cliveden is now just an hour by train from Paddington. A chauffeur can pick you up from the station at nearby Burnham. Natch. Culinary delights to satisfy the most demanding of gourmands await. The Terrace Dining Room greedily devours six windows of the nine bay garden front. Menu highlights include John Dory slowly cooked to perfection and Heston Blumenthalesque chocolate fondant (The Fat Duck restaurant is a mere 6.5 kilometres downstream).

Business Development Manager Amanda Irby confirms that these days you are more likely to find television chef Jamie Oliver celebrating his 10th anniversary at an informal dinner on the terrace than any political mischief unfolding. “Or you may well pass Sir Paul McCartney engaged in conversation with his daughter Stella next to the Great Hall fireplace,” she remarks. Indeed the President of Afghanistan held meetings in the Macmillan Room lately. History is rumbling along. The Heritage Concierge at Cliveden will never be short of tales to update his tours.

The 8th Marquess of Waterford + Curraghmore Portlaw Waterford

Heirs and Graces

Of course we had no idea at the time it would be the last interview to be given by the 8th Marquess of Waterford. We did know it was a rare opportunity though: he rarely spoke to the media. So on a drizzly day in May 2014, it was with a great tingle of anticipation that we watched the gates electronic gates slide open before racing down that great eternal avenue. The Marquess, in a wheelchair and sporting trendy trainers, cheerfully greeted us at the top of the steps of the voluminous entrance hall. And so began our glimpse into the magical world of Curraghmore.

In principio erat domus.

The shadows were closing in. On a dark night in 1922, while heavy clouds curled and unfurled over the Comeragh Mountains, four IRA men crawled up the 6.5 kilometre driveway of Curraghmore. The fourth of four castles owned by the de la Poer family, who’d come to these islands during the French Catholic Norman Invasion, was about to become a ruin. But St Hubert would save the night. As the terrorists approached, a flicker of moonlight silhouetted the crucifix atop the stag of St Hubert on the balustrade of the entrance tower. Illiterately, the terrorists assumed the family inside must still be Catholic. They fled and burned down the crucifix-free Woodstown House nearby. The de la Poer motto is Nil Nisi Cruce: “Nothing without the cross.”

We’re in the James Wyatt designed staircase hall of Curraghmore. It’s a Sunday morning and John Hubert de la Poer Beresford,  8th Marquess of Waterford, has graced us with his presence. Inspecting our vintage postcard of Curraghmore, he remarks, “Look, the fountain in the lake is clearly visible. It was the tallest fountain in Europe before my grandfather took it down.” The estate boasts the tallest tree in Ireland, a Sitka spruce. At 47.5 metres tall, its full height is not immediately apparent as it grows out of a dell. The Marquess is less than impressed by wind turbines visible from the neighbouring farm which mar the otherwise Arcadian setting.

“That dashing red haired gentleman,” says the Marquess pointing to a portrait on the landing, “is Henry the 3rd Marquess. He was hot tempered and one day got into such a fierce argument with his father he charged up the staircase on his black stallion. That’s how the middle step got cracked. The portrait of his wife Louisa the 3rd Marchioness, herself an artist, is rather lovely. The 3rd Marquess was killed while fox hunting. My brother Patrick is a great soldier. He was awarded the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst.” The current Marquess was a talented polo player and is a friend of the Duke of Edinburgh. “I’m lucky to have three sons and five grandsons. Richard, my eldest grandson, is 6’8” and a professional polo player.” Sport’s in their (blue) blood. The 3rd Marquess enjoyed partying as much as sport. He was one of several wild sportsmen who sprayed the tollgate and houses of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire with red paint. The phrase “painting the town red” was born.

“That’s Aunt Clodagh,” the Marquess grins gesturing to another portrait. “Do you know what the Irish name Clodagh means? Muddy water. Lady Muddy Water Beresford.” Over six kilometres of the Clodagh River run through the estate. “Curraghmore has always been a working farm.” Even more than that, it was once a self contained community. In contrast to the format of wings elongating the façade, at Curraghmore the ancillary quarters stretch forward from the entrance doors to form the mother-of-all-forecourts. More Seaton Delaval than Russborough. As well as the stables for 60 horses, this parallel pair of wings at one time housed the accountant, bookkeeper, butler, doctor, estate manager, gamekeeper, headmaster and woodcutter. An estate school lay behind the gatelodge. Basil Croeser, the retired butler, still lives in one of the Gibbsian detailed houses lining the forecourt. A new butler, aged 23, has just started. He’s yet to be fitted for his uniform. Later, he will serve the Marquess lunch, a silver tureen on a silver tray concealing fresh produce from the estate. Game soup’s a favourite. There are 25 estate staff, including a cleaning lady for every floor. There may be fourposter beds but bathrooms are on the corridor. No en suites. This is an Irish country house, not a hotel. Chamber pots at the ready.

“That painting’s by Gilbert Stuart who famously was George Washington’s portraitist. Those are of my parents and grandparents. Do sign the visitors’ book.” Lavender’s Blue is added to Prince Albert of Greece, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and, eh, Iain Duncan-Smith. “The house is surprisingly warm, even in winter,” comments the Marquess, “thanks to roaring fires in the main rooms and the thickness of the walls.” We move into the Blue Drawing Room, walking across a 1770 Axminster. The wealth of art between these thick walls becomes even more apparent. One, two, three Joshua Reynolds. Same again for Rubens. A portrait of Catherine the Great by Giovanni Battista Lampi hangs over the doorcase. A Gerrit van Honthorst here; a Thomas Lawrence there. In the adjoining Yellow Drawing Room, filled with morning light from two windows on two sides (blind windows were unblocked in a major restoration 25 years ago), is a painting of another family aunt, Lady Wyndham. She’s wearing the pearl necklace Mary Queen of Scots handed to her lady-in-waiting before she lost her head. The pearls are upstairs, in the Marchioness’s dressing room.

The dining room retains its original skin tone coloured walls and the nine metre long linen tablecloth dating from 1876 is still in use. Standards are high at dinner parties. The Marquess and Marchioness sit at opposite ends of the table, 17 privileged guests on either side. Men wear bow ties; ladies, long dresses and jewellery. Candles perched in three silver candelabra provide the only lighting. Dinner is served on 10 dozen floral Feuillet plates. Upstairs, far flung corners of the house are piled high with boxes of English, French and Chinese china. After dinner, at a nod from the Marquess, the ladies withdraw to another room. A larger than usual party was recently held when the Marquess celebrated his 80th birthday with 80 guests.

There’s so much else to write about Curraghmore. The stuffed lioness and her cubs lurking in a glass box. Elephant trunk and feet umbrella stands. The quatrefoil shaped shell grotto. The grass avenue which stops abruptly, unfinished since the 3rd Marquess’s untimely demise. The Curraghmore Hunt painting by William Osborne with nameplates for everyone including the hounds Jason and Good Boy. Grisaille panels by Peter de Gree. Roundels by Antonio Zucchi. Francini brothers plasterwork. Most of all, the great sense of peace that presides throughout the 1,620 hectares of Ireland’s last wilderness.

Friar Lane + New Street + St Martin’s West Leicester Leicestershire

Greyfriars

“‘I like everything old fashioned,’ said Eleanor; ‘old fashioned things are so much the honestest,’” Anthony Trollope scribes in his 1857 classic Barchester Towers. And there’s nothing so old fashioned – in a good way – than a cathedral close, something he captured in words better than anyone else in his series of six novels about the fictional cathedral town of Barchester.

The first issue of Country Homes and Interiors magazine was hot off the printers in April 1986. The August edition of that year featured an article by Moira Rutherford called Close Encounters about clergy living in cathedral quarters. Archdeacon Michael Perry who lived in Durham Cathedral Close summed it up: “Someone once said clergy consists of middle class people living in upper class houses on lower class incomes. That’s certainly true here. All the canons have at least two jobs.”

