Stately Homes: Inside Britain’s Historic Houses with Alice Loxton

0:00There is a reason that fashion shoots and TV and films, they always go to country houses and stately homes. Yes, that's true. And I think we take it for granted because we live here. These were banqueting houses, right? So they were built for the purpose of basically having dessert, a kind of after dinner party house. Our ability to have a navy and to have these connections all around the world really brought in huge amounts of wealth to Britain's story. And the stately home is with that. I think Blenheim Palace is a high point if you want to talk about stately homes. It's like the real exemplar of absolute grandeur.

0:37In 1933, he had one of his big parties and burnt the whole thing down. Good gracious. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't just civil wars that were bringing these houses down. Yeah, exactly. Outrageous parties. Yeah, exactly. Hello and welcome to The Luxury Dispatch, the podcast that reveals the refined and the rare. People, items and stories that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain and today we shall be stepping into a world of long drives, hidden libraries, echoing halls and the layers of history that cling to stone, wood and landscape. It is the world of stately homes. These houses are more than architecture.

1:09They are repositories of taste, power, patronage and craft. One might even say that the story of British luxury is written as much in country houses as it is in workshops and ateliers, or indeed the enduring craftsmanship of legacy brands such as Swain. To help us explore that landscape, I'm joined by Alice Loxton, historian, writer, and one of the most engaging interpreters of Britain's past and the palaces that hold it. Alice, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. No, thank you very much for coming on. This is very exciting. Somebody who knows what they're talking about at long last. Where do we start from when we're talking about Stately Homes?

1:44Is there a point where it converted from being a sort of martial statement to something slightly more luxurious? Yes, well, I think it's probably best to start from the beginning. Britain has a very long history of building quite impressive structures. So you could even go back as far as say 1066 following the Norman conquest, when William the Conqueror was building all kinds of fortifications. so the likes of the Tower of London and Warwick Castle and Dover Castle and these were you know many of these have evolved into stately homes over the years and these tell us a lot about what the medieval world was like in that these are built as defensive structures you know they've got great castle walls they've got arrow slits they've got castellations and so they are are really built to reflect or they are a great reflection of of England at the time we had William the Conqueror building you know establishing himself in the new Norman dynasty but then even during the time of Edward the first he subdued the Welsh and in that period he built all of these castles along the the Welsh border and and and this was a time where there were there were skirmishes happening all the time you know within england so if you look at the wars of the roses say that was in the 1400s there was fighting going on all the time so you can see there was a real practical reason or it to be defensive and you can look at places like heaver castle which later became the home of anne boleyn the second wife of henry the eighth or you could look at leeds castle which again was lived in for hundreds and hundreds of years all the way through to the 20th century um and these are surrounded by water.

3:29You know, they are very much the classic fairy tale medieval castle in our mind's eye, if you like. But I think a point where it changes, and an important point in British history is 1485, the Battle of Bosworth. It is the end of the Wars of the Roses, which was a very, very turbulent time, if you like. This was a period between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. The country really divided in civil war, and that came to an end unified under the Tudor dynasty And we see that in the Tudor rose, the red and the white. And in the next century or so, we see this flowering of quite different palaces.

4:08First of all, they're not necessarily defensive in the way that they had been in the medieval period. So you might look at somewhere like Hampton Court Palace, which was built by Thomas Wollsey. And that is more in a kind of Renaissance palace sort of style. perhaps inspired by similar palaces in Europe. And these are much more kind of demonstrations of luxury and wealth than being practical defensive fortifications. And so that's a big moment of change. It's also a big moment in the Tudor period, of course, is one of the biggest moments of land change in British history with the dissolution of the monasteries, where huge swathes of land were seized by Henry VIII.

4:56All of the church land, the church was incredibly wealthy at this point. Lots of the land was seized and redistributed amongst his supporters. So if you ever go to a country house where it's called something abbey, it probably means that land was originally an abbey, perhaps Woburn Abbey, for example. So that's an interesting thing to look out for. And then in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, we see this real flowering of what they call prodigy houses, which are these incredibly elaborate, incredibly decadent buildings, which are completely different to the castles you see in the medieval period.

5:31So a real classic example of this is Hardwick Hall, which was the house of Bess of Hardwick. And Bess of Hardwick was the second wealthiest woman in England after Elizabeth the first um and it's covered in windows okay the right the rhyme went hardwick hall more glass than wall and you know if you think about you know creating a defensive structure well glass is definitely not something good with that so um so that gives you an indication of of it being a time of peace but it's an incredibly impressive structure there's state rooms inside you know it could have been a kind of royal palace in its own way.

6:11There's this beautiful long gallery with amazing portraits on the walls. So really splendid, I'd say, in all its different ways. So when these buildings started to be built, was there a kind of a hesitance or a shyness around filling it with ornate and beautifully crafted things? You know, were there artists and craftsmen just ready to go as soon as people were saying, actually I'm ready to commission you to do something because obviously prior to that with all the cast and stuff it had to be rudimentary and stick to its principal purpose which is as you say defensive. Well absolutely I mean what we're forgetting here is that there were many many craftsmen in the medieval period exceptionally skilled at perhaps stained glass or working with metal creating beautiful objects which are you know covered in jewels but of course these were within the church so these would have been working on the great cathedrals if you imagine some of the shrines of medieval england of which there were many um they are some of the most elaborate and ornate kind of works of art and these were destroyed by henry viii so we we tend to forget about them um you know the the churches would have been adorned with really beautiful wall paintings of course illuminated manuscripts which were decorated with beautiful gold leaf and a really high standard of craftsmanship.

