Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

A couple of years ago, we visited the glorious Apethorpe House , which English Heritage bought through compulsory purchase and have partially restored. At the time, they were attempting to sell the house for around £5 million - there have been no takers, perhaps not surprising in view of how much will need to be spent on the house. Or perhaps the requirement to open the house for 28 days a year is putting potential purchasers off. Whatever, the house is on the market again now for rather less, £2.5 million, still not exactly a snip. It's on with Savills . It wouldn't be a straightforward purchase: potential buyers can't just rock up with a bulging wallet. They will have to pass "three key tests" with English Heritage: 1. An acceptable scheme/proposal/use/occupation in conservation and planning terms 2. Soundly-based costs, programme and funding for the future refurbishment works 3. Expertise – an experienced team with appropriate track record in this field ...

If I were a more devoted historian I would do a much longer post on this, but this is a quick skim sort of post.  Recently I was shown this conveyance, in which  Richard Goodwin, yeoman, appears to be selling most of the village of Irchester to Thomas Ekins, of Chester (which in this case I think refers to nearby Chester House, not Chester in Cheshire).   Whether or not this conveyance includes our house and the land that was once associated with it is debatable.  The document mentions "All that messuage or tenement lying next the churchyard in Irchester..." We do know that the farm once stretched down to the Wellingborough Road, which would certainly include the land mentioned above.  We haven't traced the ownership of the house as far back as 1698, which is when the document is dated, but Richard Goodwin and Thomas Ekins look like possible owners, though it's more likely that Thomas Ekins owned the house rather than lived in it himself.  Besides th...

Castle Ashby is the home of Earl Compton.  The house isn't open, but the gardens are, and we have been there a lot over the years.  If you are ever within spitting distance of Northamptonshire, go.  It's open right the way through the year, not just for the Craft Fair I wrote about yesterday. The gardens are tremendous, and the garden buildings amazing. The Castle Ashby orangery is as big as the average village hall.  I am always caught between awe at its beauty and relief that it is not me who has to do the maintenance. The Castle Ashby mulberry: This is a Victorian beehive.  It must have been quite a sight when it was in full working order, particularly as there are two; the other being opposite. Ah, the Craft Fair.  Some of this was of the lovingly made at the kitchen table school, which isn't quite my style, but I did like the tiny little wooden piece, all of about 2" high, by wood turner Paul Coker, and the cushions by Oh-So-Georg...

Despite having lived pretty close to Boughton House for most of my life, I have never actually been. The house is open for a month every summer, and usually when the place swims into my consciousness as somewhere to look at, it's closed. So, it's taken me jolly nearly half a century, but at last I've been round. Here's Boughton , which is the Northamptonshire home of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry. It is very, very grand. As far as I know, nothing of the original Medieaval buildings remains. The house took its present form when Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu returned from the court of Louis XIV, where he had been an ambassador, inspired by Versailles. The house is very unified externally; it's not the glorious hotchpotch that is Apethorpe , and which I must admit I prefer. Apethorpe though is utterly empty. Boughton is very, very full. It is one of those houses where things turn up which had been forgotten about for centuries. You are not allowed t...

Vista, oh bless it, has just decided that blogger is a malicious add on. I know several things I would describe as malicious add ons, but blogger isn't one of them. So, fingers crossed that Vista doesn't do the dirty on me again, and here is my second attempt at a second post on Apethorpe - more specifically, on the caretaker, George Kelley, and also in passing, because I was so intrigued when I read the Inquiry into the Compulsory Purchase Order, Simon Karimzadeh. George Kelly worked at Apethorpe from 1970 as a groundsman, when it was still St John's School. When Wanis Mohammed Burweila initially bought the house, Mr Kelley was kept on as a caretaker. Together with his colleague Peter Coxhead, he spent the next 20 years trying to stem the tide of decay. Knowing only too well just how wracking it can be to try and mend a small listed house when there are two of you and you have at least some cash, Mr Kelley's task, with no input from the owner, no money for repairs ...

A couple of weekends ago we went to Apethorpe: until quite recently this was a large and unknown house unless you lived in Northamptonshire and knew through the local news of its chequered history - I didn't realise until we came that the Borstal to which one of my acquaintances was sent was probably here, nor that Porterhouse Blue was filmed here. For years, we had seen tantalising glimpses but never seen it properly. Now that English Heritage have bought it and spent a huge wodge of money on it to stabilise it, you can visit it, albeit only in the summer, and if you want to go you'll have to hurry, as the season en ds on 5th September . It is the most absolutely enchanting house. OH and I decided that if we had a spare £50 million (£5 million to buy it, another £12 million to carry on restoration, plus the rest to meet the enormous annual running costs and no doubt vast programme of annual maintenance) we'd buy it like a shot. It's the sort of house you'd never...