Dean Richard Eyre who lived in Exeter Cathedral Close said, “It’s not difficult to heat a big old house like this; it’s simply difficult to pay for it. The guest room alone measures 30 feet by 18. It’s lucky the house only has three bedrooms not including attic rooms.” The immediate area around Leicester Cathedral has the appearance of a close (lots of substantial period houses) but is actually a legal quarter known as Greyfriars. Handsome Georgian terraces line several streets including Friar Lane and New Street; the latter heading northwards frames a view of the cathedral.

One of the best Georgian houses in Greyfriars is 17 Friar Lane. It’s one of 30 buildings which have received restoration funding from the Greyfriars Townscape Heritage Initiative. This was a restoration programme set up by Leicester City Council and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. In 2016 the sash windows and ornate timber Doric entrance doorcase were restored with a £50,000 grant.

Built in 1750 for banker William Bentley, 17 Friar Lane has a sophisticated three storey façade vertically divided into three by quoin pilasters. The central portion of the symmetrical brick elevation is particularly well handled with a Palladian window over the entrance door and a Diocletian window on the top floor. A pediment over the cornice completes the geometric arrangement. Whoever the architect was had a strong grasp of ornament and proportion.

The half timbered wholly jettied 14th century Guildhall on St Martin’s West next to Leicester Cathedral is a rare survivor predating the Georgian redevelopment of the area. Old fashioned indeed.

The Hideaway Sloane Place Hotel Chelsea London +

The Zone of Influence

Sloane Square is “the centre of the world” according to Ann Barr and Peter York’s Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. This essential 1980s guide was in effect an expanded update of Nancy Mitford’s 1955 “U and Non U” essay on what is upper class and what is not. Linguistics were tricky back then: “chimneypiece” was U; “mantlepiece” Non U. We sat beside Peter York at Nicky Haslam’s private gig in The Pheasantry, King’s Road, and he did emphasise it was all a bit tongue in cheek.

Sloane Square Hotel on Lower Sloane Street is equator hot in Handbook terms. It’s the launch party of The Hideaway, a basement speakeasy under Sloane Place. The Peter Jones crowd are here but everyone is more diverse less shibboleth reliant these days. Jazz musicians Bandini not to mention gallons of Moët and Chandon (thankfully the Prohibition theme isn’t taken too literally!) mean the intimate dancefloor is soon filled. The goat’s cheese macaroons are definitely U.

Nate Freeman + The London Edition Hotel Punch Room Fitzrovia London

The Second Age of Umber

“You must not ever stop being whimsical.” Staying Alive by Mary Oliver, 2016.

When New Yorker Nate Freeman, ArtTactic podcaster and Vanity Fair writer, comes to town where does he go and what does he do? Why, he fills the Punch Room in The London Edition with 100 of the capital’s brightest. Punch and conversation flow while supper is served. Gruyere and thyme tartlets and tuna kimchi seaweed canapés to be precise. Waving goodbye to Nate and the revellers, the following morning it’s the Sheraton Grand Park Lane Hotel for Women Leading Real Estate. And for breakfast? Canapés of course.

“And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility of your life.” Still Staying Alive by Mary Oliver, 2016.

Design Museum London + Alexander McQueen + Rebel Show

Rebels With a Cause

The John Pawson redesigned monument to minimalism has taken on a whole new splash of colour and pattern. Making waves at the Design Museum is Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion sponsored by Alexander McQueen. Dynamic, daring and determinedly rebellious, this show invites visitors to get on a Septemberfest rollercoaster of a ride. The press breakfast (avo prods and fruit torpedoes – fashionistas need to keep trim) – is full of everybody one should know on the elite fashion circuit.

Tim Marlow, Chief Executive of the Design Museum, shares with us, “We’re delighted to be collaborating with the British Fashion Council to showcase and explore the youthful energy, creative vision and rebellious spirit that is so central to their NewGen programme. Visitors are going to be stunned by many of the instantly recognisable fashion items on show. We hope they’ll also be captivated by the breadth, depth, diversity and world class talent that has emerged from the London fashion scene in the past three decades.” Caroline Rush, Chief Executive of the British Fashion Council, reciprocates, “We’re thrilled to be collaborating with the Design Museum to celebrate our wonderful NewGen initiative and its influence and legacy over the last 30 years.”

And stunned we are – what a show! All 300 or so designers who benefitted from the rightly celebrated NewGen grant funding programme are referenced. Lee Alexander McQueen was the standout talent from the first NewGen cohort. Archive pieces and photomontages give insights into his – to put it mildly – nonconformist work. ‘Art Show’ celebrates London’s art education establishments and features more talented alumni. But this is no passive exhibition. It’s full on interactive. ‘Backstage’ is all about artificial reality sponsored by Snapchat. Before long we’ve donned designer motorcycle helmets, had our faces painted and entered a cyber world of fun. That’s before shaking our booties to Eric Martin (Technotronic) in the ‘Club’ inspired by those 90s temples of decadent dance, Heaven and Turnmills.

Next comes ‘Runway’ where dozens of mannequins are frozen in time mid strut. Collections by J W Anderson, Wales Bonner, Craig Green, Christopher Kane, Meadham Kirchhoff, Sinéad O’Dwyer line the catwalk. Wait, there’s more! ‘Changemakers’ celebrates NewGen designers doing just that since 1993 – confronting the norms, fighting against stereotypes – in performance and politics. Sarah Mower, British Fashion Council Ambassador, tells us more, “It’s impossible to underestimate the influence London has on Britain’s fashion talent. It’s a city that produces wave after wave of young designers who value originality, wearing what you believe in, and tackling social issues to make a better world. The city’s art schools, clubs and catwalks are brought to life like never before.” Marjan Pejoski’s Swan Dress is one of many eye catching pieces never before on display in London. Born in Macedonia, the designer studied at Central Saint Martins before unveiling his first show in 2001. That same year, Icelandic singing sensation Björk famously wore the dress to the Oscars.

‘Colour Explosion’ revels in just that. Clements Ribeiro recalls, “Colour was massively unfashionable at the time. Everything was grey, downbeat, raw edged or minimal. We decided to go against it with colour, cashmere stripes, clashing prints and luxury. We called it ‘clumsy couture’. Colour turned out to be our superpower.” Fellow designer Craig Lawrence created huge knitted colourful forms in materials such as sweetie papers. He reflects, “My Ribbons Jumper and Leggings are like a big creamy strawberry marshmallow. That summer I was an ice cream man in Ipswich. Somehow, the extreme lollipop colours, stripes and bobbly bits sort of seeped into my Central Saint Martins holiday project.”

We’re at the Rebel press preview with another super talented member of the Martin family. Carrying on the fearless rebel tradition, Eric Martin’s sister, fashion artist Mary Martin, says, “I’m the middle child, the seventh of 13 children. We’re all very creative. I’m loving this show – it’s absolutely fabulous! I studied fashion at the University of East London and launched my label Mary Martin London in 2018. It’s fascinating to see this record of rebelliousness at the heart of London fashion. I like to see my clothes as carrying on that tradition, flying the flag.” Literally – one of Mary’s early dresses was a reworking of the Union Jack. We check out Russell Sage’s upcycled Union Jack jacket which Kate Moss modelled for a Vogue cover back in the day. Then it’s on to the next show. The waves haven’t stopped rolling in the capital.

Terre à Terre + VBites Brighton East Sussex

Be Right On

There are knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Yes, but is it art? No, it’s Fancy Nancy. That is, coco cardamom fired spiced rice with spring onion and yuzu palm bean shoots served with a salad of lychee, coriander, mint and pickled lotus root and pinda peanut laksa, finished with yuzu crème fraîche, panang pickled chilli sambai and chilli fried egg, peanut cumin and onion seed crumble, and tapioca sea salad cracker (£14.95). Complemented by sizzly chips, truffle Mornay sauce and truffle with pickled quail’s egg mimosa (£7.65). Only in Brighton would vegetarians be in the majority. And so, on a cold rainy winter afternoon, Terre à Terre, one of Clapham-Junction-on-Sea’s best meat-free restaurants is jammers. Red walls in the dining room stimulate conversation and appetite. So do great company and great food. Afterwards, it’s a dash across East Street, seagulls serenading overhead, for the best vegan coffee and orange brownies in Brighton. VBites, Heather Mills’ cosy café, proves she’s more than just a charity fundraiser, animal rights campaigner, TV personality, model and champion skier. Actually, Fancy Nancy? It is art. The edible kind.

