Jan & John Maggs

Antiques and Art

A Springtime Odyssey - Exploring historic English properties

Part 1 - Cotswolds to West Yorkshire

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Many of you know that we’ve just returned from three weeks of work and holiday in England. In the forty years we've been together, we’ve had the good fortune to have made nearly five dozen trips “across the pond,” during which, in addition to forming new friendships, we’ve learned a great deal about the English and their history, architecture, and furniture. Our side trips to Italy, Holland, Belgium, and France have complemented those interests and given us many days of enjoyment.

One of our greatest joys in England has been visiting early homes that have been preserved by organizations like The National Trust and English Heritage. Early buildings like Hadden Hall, Hever Castle, Knole, Hardwick Hall, and Little Moreton Hall, which are open to the public, have given us the opportunity to visit the past amid early furniture and furnishings, an extraordinary privilege.

So, this year we decided to make a select group of these early houses/museums the focus of our travels around the country. To keep costs our low and at the same time support an important institution, we purchased a dual membership in The Royal Oak Foundation, an affiliate of the English National Trust. For a little more than $100 we were given access to more than 500 protected sites, gardens, and buildings across the whole of England and Scotland. We chose a dozen sites of particular interest to us and built an itinerary around them. Since our first group of buying appointments concluded near the Welsh border, we planned to begin there and work our way up the west side of the country, concluding in the Yorkshire Dales and the city of York.

As usual, we've taken hundreds of images, planning to use them in upcoming newsletters. Because of the richness of the experience and the number of photographs we took, we’ve decided to break the story into three installments: 1) The Midlands; 2) Cumbria and Lancashire; and 3) Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Installments 2 and 3 will appear in our June and July newsletters.

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We began our buying with a few days in London and the South. On Saturday, after connecting with old friends at Portobello Market, we took the tube to Temple Station and walked to Somerset House, where we made our first visit to Courtauld Gallery. This lesser-known London museum is noted for its exceptional group of paintings by French Impressionists, including this well-known canvas by Manet.

[Édouard Manet (1832-1883). A Bar at the Folies-Bergère]

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On Sunday afternoon we left London and picked up our rented Nissan Qashqai at Heathrow, but our National Trust itinerary could not begin until we’d visited our favorite shops in the Cotswolds. After two days of shopping and a morning of preparing stock and documentation for shipment to Conway with DHL, we were free to begin. Our first holiday destination was in Warwickshire.

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1. Baddesley Clinton

(Warwickshire)

The setting of Baddesley Clinton, a 15th-century moated manor house located only ten miles from Birmingham, transports the visitor back in time. Baddesley is remarkable in that it was owned by a single family for five centuries. While changes were made during that time, the house retains much of its medieval flavor and furnishings.

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While the 13th century moat is still intact, the drawbridge has been replaced with this brick bridge, probably in the 19th century.

 

One of many oak cupboards found in the house and a Cromwellian chair

 

 A large, heavily carved 17th-century court cupboard. Why don't the lower doors agree?

 

Another interesting cupboard, with applied geometric designs and painted grounds

 

 

An exceptionally handsome carved oak coffer with deeply recessed panels

 

 A small William and Mary lowboy

 

 

 According to the Trust, the chimneypiece and paneling were probably installed by Henry the Antiquary in 1629.

  

A fine oak tester bed with another carved coffer at its foot and a chest of drawers near its head

 

An oak "hanging cupboard", rare in our experience, but found in several of the houses we visited

 

   

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2. Wightwick Manor

(West Midlands)

 

On Thursday morning we left the Cotswolds and drove to Leominster, where we made our final pre-vacation purchases. From Leominster it was only an hour’s drive to Wightwick Manor, built in the late 19th century in the manner of a Tudor mansion, as the family home of Theodore and Flora Mander. The Mander family, and particularly Theodore and Flora's son Geoffrey, who inherited the house after the deaths of his parents, enjoyed the work of the pre-Raphaelite artists, and Wightwick Manor houses their collection, which is continually expanding under the curatorship of the National Trust. Paintings and drawings by Burne-Jones, John Ruskin, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, fabrics and wallpapers by William Morris as well as books from his Kelmscott Press, and tiles by William de Morgan complement the Arts and Crafts building.

The furniture is a curious mixture of modern and ancient. Furniture from the 17th century stands beside pieces made around the turn of the 20th. Some of these latter examples are decorated with paintings by Rossetti and other members of the society. While it is an eclectic mix, representing late Victorian taste rather than academic conciseness, our visit was most rewarding.

