The Destruction of the Country House.

Something I feel passionate about is the staggering loss of Britains large house since the first world war and up until quite recently. Since 1900 more than 1200 large country house have been destroyed and amongst them some 378 very important ones due to age or their architectural value.

Now many people would say ' but this only concerns the very rich' whereas was are talking about our heritage, our past, the thing we build our future on. One is six country mansions have gone in this period. One of the reasons the owners allowed this is due to inheritance tax or death duty. 

In 1910 it was 15% on taxable assets over 1,000,000 pounds but by 1949 it had gone up to 80% ! Left wing governements saw no reason not to impose this but when both a father and son died, say during the war, the taxes had to be paid twice! This was a period when great paintings and furniture were not fetching the prices they do today so selling off the assets to pay the taxes wasn't an option and institutions like the 'National Trust' either didn't exist as such or would only take on properties with an endowment to sustain them. Owners could just go ahead and demolish their homes, selling off the stone and trims for mere pounds.

In 1994 Sir Roy Strong, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London put on an exibition on ' The Destruction of the Country House', which was not only a brave move but it brought home to visitors just what had been lost of their heritage. Some of the surviving houses pale in comparaison to what was demolished.

I bought this book some time ago, you can still find it for between 60 and 150 pounds on Amazon.

As a teenager I used to play in a huge Georgian mansion near my village called Tarbat House, built in 1787 that had been empty for some time. It is actually grade A listed!  It had a huge hallway with a pair of marble fireplaces opposite each other and the plaster work around the top of the walls depicted stag and boar head in relief. The huge staircase would up to three floors and at its base sat a huge enamelled iron stove used to heat the stairwell. Each floor had suites of rooms behing green baize doors, all very Downton Abbey. The windows were shuttered and huge curtain poles still had their ornate brass rings on them that once held velvet drapes. There was even enormous mahogany wardrobes in the bedrooms, too large to be taken out in one piece. On the top floor there were the servants rooms with their brass beds and small wardrobes still in place. The walls still had their original wallpaper from the late 19th century and there was even some clothes in the cupboards. A small stair led up to the roof from where you could see the whole estate. The kitchens in a separate building still had their huge cast iron ranges and long kitchen tables where food was prepared in the past. This building was linked to the house by a corridor and the reason this was so was in case of fire mainly. 

Across from the house lay a huge walled garden for vegetables and fruit and on each corner was a pavillion in divers styles. One such building was Chinese in style and held the laundry and another was a thatched cottage for the gardener. This area was severly neglected and overgrown but there was still a lot of fruit trees.  The rododenrons were ten metres high and gorgeous.

I went back some years later to see that the lead roof had been stripped off and the stove and wardrobes and kitchen fitting had been stolen. the rain did it's best to rot the wonderful wood floors and slowly it fell in until some idiot decided to set it on fire. Today it is still standing and clad in ivy and on the 'Buildings at Risk register'. 

Below is Tarbat house as it was and Following the state it fell into.

This was how I last saw it.

I had not the courage to go back and see this terrible site.

I will add here a strange coincidence. On my recent flight to Scotland I sat next to a piano teacher who was going to the Ullapool to give a concert and when I said where I was from she said ' oh my nephew has a property near there'. OK what are the odds ! Yes it was Tabart House. Years of asking who owned it and there was the answer. She said that he had turned the kitchen quarters into a house, keeping the full ceiling hight so maybe he has some good taste but the house itself he cannot afford to restore, much is the pity. I used to fantasise as a kid that one day I would own it and restore it but the sheer cost in today's money would make that impossible.

Below is Rosehaugh House that stood near my home and was a most impressive house. It was demolished in 1959, the huge tower was the last to go and schoolchildren were invited to Watch.

A picture of its final days. Today it hardly seems possible especially when we know how much it costs to actually build in stone and have woodwork done specifically.

Here is Balintore Castle Scotland still standing and in the process of restoration by a lovely enthousiastic young man called David. You can follow his amazing Journey on his blog.

https://balintorecastle.blogspot.com/

Below are some of the lost houses that figure in the book, all gone now.

The house below is absolutely vaste but that didn't save it from demolition. Some of these houses had up to 400 doors alone! One such house so resisted demolition that they had to dynamite it.

Some links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_in_20th-century_Britain

http://www.lostheritage.org.uk/index.html