There are certainties, uncertain certainties and uncertain uncertainties. Yes, but is it art? Yes, it’s Fancy Nancy. That is, coconut cardamon fried rice with spring onion topped with egg fu yung, crispy shallots, chillies and a salad of coriander, mint, lychee, pickled lotus root and yuzu beansprouts, served with laksa oil oyster mushroom kebabs, pinda laksa and crispy lotus root. So that was then (January 2015) and this is now (July 2023). It’s our return visit to Terre à Terre. Pricing variance is a game of snakes and ladders. Fancy Nancy has climbed £4.70; sizzly chips now come with earthy tangy cep mushroom ketchup and have fallen 70 pence. Only in Brighton would vegans be in the majority. And so, on a windswept rainy summer afternoon, Terre à Terre, one of Clapham-Junction-on-Sea’s best meat-free (and dairy-free in places like karekatsu smoked tofu) restaurants, is buzzing. Red walls in the dining room continue to stimulate conversation and appetite. So do even greater company and greater food. Afterwards, it’s not a dash across East Street; sadly VBites closed just two years after our visit. Fortunately, Terre à Terre now serves the best vegan coffee and boozy rum truffles in Brighton. Actually, Fancy Nancy? It still is art. The memorably edible kind.

The Clockspire Restaurant Milborne Port Somerset + Set Menu

Stretched Portmanteau in Milborne Port

Where once there were chalkboards now there are menu boards. In place of attendance lists are wine lists. After 115 years as the local school, the building closed in 1979 before being reinvigorated as a restaurant opening in 2019. The clock tower popping up from the roof and topped by a spirelet was restored. This former school was built by Sir William Medlycott of nearby Ven House and designed by Henry Hall. It’s faced with yellowy Bath stone. The entrance is set in a cloister style colonnade supported by Norman style columns is symmetrically terminated by gabled projections. Large gabled dormers above the colonnade flood the interior which is open to the rafters with natural light.

Mike Fisher, building owner and Creative Director of Studio Indigo, explains, “The creation of The Clockspire has been a thrilling and rewarding experience. This significant village landmark has been beautifully restored and now sits proudly once again at the heart of the village. New employment has been provided in the village and a new destination restaurant has been created in this part of Somerset. The village is enormously proud of this restoration project and the restaurant has been a tremendous success in a very short time.”

Mike founded his practice in 2005 with the aim to provide a holistic approach to architecture and interior design from yachts to townhouses. A recent project was the design of Mandarin Oriental Mayfair in Hanover Square London. His office of 40 staff is based on Lots Road, Chelsea Wharf London. He lives on the edge of the picturesque town of Milborne Port in the magnificent mansion of Ven House.

The set menu available at lunch and dinner has three choices for each course including the following. Starter: cod croquette, smoked cod’s roe, cucumber and apple salad. Main: Cornish pollock, summer vegetables chowder, seaweed sauce. Pudding: strawberry tart, chilled elderflower custard, honeycomb. An optional wine flight is available. Plate presentation by Head Chef Luke Sutton is as artistic as the restaurant’s address: Gainsborough. The Michelin inspector sums it up as, “Attractively presented modern British cooking using the local larder to good effect. Service is personalised and it feels as through they really care.” They do: General Manager Massimilanio Mannella sees to that. Restaurateur Alessandro Fasoli’s other establishment is The Woodspeen in Newbury, Berkshire, also recommended by Michelin.

Wilhelmina Blakley + Beauty

Forever Ballroom Dancing

“Rarely does a wicked soul inhabit a beautiful body and thus external beauty is a true sign of internal goodness.”  Baldassare Castiglione 1528. Wilhelmina Blakley is demonstrably one such soul. Blessed with exceptional beauty, she was the life and soul of 20th century Belfast. A true legend.

John Copeland Blakley + The Irish Guards

You Just Can’t Lay Down and Die

Be born, die; plant, pluck up; kill, heal; break down, build up; weep, laugh; mourn, dance; throw stones, gather stones; embrace, don’t embrace; get, lose; keep, cast away; rend, sew; keep shtum, speak; love, hate; make war, make peace. Supplement to the London Gazette 1 January 1949: ‘New Year’s Honours List. Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, St James’s Palace, SW1. The King has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the British Empire Medal (Military Division) to John Copeland Blakley, Irish Guards.’ John Copeland Blakley’s known active service covered Italy, Norway, Libya, Palestine and Suez. The 1st Battalion. Always.

Coya Restaurant + Bar Mayfair London

The Journey

“You need to go to Coya. It’s the best Peruvian restaurant. The food, the feel, the waiters – all are amazing!” recommends leading businessperson Astrid Bray. “It’s a fav of mine!” And so we make haste while the sun shines. The restaurant has possibly the most discreet frontage ever. A solemn stone columned portico on Piccadilly conveys nothing of the colourful madness that lies beyond, or rather below. Like our favourite Chinese restaurant Hakkasan, the best dining room and bar are in the basement which we just love. Never has subterranean living looked so glam. We’re enthralled!

Amazonica and Lucky Cat may be the new Mayfair restaurants you will shortly be hearing about, and never stop hearing about, and Nobu may or may not be about to close, but here at 118 Piccadilly life gathers pace in the fast lane under the street. The international jet set just can’t get enough of this high end eclectic Latin American cuisine sporting an oriental twist. On a very random Thursday night the place is packed to its rustic rafters. It’s like sitting in Emirates First Class. The vibe is very cool, very relaxed, very us.

“I bring you one to taste,” announces the sommelier, instigating an impromptu pre tiraditos (Peruvian sashimi) wine tasting. “This Argentinian Torrontés is very fruity” is how he describes a Susana Balbo Crios 2018. It instantly transports us back to Atlántico or I Latina or UCO or anywhere spectacularly upmarket in Buenos Aires. “We’ve lots of Argentinian, Chilean and Uruguayan wine! Their high altitude is good for wine growing.” A “full bodied North Argentinian” Hermandad Chardonnay 2016 follows.

Coya’s menu was “born from the spirit of adventure” explains Indo British Culinary Director Sanjay Dwivedi. He spent all of 2012 touring South America and found what he was looking for amidst Incan heritage. “When I went to Peru I was like a kid in a sweet shop, I was so impressed! They have so many different foods – fruits, vegetables, ceviches – I was hooked.” He teamed up with businessman Arjun Waney, the Asian tour de force behind several top London restaurants as well as The Arts Club, and the adventure took wings. Coya now showcases the best of Latin American food, art, music (note the freestanding fireplace in the bar doubling as DJ decks) and culture.

“Peruvian food is the original fusion cuisine,” Sanjay reckons. “It takes in flavours from Japan, China, Spain and Africa.” His menu certainly has recognisable Japanese elements (chiefly miso and teriyaki). It’s an unlikely yet successful pairing of Lima and Tokyo. Late night summer supper costs £60. There’s a tasting menu for £80. Saturday brunch is £95 with cocktails or £115 accompanied by Perrier-Jouët.  Our à la carte dinner sets us back a tad more, although we did consume rather a lot of ensaladas (salad), antichuchos (marinated skewers grilled on charcoal), para picar (sharing plates), pescados y mariscos (seafood) and acompañantes (sides). And the highlight: palomitas con leche (sweetcorn and popcorn crème brûlée with roasted pineapple). There’s another Coya in London in the City, and there are branches in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Monte Carlo. Coya is also opening shortly in Paris. Another excuse – not that one is ever needed – to return to the City of Light.

That was two years ago. And now from our own foreign correspondent. Our dedicated man in the trenches, or at least he who luncheth in Coya Dubai right now. Hard work, but someone’s gotta do it. So what’s his learned verdict? “It’s part of the Four Seasons Dubai complex. The interior of Coya in Dubai is very similar to London with lemon and lime velvet chairs. The menu is more extensive that its London counterpart with a lot of fish and ceviche choices. There are great views over the city. The staff are mainly European. Excellent restaurant.” Our overseas diplomat cuts it short: happy hour has begun back in his hotel.