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 Window seat in The Hall, with stained glass windows by Charles Kempe, dated 1888

 

Large spaces, designed to recall an earlier time

 

The Great Parlor (1893) with oak paneling and 17th-century furniture

The inglenook in The Great Parlor with decoration by Kempe, early Delft tiles, and Chinese porcelain

 

Two early oak chairs

 

A decorative panel on the first floor of the house, probably painted by Rossetti

 

A bound copy of William Morris's Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer's works

 

A large tapestry on the first floor (William Morris?)

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3. Little Moreton Hall

(Cheshire)

One of our favorite destinations in England, we’ve visited Little Moreton Hall several times over the last decades. Since this itinerary would bring us within a hundred miles of Moreton, there was no question that we would include a visit on this trip.

There is probably no better introduction to Little Moreton Hall than this one, found in the National Trust’s guide.

Little Moreton Hall is a Tudor house that defies expectations. One of the best-known half-timbered buildings in Britain, Little Moreton Hall rises from the flat Cheshire plains that surround it, its riotously decorative timbers as impressive now as when they were first hewn, carved and hefted into place some 500 years ago.This was a house that was meant to impress. It is a lasting reminder of the sophistication and craftsmanship of the Tudor era – a building of such structural ingenuity, dazzling carpentry, plasterwork, painting and glazing, that to this day it is the envy of many who visit. Yet this is a house that buckles under its own weight. The massive burden of its stone-slabbed roof bears down on crooked, sagging timbers, apparently threatening to send the lot tumbling into the moat below. So the question many ask when they first arrive is not how Little Moreton Hall came to be built – but how it still stands at all.

It seems impossible not to feel, as we did on our first visit years ago, that we had come to a very special place. Perhaps the following images will show why Little Moreton Hall remains a favorite place to visit.

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The eastern end of the south range, misshapen by the weight of the Long Gallery

The Gallery Chamber sitting atop the Bridge Chamber

Unlike many other Trust properties, Little Moreton Hall contains very little furniture - testimony to its neglect during the 18th and 19th centuries.

 

The painted plaster walls of The Little Parlour - discovered and exposed in 1976

 

One of The Little Parlour's simulated panels

Unlike most oak panels, these suggest significant depth, like this court cupboard in our shop.

 

The octagonal table in The Great Parlour is one of the few pieces of furniture original to the house.

 

The Long Gallery, with its oddly undulating floor

 

The Gallery Chamber.

Visitors usually feel that the fireplace leans, but that illusion is caused by the sagging floor and walls.

 

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4. East Riddlesden Hall

(West Yorkshire)

From Little Moreton Hall, we drove two hours north to Keighley, in West Yorkshire, a few miles northwest of Leeds, to visit another remarkable National Trust property, East Riddlesden Hall.

The property was purchased by wealthy wool merchant James Murgatroyd in 1638 but, after the devastation caused by English Civil War, it passed to another branch of the family, the Starkies. During the eighteenth century the Starkies flourished and renovated the medieval hall adjacent to the manor.

The Industrial Revolution and the building of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which cut through the estate, changed the area in fundamental ways. While East Riddlesden Hall was owned by absentee landlords, its condition deterioriated steadily, and virtually all of the Starkie furnishings were sold.  Sadly, due to its state of deterioration, the Starkie wing was demolished early in the 20th century, but its façade still stands, giving an idea of the the appearance ot the 18th century Riddlesden Hall. What was left of the property was purchased by two Keighley brothers, who presented it to the National Trust. The Trust restored this 17th-century manor house and has furnished it with purchases from local sources. Today, East Riddlesden Hall offers a pleasing glimpse into the lives of a wealthy Yorkshire family.

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The facade of the Starkie Wing, which was added in the 1690s and demolished in 1905

The grand stairway, taken by the Trust from a local school that was being demolished and adapted to this space

 

 

One of several tapestries in the house, with a settle and a wainscot chair

 

  

     

Five more wainscot armchairs, all of remarkably high quality, presumably sourced locally by the Trust

 

An oak slope on a finely carved table

 

A tester bed, wainscot chair, and cradle in The Great Chamber

 

Oak overmantle in The Drawing Room

 

An interesting coffer with perspective panels, like the painted walls of Little Moreton Hall and this court cupboard.

The curators give provenance as "Continental, 1500 - 1525".

 

The grain ark of 1600 - original to the house

 

 

One of Riddelsden's two rose windows

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From Keighley we drove to Grange-over-Sands and the bed and breakfast that would be our home for the next three days.

CLICK HERE to continue on our journey.

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