Sexy Fish Mayfair London + Annabel P + Mary Martin London + Peggy Gou + K Style + Maya Jama + Teddy Music + Gertrude Stein + Frank Gehry + Damien Hirst + Lavender’s Blue + Love + War + Peace

Annabel’s Party

Finally the limo pulls up on Berkeley Square and Annabel P dramatically disembarks dripping in diamonds. Cathedral school followed by the finishing variety has clearly paid off. It’s her role. Lavender’s Blue Directrice turned Diamonds Ambassadress turned Frontline Heroine has arrived. “Dahlings! One can never have enough class – or diamonds.” Clearly not. The doormen make way, the waitress beckoning to the best table in the house. Siberia where art thou now? “This is War and Peace!” Annabel declares scouring the wine list. “Champagne, dear Giuliano!” Meanwhile DJ Sophie ups the tempo downs the base. It’s a night off for Korean DJ Peggy Gou – K Style is so where it’s at right now – but Sophie is determined to bring the house down. This is going to be more disco than dinner.

Sometimes you really gotta go with it and order a pre dinner alfresco cocktail that matches the cushioned upholstery. Sea Breeze please or at least something ephemerally turquoise. Beetroot, carrot, ginger and orange detox elixirs soon cancel the boldness. For a hot minute. Annabel’s wearing Biba vintage, working it babes. Her fellow guest is as always rocking Mary Martin London head to toe. Annabel gets busy stirring up Insta Stories in between yellowtail tartar, smoked tofu and caviar followed by pink shrimp tempura. Maya Jama sends her love. Sexy Fish is after all the television presenter’s fav restaurant. Good friend Grime DJ Teddy Music of Silencer fame chimes in next. Everyone’s soon discussing menu tips. Mango and passionfruit, coconut and lemongrass or pineapple and mandarin sorbet? Decisions, decisions. “All three. Or is that six?” How does Gertrude Stein view dinner in her 1914 classic Tender Buttons? “Not a little fit, not a less fit sun sat in shed more mentally.”

Basement bound, a downward descent reverberating under a Frank Gehry crocodile past Damien Hirst mermaids before walking by those marbled bathrooms – salut Versailles – till the night relaxes into an embrace of unbelievably attractive seafood. Late call but Mary Martin London’s on the blower. “Fantastic! I cannot wait for our next interview. Let’s talk. I’m here and ready and want to talk about my amazing new dresses and fashion.” The limo pulls up on Berkeley Square and Annabel P dramatically departs dripping in diamonds and fantasy.

Daphne’s Restaurant + Bamford Haybarn South Kensington London

Everyone Likes It Hot

Macaronis and cheese anyone? That’ll be our movie. Moving on, we’ve got the hottest table in the coolest restaurant on the hottest day of the year. More Sahara than Siberia. Hot in the city. While the Christian name “Daphne” is most recognisable as Tony Curtis’ alter ego in Some Like It Hot, “Daphne’s” belongs to Princess Diana’s fav Italian local. Founded in 1964 by theatre agent Daphne Rye, just when nearby King’s Road was gearing up to the era, Daphne’s has since become a South Ken institution.

The restaurant is in cool company. Bamford Haybarn, one of Lady Bamford’s forays into retail and a shrine to sensational scent, is three doors down. Joseph and Chanel, shops not people, hang out in this Draycott Avenue ‘hood. Serena Armstrong-Jones, Countess of Snowdon, had a charming eponymous gift shop on Walton Street back in the day when she was Serena Linley. Her shop has come and gone. As for fashion, Isabel Marant flies the flag on Walton Street these days. Daylesford on Sloane Avenue is another of Lady Bamford’s organic outlets. Its canopy announces an all embracing offer: “farmshop, café, bar, butcher, bakery, cheese, fish, larder, wine, home store”.

Under current owner restaurateur Richard Caring’s watchful eye, Daphne’s was given the full Martin Brudnizki treatment half a century after it first opened. The Swedish interior architect puts it succinctly: “Minimalism, maximalism, modernism, classicism – I’ve done them all. For me they are the four pillars of design. I take a bit of each and mix them in different strengths depending on the client.” Dublin born designer David Collins, who died prematurely in 2013, transformed a swathe of hospitality interiors in London. A fresh eclectic glamour upped the stakes and steaks at The Wolseley restaurant for starters and Artesian Bar at The Langham Hotel for nightcaps. Martin Brudnizki upholds that tradition, from giving minimalism a Scandi twist at Aquavit restaurant to maxing out maximalism at Annabel’s club.

Daphne’s interior floats somewhere between minimalism and maximalism, blending modernism with classicism. A vivid palette of pinks, yellows, greens and oranges recalls the hues of sun drenched Verona gardens and rooftops. The conservatory dining room is a light confection of bevelled mirrors, linen awnings, 1950s Murano chandeliers, modern European art and a baroque style green marble fireplace.

Effortlessly sophisticated, Daphne’s is neither the place to try out macaroni cheese nor entry level wine. Lunch is Pinot Grigio di Lenardo Friuli 2018 (grape expectations); scallops with chilli and garlic (park those kisses); ravioli with buffalo ricotta and asparagus (so this season); Wedgwood strawberry cheesecake (china town). And selection of Italian cheese (please).

The Isle of Thanet Kent + Westbrook Bay Beach Huts

Not the Last Resort

The Isle of Thanet is the most easterly point of Kent. Once separated from the mainland by the Wantsum Channel, this area to the north of Deal and east of Whitstable is famed for its golden strands. All 15 of them. Margate Main Sands may be one of the best known beaches, crammed on sunny weekends, but just round the coast to the west is the quieter Westbrook Bay. Really an early 20th century suburb of Margate, Westbrook has its own distinct identity.

Beach huts line the esplanade of Westbrook Bay. Born out of an 18th century sense of modesty, they have become a cherished part of coastal heritage. Still great for changing into swimming gear, beach huts have their limitations as a couple discovered when they set fire to their hut in Bournemouth recently. They are not designed for cooking. Cucumber sandwiches are more appropriate. Beach huts’ latest reincarnation is as valuable real estate. Current prices in neighbouring East Sussex range from £15,000 in Eastbourne to £55,000 in Rye. Whitstable in Kent, £30,000. In 2016, Kent Online featured the extraordinary headline “Margate posh beach huts go on sale for £500,000”. On closer inspection, the article actually refers to beach hut style two bedroom terraced houses overlooking the beach.

Northumberland Hall Margate Kent + Lavender’s Blue

Our Testimony

Opened in 1904, Northumberland Hall continues the gospel tradition into the 21st century. The Lord’s Day meetings keep going as does the Thursday evening Address. The gable fronted Edwardian brick and plaster façade remains true to the town and street and faith and scripture. Sometimes seeing is more than believing. Marilynne Robinson in The Death of Adam beseeches, “By the standards of my generation, all of my life I have gone to church with a kind of perseverance as I do to this day. Once recently I found myself travelling all night to be home in time for church, and it occurred to me to consider in what spirit or out of need I would need to do such a thing. My tradition does not encourage the idea that God would find any merit in it. I go to church for my own gratification, which is intense, although it had never occurred to me before to describe it to myself.” And that is the story of Calvinist salvation, a longing fulfilled, a desire satisfied, a promise met, not a dramatic Damascene revelation but rather a gradual and rather beautiful opening and awakening of truths.

Mary Martin London + The Return Collection + Foreign + Commonwealth Office London

Power

“You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” croons Lisa-Marie Presley. You ain’t. And you won’t. Not yet. For Mary Martin London is busy sewing up a storm for her forthcoming fashion feat: The Return Collection. This comes hot and heavy on the haute heels of her last extravaganza Blood Sweat and Tears. This time it really is all about power dressing. And the corridors of power are about to be torn up by the thrust and throttle no room for boondoggle of a Mary Martin London show. “If our myths and truths are only another exotic blossoming, the free play of possibility,” writes Marilynne Robinson in The Death of Adam, “then they are fully as real and as worthy of respect as anything else.”

Show. Not merely catwalk, for Mary will as ever be mixing decks in between directing the lighting, sound, photography, choreography, and always, laughter. There is really only one space that can hold its own for her solo show. Enter Durbar Court. “I like that the heads of the East India Company leaders will be looking down on my catwalk!” Mary howls laughing. “History and all that!” The Court was first used in 1867 for a reception of the Sultan of Turkey. King Edward VII threw his Coronation party here in 1902. Ms Robinson again, “At best, our understanding of any historical moment is significantly wrong, and this should come as no surprise, since we have little grasp of any present moment.” More recently, President Trump gave a speech here; Victoria Beckham showed last summer; Vivienne Westwood before that; but this is a first: a black female designer holding court in Durbar Court.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is accessed off King Charles Street. It backs onto Downing Street. Numbers 10 and 11 can be glimpsed through muslin drapes. Architect George Gilbert Scott and the India Office’s surveyor Matthew Digby Wyatt were the dream design team. Completed in 1875, really it’s a cluster of buildings: the Foreign Office, India Office, Colonial and Home Offices. George Gilbert Scott supplied the august neoclassical cloak of architecture enveloping the inner sanctum of Matthew Digby Wyatt’s grand interior which reaches a climax in Durbar Court, a marvel in Greek, Sicilian and Belgian marble. Three storeys of columns and piers supporting arches rise to the glazed roof. The ground floor Doric and first floor Ionic columns are red Peterhead granite; the top floor Corinthian columns, grey Aberdeen granite. It’s the atrium of atria, arcades in Arcadia.

There’s so much art and sculpture and history layered with meaning and misapprehension in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. En processional route to Durbar Court is the Muses’ Stair. An octagonal glass lantern lighting the Portland stone staircase is decorated by Canephorae, Roman goddesses of plenty, floating over cherubs representing Roman virtues. Portraits of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie hang between red Devonshire marble and grey Derbyshire marble Corinthian columns.

“Dare to be you!” Reverend Andy Rider preached in his last sermon as Rector of Christ Church Spitalfields. Over 100 years ago Lady Sybil Grant wrote in her self hagiography, “Provided that we are a star we should not trouble about the relative importance of our position in the heavens.” Fastforward a century or so and Mary is confident of her place in the firmament. And daring to be Mary Martin London. The creation of Eve. “We should be thankful that our cinematographic life in London still affords the quality of mystery and unexpectedness,” proclaimed Lady Sybil. Big statement.

Big statement architecture requires big statement fashion. Another interjection from Marilynne Robinson, “It all comes down to the mystery of the relationship between the mind and the cosmos.” First there was The Black Dress: “I see through a dark cloud of black mist.” Then The Red Dress: “The tainted bride is no longer a virgin.” Next came The White Dress: “I dream of memories when I was a Queen.” There’s only one dress left. The Rainbow Dress: “It’s finally coming – the biggest and the best! The Rainbow Dress will open The Return Collection!” the fashion artist declares. “A world champion ballerina will combine Tai quan dao and African dance on the catwalk. I’m bringing it in a bit different! People haven’t been out so I’m going to give them an amazing show. The Return to Africa. I’m out of the box!” Out of the box and into the Court. “Just A Dream” mourns Lisa-Marie Presley. Not for Mary Martin London. She is all about turning dreams into fantasies into realities into myths and truths. An uncommon wealth of talent.

Bentley + Lavender’s Blue

The Cannonball Run

Handily placed between Sexy Fish (the restaurant) and Annabel’s (the club), Jack Barclay on Berkeley Square, Mayfair, is the world’s oldest and largest Bentley dealership. For more than a century, it has been keeping the one percent on wheels. When you’re in full throttle sports gear (our tyres and our attire) breezing along the coast, escaping the heat of the city, who cares that your automobile is averaging 19 litres per 100 kilometres (15 miles to the gallon)? Everywhere looks better from behind the wheel of a hand built Bentley Continental GT Convertible. And that includes the English Riviera when the mercury’s rising.

Royal Victoria Patriotic Building + Le Gothique Wandsworth London

Mad For It

Sunday afternoon cricket on Wandsworth Common makes for a bucolic tableau. It’s like a Lowry painting negative: starched white figures against a deep green, the working class city swapped for middle class suburbia. Or perhaps a Surrey village scene. Two centuries ago it would’ve been a Surrey village scene. Wandsworth only became a London Borough in more recent times. In the midst of the Common is a building locals refer to as “Dracula’s Castle” with good reason – its history is as dark as its slate roof.

The Treaty of Paris of 1856 brought the Crimean War formally to an end. The Royal Commission of the Patriotic Fund was established to collect and distribute money donated by the public for the widows and orphans of men killed in the Crimean War. The Fund’s Executive and Finance Committee decided to build an orphanage on the then edge of London for 300 daughters of soldiers, sailors and marines killed in the recent conflict. A well timed letter from Frederick, 4th Earl Spencer and great great grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales, solved the site issue:

“My Dear Sir, If the Patriotic Fund Commission should select my ground to found their Institution on Wandsworth Common I should be willing, in consideration of the national object, to take on half the price Mr Lee has fixed on the value viz: £50 an acre… I do not wish to encounter any difficulty with the Copyholders, and the Commissioners, if they entertain any position of land, must take all risks of those difficulties. Yours faithfully, Spencer.” The Committee accepted the Earl’s offer and bought 65 acres (26 hectares) for £3,700. Nearby Spencer Park, where Chef Gordon Ramsay has his London pad, is a reminder of the Northamptonshire aristocratic connection.

The building may also look like a Victorian madhouse but that’s about the only use it hasn’t been even though it was originally called the Asylum. Now for a countdown through the decades: 1858 orphanage; 1914 hospital; 1919 orphanage once more; 1939 reception centre; 1946 training college; 1952 school; 1970 vacant; and of late, 27 apartments, 20 studios, 15 workshops, two offices, a drama school and Le Gothique bar and restaurant. Tom Bailey from the Thompson Twins lives in one of the apartments. Past residents have included Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor and Charlotte Jane Bennett. The latter was an unfortunate schoolgirl who burned to death in 1901 on an upper floor – her ghost is said to prowl the interior as night falls.

What on earth is a ‘reception centre’ or to use its full name the London Reception Centre? It is a somewhat euphemistic term for a refugee detention headquarters. Following the collapse of France and the Low Countries in 1940 in World War II, a flood of refugees entered Britain. Those from Germany and the Axis countries were usually interned while non enemy aliens were interviewed by immigration. MI5 decided to create a reception centre and where better than the highly adaptable Royal Patriotic School as it was known in its latest guise. Refugees from Occupied Europe had to pass through the reception centre – a sheep from the goats process. An average of 700 refugees were processed each month. Several spies were unmasked and hanged at Wandsworth Prison across the Common. It is rumoured that the Nazi Rudolf Hess was interrogated in the reception centre.

Major Rohde Hawkins was the original architect; Giles Quarme, the restoration architect. The 17th century George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh designed by William Wallace was the inspiration for the design. Major Hawkins sought to omit some of the ornamental details “to carry out which it was found would absorb too large an amount of the surplus at the disposal of the Commissioners”. Opening the orphanage, Queen Victoria declared it to be “beautiful, roomy and airy”. Recounting the day’s events in her diary that night, Her Majesty ended the entry with an entreaty: “May this good work, which is to bear my name, prosper!”

The Building News praised the new orphanage as being “bold, picturesque and effective”. Later royal visitors would include King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Princess Victoria, and Queen Amelia of Belgium. Country Life contributor Dr Roderick O’Donnell recognises the influence of municipal Flemish works in the architecture. “This is a secular gothic rather than ecclesiastical gothic influenced by buildings such as town halls in Florence and Bruges. There are also tones of Scottish baronial. The rhythm of a central tower with balancing towers either end of the façade was very popular during this period.” A corresponding orphanage (now Emanuel School) designed by Henry Saxon Snell was built for boys slightly to the north of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum.

The Survey of London Volume 49 Battersea (2013) edited by Andrew Saint records, “The lifespan of the Royal Commission of the Patriotic Fund Boys’ School (its official name) was brief. The Fund had been created in a surge of sympathy for the dead of the Crimean War, with the aim of maintaining their orphaned children. It was resolved to create a school and asylum for 300 girls, and another for 100 boys. The girls came first. With the money amply donated, the Commissioners bought the Clapham Junction site. This land’s southern portion was farmed, while at its centre arose the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum, conceived as a ‘national monument’ and built in 1858 to 1859 to ebullient gothic designs by Major Rohde Hawkins, architect to the Committee of Council on Education.”

“Built as a school for orphaned daughters of servicemen, 1857 to 1859, by Rhode [sic] Hawkins,” summarise Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry in The Buildings of England London 2: South (1983). “A typically pompous Victorian symmetrical composition of yellow brick, with coarsely robust gothic detail. Three storeys with entrance below a central tower; lower towers at the ends, corbelled out turrets and bow windows. Statue of St George and the Dragon in a central niche. Separate chapel. Low concrete additions of the 1960s to the north.”

Amongst the flourish of turrets, spikes and spires is a crocketed pinnacle with what appear to be mad cows nosediving off it. “It is strange that the gargoyles are in the form of hounds or lambs in lead!” observes heritage architect John O’Connell. “The Major designed this architectural element in timber and lead when it should all be in stone.” The orphanage Commissioners noted in their 1869 report that “from the size of the building and its peculiar construction and arrangements, it is a most expensive one to manage and keep in repair”. So much for Major Rohde Hawkins’ value engineering efforts! That’s no surprise. It is a complex complex with the main block built around a north courtyard and a south courtyard separated by a dining hall which is now used by the drama school. Both courtyards are surrounded on three sides by ground floor cloister type corridors. A rear courtyard cloistered on one side extends to the east and to the northeast is a standalone chapel.

Master of the Gothic Revival architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin’s preferred builder George Myers constructed the orphanage. His tender of £31,337 also happened to be the lowest. “George Myers had an enormous works along the South Bank in Lambeth,” explains Dr O’Donnell. “Middlesex County Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Colney Hatch, Barnet, was his largest project.” The contractor made one change to Major Hawkins’ design, replacing a clock with a statue of St George and the Dragon – which as a skilled stonemason he may have carved himself – on the top floor of the entrance tower. Innovative construction methods included off site prefabrication of iron window frames, decorative leadwork and stone dressings. This allowed construction to be completed in under two years. Mark Justin, founder of Le Gothique relates, “This was the first building in the UK to have pre stressed concrete and mesh floors.” The restoration of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building would take three times as long.

“This building has a colourful history!” says Mark with more than a hint of understatement. He manages the bar and restaurant with his son Andrew. “Le Gothique is masculine not feminine because it’s named after the era not the building. I’ve been here for 35 years – I’m the longest serving landlord of a venue in London. Jean-Marie Martin was our French Head Chef for the first 25 years. Our Head Chef is now Italian Bruno Barbosa. If I’m asked for a description of our food I’d say ‘modern European’.”

Mark confirms the Rudolf Hess story is more than a rumour. “He came here in 1945. Why did he come to the UK though? On a whim he crash landed in the Duke of Hamilton’s estate in Scotland. He seemingly thought he could arrange peace talks with the Duke who was involved with the British Government’s war policy but he misunderstood pacifism here. Churchill went ballistic and he was arrested. But why did he come? He was invited by the Royals, specifically King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Hess spent three days in the reception centre. The Government papers were due to be released but have been classified again until 2035. It’s all to do with Rudolf Hess and the potential downfall of the monarchy.”

“The restoration and conversion were featured in a 24 page spread in Architects’ Journal. Architect Eva Jiricna did the apartment interiors. She replaced the wooden beams with high tension steel wire and added glass staircases to mezzanine bedrooms.” Mark finishes, “Businessman Paul Tutton bought the 3,700 square metre derelict listed building from the Greater London Corporation for a pound. It was pigeon central! He restored and converted the building incrementally. Geoff Adams bought flat number one in 1985 for £24,000. Geoff died last year.” Gnocchi with butternut squash velouté followed by tart aux poires with vanilla ice cream, modern and European and delicious, are served alfresco in the north courtyard. Upstairs, a figure darts across one of the windows. Could it be Charlotte Jane?

Chilston Park Hotel + Lenham Kent

Palace in Wonderland

The black and white half timbering of the medieval house jettying over the graveyard is matched by the monochromatic wooden porch gable attached to the Early and Very Early English St Mary’s Church. Coordinating domestic and ecclesiastical architecture separated by the dead. Lenham Village betwixt Ashford and Maidstone in a stretch of Kent that never feels entirely rural lives up to its Medieval Village brown sign. A discreet distance away on the far side of the M20 lies Chilston Park Hotel, full of the living and the alive.

The Alice in Wonderland scale chess board and pieces on the lawn are enough to make Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson burst into song. And the weather would force Belinda Carlisle to belt out her hit Summer Rain. Safely and elegantly ensconced in the great indoors, what’s not to love though? Lunch in The Marble Lounge is a sheer delight. Presumably named after its gargantuan pedimented fire surround, a piece of architecture in its own right, the entrance hall as it really is could also be called The Flagstone Hall or The Hall of Mirrors.

It’s like lunching in a National Trust property. So it comes as no surprise to learn that Chilston Park was converted into a hotel by Martin and Judith Miller, authors of Miller’s Antiques. Judith is also a presenter on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. “I just feel a connection with historical buildings,” she shares. “My interest in antiques comes from discovering them through the pursuit of history.” Almost four decades later, and despite changing hands several times, a current inventory of the furnishings and art in the rooms would read like a supplement to Miller’s Antiques. The last private owner was the extravagantly monikered Aretas Akers-Douglas, 1st Baron Douglas of Baads and Viscount Chilston of Boughton Malherbe. The peer was a Conservative Home Secretary. It is currently owned by Hand Picked Hotels whose portfolio includes historic properties across Great Britain and the Channel Islands.

The architectural history of the house is almost as complicated as the Really Early English St Mary’s Church Lenham. The first building was a turn of the 16th century courtyard house. In the opening decades of the 18th century, an earlier central tower was replaced with a three bay pedimented projection and the house was generally revamped. The resultant balanced elevations – two storey red brick sash windowed hipped roof – present a convincingly coherent Georgian pile. Subtle asymmetries and eccentric quirks of the floor plan reveal otherwise. A neo Jacobean staircase hall, ancillary stairs and corridors all lit by roof lanterns gobble up the courtyard. There are 53 bedrooms in total spaced across the main house, mews houses and converted stables. On the first floor of the main house, the northeast facing Queen Anne Room, Hogarth Room, Guilt Room and Oriental Room overlook the lake. The east and southwest facing Regency, Victoria, Byron and Evelyn Rooms have views of nine hectares of parkland. Tulip and Rowlandson Rooms overlook the mews houses to the west. As Lewis Carroll wrote, “There were doors all round the hall.”

Kibou Japanese Hot Kitchen + Ramen + Sushi Bar Battersea London

Signore and Madama Butterfly

The bustling Northcote Road just got a whole lot more bustling with summertime weekend pedestrianisation. Hurrah! So we’ve really got no excuse to not sashimi over to the newly opened Kibou opposite The Bolingbroke gastropub and Uncommon deli. It’s a Japanese hot kitchen, ramen and sushi bar inspired by Tokyo’s canteen style drinking dens. This is their second branch: Kibou launched in 2013 in Cheltenham, home of fine breeds (and that’s just the Ladies’ College).

It’s a gastronomic education for sure getting to know our hosomaki (thin sushi) from our futomaki (fat sushi), our tataki (seared fish) from our temaki (cone shaped roll) not to mention donburi (rice bowl). And we’re stretching our vocabulary, adding korokke which means croquette, ebi for prawn and hamachi for yellowtail. It feels like half the Battersea postcode is jammed in here tonight. We’re not complaining. Course after course arrives, each plate resembling an arrangement of origami sculptures. ­­The nigiri is young and we are kibou (Japanese for filled with hope) in Kibou.

Pelham Crescent + Wellington Square Hastings East Sussex

Le Confinement Est Fini

Joseph Kay (1775 to 1847) may not be an educated household name these days, but he hung out with some better known architects. He was a pupil of Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1753 to 1827), travelled the Continent with architect Robert Smirke (1780 to 1867) and married Sarah Henrietta, daughter of architect William Porden (1755 to 1822). His pièce de résistance is undoubtedly one of the architectural highlights of East Sussex.

Pelham Crescent is extraordinary in lots of ways, from its setting (carved out of a cliff) to its complexity (it includes a rabbit warren of cellars and areas as well as a lower street level shopping arcade) to its arrangement (St Mary in the Castle Church is plonked in the middle of the arc of townhouses). Joseph Kay owned one of the townhouses as well as a villa in the Belmont area of Hastings. An architect’s salary of £150 a year clearly stretched far in those days. A blue plaque on one of the townhouses records ‘George Devey (1820 to 1886) Architect and Pioneer of the Arts + Crafts Movement lived in this house 1870 to 1886’. He clearly didn’t practice what he preached for Pelham Crescent is as far removed as is possible from Arts + Crafts. High above Pelham Crescent are the remains of the Norman Hastings Castle just to add further drama to the setting. Heritage architect John O’Connell calls the castle “The Ostia Antica of the South Coast”.

The terrace and church were completed in the 1820s for landowner Thomas Pelham 1st Earl of Chichester (1728 to 1805). Each of the stuccoed houses is only one bay wide – but what a bay! The ground floor boasts a tripartite Wyatt window; the first floor, a balconied and hooded bow window; the second floor, a balconied and hooded French door; and the top floor brags a half moon Diocletian window. It’s as if Mr Pelham swallowed the architectural dictionary or at least the fenestration chapter. The four end houses have charming scrolled pediments topped by acroteria. Inland to the northwest of Hastings Castle is Wellington Square, started just before and finished just after Pelham Crescent. Developed by speculative bankers, it is less coherent yet of a similar ilk to Joseph Kay’s work with at least as many idiosyncratic details. “The Nash Class of ‘99” says John O’Connell. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Hastings East Sussex + Foyle’s War

Nodal Point Class A

“Welcome to Foyle’s Country!” declare the friendly locals. Their locale is Hastings’ answer to Bristol’s Clifton or Dublin’s Killiney. It’s a ravishingly unrepentant patchwork quilt of cottages and gardens and love knitted across the lower – and occasionally upper – gradients of the hills that bow down to England’s southeast coast. Interspersed with some rather grand Nash-sur-Mer terraces. “You have to photograph St Just!” they cry. “That’s Detective Chief Inspector Foyle’s house although the interiors were filmed elsewhere.” A ­­faded sign on the flank wall next to the rather smart three storey plus multi bowed Regency St Just (who knew an interwar policeman’s salary was so generous?) reads: ‘T Noalles. Plumber, Painter and Glazier. Writing, Graining and Gilding. Estimates Given.’ Mr Foyle’s accent is certainly more plummy than plumber.

The very sunny very atmospheric very colourful (check out the half red squirrel peeping out of a stone basket) very real set of Foyle’s War was a training ground for thespian soldiers with Edward Fox, James McAvoy, Tobias Menzies, Rosamond Pike, and, eh, Danny Dyer, working the trenches. With more country houses than a Burke’s Guide, lemon curd sandwiches by the dozen, ladies wearing lavender water, and as many twists and turns as Murder on the Venice Simplon-Orient Express, no wonder Foyle’s War was an instant television success. It’s all terribly tickety boo. A celebration of flotsam and jetsam narratives floating across topsy turvy townscapes and higgledy piggledy farmyards. Foyle’s War features some memorable wartime sayings too such as, “Up with the lark; to bed with the Wren.” Cue Chris de Burgh’s ‘Borderline’ playing…

Holy Trinity Hastings Church East Sussex + Samuel Sanders Teulon

Alpha and Omega

Visitors are given the friendliest of welcomes. “We’re brothers! Do you know St Peter’s Church Brighton? It is an HTB plant. We’re a church plant of St Peter’s. We’re a plant of a plant! We have a congregation of about 200 people.” HTB is of course Holy Trinity Brompton, the Anglican church in Kensington where the Alpha Course began in 1977. Alpha, a series of interactive sessions exploring the basics of the Christian faith, soon exploded into the worldwide phenomenon it is now.

Close to Hastings Railway Station, the Grade II Holy Trinity on Robertson Street is not as old as it looks. Presumably the architect Samuel Sanders Teulon, as a practitioner of the Early English style, would have taken that as a compliment. The building was completed over eight years starting in 1851. It is constructed of coursed rubble with dressed stone details such as the tracery, quoins and trefoil pierced parapet. HTH, or Holy Trinity Hastings Church, is a forceful and accomplished piece of polygonal ecclesiastical architecture from its semi octagonal apse to its hexagonal vestry.

Hastings East Sussex + Esplanade

Feeling Peachy

“You write like an angel,” architect and bon viveur Fergus Flynn-Rogers once remarked during a long forgotten country house lunch party in County Wicklow. Sometimes we photograph like an angel too. And with that, Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem Agnus Dei plays.

Hastings East Sussex + Lavender’s Blue

Nothing Erases This Feeling

We had to escape the city was sticky and cruel. Sometimes, life is best not being an actual riot. And so we battled our way to Hastings. It must be the most underrated understated overshadowed overlooked resort abutting the English Channel. The town – this is getting serious – really doesn’t live down to its rep. That said, it’s not chichi. It’s not bohemian. It’s not trendy. Rather, Hastings feels real from the fisherman working the pebbly beach to the friendly locals keen to share titbits “numbering of houses is all over the place here”. It’s as historic as you would expect for a conquered town forever linked to one of the most famous dates on record. Colourful eclectic architecture lightens the winding streets (literally on Winding Street) and brightens the climbing hills. We drove all night to get to you (probably on Tackleway). It is all right.

Belair House + Park Dulwich London

Season of The Unexpected

A little along Gallery Road, opposite Lovers’ Lane, stands a distinguished villa. Belair, whether two words, hyphenated or a portmanteau is a class signifier from Los Angeles to Wicklow to Dulwich. Pure class. Belair House in the picturesque perfect postcard pretty prestigiously pristine village of Dulwich in southeast London was built in 1785. That’s a fact. Or at least it’s the date proudly painted on the pediment over the entrance door. But all is not how it seems. What is rather more certain is the original name of house was College Place and the client, John Willes. A wealthy corn trader from Whitechapel, he first leased 20 hectares known as Home Farm from Dulwich College some 14 years earlier. The house would be renamed Belair by a later owner, solicitor Charles Rankin, in 1829.

Local shopkeeper and historian Brian Green records in his 2002 book Dulwich: A History, “Belair is a fine example of an Adam style Georgian house. For many years it had a model farm in its 48 acres of grounds… In the lodge, still standing at the front entrance, lived the under-gardener who was responsible for looking after the grapevine hothouse, the cactus hothouse and three other large greenhouses. The coachman lived next door in the coach house… After the death of Sir Evan Spencer, the last occupant, in 1937, the contents were auctioned and the house fell into some decay. During World War II it was first used by the Royal Army Service Corps as a depot and later by the Free French forces. The grounds were used by the local platoon of the Home Guard for grenade practice.”

Over to Ian McInnes, Chair of the Dulwich Society, “No one knows who the original architect was for Belair. Despite many articles suggesting it was the Adam brothers, there is no information in the Dulwich Estate archives to support that. We have quite detailed background on the owners in the 19th century but nothing on the original architect(s) – what you see today is of course an early 1960s ‘impression’ of what a late 18th century house in a park ought to look like.” So it is “Adam style” as Brian Green points out but probably not Robert, James or William Adam. And what an impression!

In 1961, under the ownership of Southwark Council, Belair was radically stripped back to its original form, more or less. A villa reborn. A vision reimagined. A variation on a theme recomposed. Rationalised single storey bow ended wings were added either side. Behind a blind bow window, the north facing wing is actually hollow and conceals a staircase winding up to a first floor terrace which embraces the mother of all views. In the distance, a serpentine lake nestled in the pleasure grounds radiates in the early summer heat, red mace, yellow flag and purple loosestrife erupting in a blaze of colour.

“The architects for this reconstruction,” explains Ian, “were Austin Vernon + Partners, most probably Malcolm Pringle, but the elderly Austin Vernon may have also had a hand in it as he had done quite a bit of good neo Georgian in his career. All of the practice’s records were destroyed in the 1990s.” Returning to the identity of the original architect, Henry Holland is sometimes mentioned. “The Henry Holland connection comes from Thurlow House in West Norwood, also southeast London,” Ian says, “which he did design and was built roughly at the same time. But that’s supposition and there is no proof he was the architect of Belair.”

The period between 1785 and 1961 saw Belair House swell and deflate like bagpipes. In the 19th century the building was transmogrified under the direction of then owner Charles Hutton, Deputy Lieutenant for London. W­­ings and glasshouses and attics and grandeur were added to accommodate the Huttons and their 11 children and 10 servants. In 1980, the Dulwich Society Journal declared, rightly so, “One has a better idea now of the simple elegance of the original Georgian design than would have been the case a century ago, when it was obscured by Victorian wings and outbuildings.” Belair is now a restaurant and wedding venue. Mark Fairhurst Architects were responsible for sensitively extending and converting the former late 18th century stables building and early 19th century gatelodge into fully residential use.

“The brief,” explains Mark, “was to restore the existing stables building, which had been poorly converted into flats, and create a modern, flexible living space suitable for a young family.” An enticing blend of old and new architecture was the result. “The concept was to create an open, fluid ground floor living area by introducing a linear glass and steel pavilion linking the rooms created within the narrow existing building, and visually linking the accommodation with the surrounding landscape. Random outbuildings were replaced by a new single storey guest wing linked to the listed building via a glazed winter garden in the entrance courtyard.” The gatelodge is used as a studio linked to the house.

The Dulwich Society Journal concludes, “Belair was the first of many imposing mansions to be built in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the only one to have survived in anything like its original form.” Mireille Galinou records in The Dulwich Notebook, “The architectural historian John Harris referred to the ‘exceptional survival of Belair, a house of 1785 in a designed landscape, in his 1990 essay on London’s 18th century gardens.” She continues, “Survival is the right word. Local historian Patrick Darby discovered in the Minutes of the Dulwich Estate’s Governors’ Meetings a ‘serious proposal to demolish Belair, fill in the lake, and cover it with 200 small villas – a proposal only thwarted by the Charity Commissioners!” Further down Gallery Road, as its name would suggest, lies Dulwich Picture Gallery. A fading banner clinging to the railings advertises a British Surrealism exhibition. The gallery is closed due to a pandemic. The name of the exhibition? ‘Season of The Unexpected’. Surreal, indeed.

­­­

Hide at Home Restaurant London + Ollie Dabbous

Please Do Eat the Daisies

One of the stalwarts of the London restaurant scene, Le Caprice, has sadly closed. It was the all stars favourite, or at least was for the earlier decades of its 40 year lifespan, hosting late and living legends from Diana Dors to Princess Diana to Diana Ross. A little bit of 20th century glamour vanished with its closure. Even more sadness saying farewell, adieu, goodbye to nearby Indian Accent. There was nowhere better to savour soy keema, quail egg and lime leaf butter pao than in this intimately luxurious luxuriously intimate hideaway. Relative newcomer Hide, a scallop’s throw from Le Caprice, has been steadily growing its presence since opening on Piccadilly in 2018. Hide at Home – the same Michelin starred food delivered to your doorstep – is Chef Ollie Dabbous’ latest innovation. It comes with Hide at Home Culinary Instructions which boil down to “eat and enjoy”. Our Saturday evening meal arrives:

• Green salad with spring onion, lemon and marjoram
• Fresh egg pasta with Cornish crab, garlic and parsley
• Strawberry and vanilla custard tartlet

Each course is an individual explosion of taste, texture and colour with a common aesthetic theme of Hide’s signature edible flowers. Hide Restaurant has three spaces denoting floor level: Below, Ground and Above, the latter with sweeping views across Piccadilly to Green Park and its latest addition, The Queen’s Meadow. Eating on our terrace, we add a new fourth space: Outside, which has sweeping views across laurel and bay trees to our obelisk topped trellis. Ollie Dabbous’ aim is, “To make food taste as good as it possibly can by respecting the integrity of the ingredient through a style of cooking that is organic but refined.” This rings true, whether enjoying his food in Below, Ground or Above or best of all, Outside.

Belgravia London + The Doors

Pheeling Filosophical

Early Sunday morning bliss: mushroom filo pastry and Dimello coffee from Food Filosophy, an upmarket Greek café turned deli on the corner of Ebury Street and Lower Belgrave Street.

Ryculff Square Blackheath London + Sir Albert Richardson

Paragon of Virtuous Planning

Sometimes you just gotta hunt a little harder, dig a little deeper, look a little longer, to see the wood and the trees. Beauty isn’t always served up on a plate, not even in glorious Blackheath. Its Georgian terraces and Regency villas facing the Heath are on full display for all to admire but, to employ a military analogy, the army that is architecture can’t be just about majors. Lieutenants are required too. Where is the hidden charm, the understated elegance, the stuff that scenery is made of? Ryculff Square.

But first, a race through literature celebrating the neoclassical, the Georgian, the neo Georgian and the hooley. Deputy Chief Architect to the Ministry of Health Housing Department Manning Robertson, who owned Huntington Castle in County Carlow, penned Everyday Architecture in 1924. He states in his preface, “The necessity for economy is forcing us into honest expression, and the new style, although based upon past tradition and especially upon Georgian work, is not a mere copy, but bears the stamp of the present day; we are in fact continuing the sequence of English architecture from the point where it was rudely interrupted by the industrial materialism of the last century. More and more we rely for our effects upon good plain brick and tile work, of pleasing texture and varied colour, and upon the elusive quality of proportion emphasised by the play of shadows.”

Manning Robertson wasn’t the only 20th century Anglo Irish gentleman author. Lord Kilbracken, who owned Killegar House in County Leitrim, was a Tatler columnist. His 1960 book Shamrocks and Unicorns is an amusing array of essays meandering from The Night of the Hooley and A Ghostly Encounter to Bog for Sale and Wanderlust. Arthur Trystan Edwards upholds the merits of the Georgian style in his 1946 book Good and Bad Manners in Architecture: “The period of domestic architecture from which for all others we have most to learn is the Georgian. The essential modernity of the ‘Georgian’ style should be fully recognised… The sedate and comely form of the 18th century houses are a perfect embodiment of the social spirit. They belong to the community, they are born of the discovery that in domestic architecture individuality is best securely established when houses defer to a common cultural standard.”

Ryculff Square once more. The scheme is about as streamlined neo Georgian as is possible. Sir Albert Richardson designed a series of apartment blocks placed around leafy green squares. Completed in 1954, plain brick elevations are subtly relieved by string courses and mildly projecting porches. Low pitched concrete tile roofs rest on deep eaves. Almost 65 years after its first brick was laid, Ryculff Square remains largely unspoiled. The plethora of plastic framed double glazing and galaxy of satellite dishes are both reversible. A few kilometres south of the Heath, Lourdes Close is the latest residential development in Blackheath. Designed by Thrive Architects, the nine townhouses are neo Georgian.

Sir Albert Richardson lived in the Georgian gem of Avenue House in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Gavin Stamp lamented the sale and dispersal of its contents in 2013 while extolling the architect’s virtues in Apollo Magazine. “Richardson may have adopted a pose in Ampthill – refusing to install electric light, dressing up in Georgian clothes and being carried through the streets in a sedan chair – but he was a seriously good modern architect,” Professor Stamp argued. “He began by promoting the Edwardian rediscovery of neoclassicism and the works of people like Soane and Cockerell. After the First World War he intelligently adapted the abstracted classical language of Schinkel and other neoclassicists…” Avenue House was bought by Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, and garden designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, who are restoring the house to its future glory.