7:36And so we had all of these skills within England at the time, but they weren't necessarily being used in the domestic settings. I mean, when you look at the Tudor period or the early Tudor period and the late medieval period, some of the most ornate private houses were those that were lived in by the churchmen, the bishops, that sort of thing. So we did have all of these skills and I think they were ready to go, but it went to, I suppose, the customer was different, if you like. Yeah, what strikes as interesting is that it wouldn't be too long until dour old Oliver Cromwell would come along and he wasn't particularly keen on all these kinds of things.

8:12But the origin of luxury is when the king would assign a commission to a craftsman to make something like special clothes, a bit of furniture, saddlery, anything like that. and that Crasnham would then, through the royal patronage, all the aristocrats would just swoop in and follow suit. Was there an architecture equivalent? I mean, was because the practices of creating, you know, ceiling roses or trellises or anything that's to do with actually making a building is very different to something that's sort of a practical personal use? Well, it's interesting because, of course, before the Renaissance, before the you know it's a real big time of change the the 1500s because before this point we didn't really have individual famous architects or artists they were more artisans or craftsmen that's how they were perceived of course so it's very difficult when you're writing about paintings or architecture in the medieval period which i am yes it's very exciting which is something i found difficult because you know i'm trying to bring these paintings to life but we never know who the artists are um they're for example this this book that i've been writing about this manuscript called the Luttrel Psalter.

9:29We just have to know it's a group of amazing artists who are in this monastic establishment, but we just don't know their names and we never will. And that's just because of the changing perceptions of individual genius rather than general craftsmanship. Okay, so who were generally the people who would first get stately homes? It all originates from families who owned land, perhaps stretching back to the Norman Conquest. and it is just as the country changes and I suppose time goes on that the style of these houses changes in the way that we've discussed from the castle to these some of these prodigy houses less about defence more about luxury and showing off and conspicuous consumption I think it's in the 1600s that you really see some of these incredibly ornate houses that that we might considered to be stately homes yeah um because sometimes what i've noticed uh through documentaries and stuff is seeing that often the state give it to people for particular services to the state which in my head i sort of think that means the state already owned them but in many cases actually the state sort of requisitioned them so you're talking about hampton court palace for example which was uh thomas wolsey at some point that became the sort of retreat for the royal family So they took it back or they took it over.

10:50So the state had the power to requisition these houses and then give it to whoever they wanted ultimately. Yeah, absolutely. And the Tudor period is chaotic in that manner because people are constantly coming in and out of favour. I mean, Thomas Wolsey, when he drops out of favour, it becomes a royal palace and that's how it ends up in that way. Another example, though, for example, is Hever Castle and Berlin's house. So that is part of the Berlin family. but that was actually given to another of Henry VIII's wives, Anne of Cleves. So it was where Anne of Cleves, wife number four, went to stay after she'd been rejected or...

11:28Pre-beheading. No, no, she was the one who was the flounder's mayor. And she was divorced again, wasn't she? Yeah, yeah. So she actually got off quite well. She just ended up at Hever Castle. Yeah, very fine. But some of these houses do go through quite hilarious changes of ownership in that dramatic period. But of course, the distribution of the monasteries was the big one, where suddenly all of this old, this land that had been owned by the church was redistributed. But I mean, the big kind of gift, I suppose, of a monarch to a subject is Blenheim Palace. Yes, which is the only non-episcopal palace, I believe.

12:04Yeah, that's what people say, isn't it? And I think it is a private home, which is a palace. And I think they call it that because it's just absolutely vast. It is big. And it's called Blenheim Palace. Yeah. Clues of the name. And yeah, which is which is still like one of the most famous. And Churchill was born there. And people sort of think of it as a real emblem of Britain and still very popular. Absolutely. I mean, I think Blenheim Palace is a kind of a high point if you want to talk about stately homes. It's like the real exemplar of absolute grandeur. It's got a massive estate, you know, massive lands around it, just unbelievably grand.

12:45It is unusual, of course, because unlike other stately homes, which have developed naturally through the centuries by the same family living there, it had this moment where it was built for a purpose, not to be a private, not really to be a family house, but to be a kind of commemoration, a celebration of a war. So it's Marx, the 1704 Battle of Blenheim, which was part of the War of the Spanish Succession. And John Churchill, who was the great favourite of Queen Anne, he was the Duke of Marlborough and he was married to Sarah Churchill who is the the figure in the favorite people might have seen in that film so it's it's um that kind of strange relationship between the two women um but it was gifted to them that land and in the early part of the 18th century this incredible palace was built there um and it is absolutely vast I mean this is a moment of the baroque yeah and the baroque is the most frivolous extravagance eccentric it's not very british in many ways um but it is uh the most splendid i suppose of of styles i think you know if we think about the renaissance as the kind of divine perfection and balance and symmetry and order or the baroque which comes from the word barocco means misshapen pearl and it's a kind of pushing the renaissance a bit further and it's pushing that perfection further to be flamboyant and fun and extravagant so you know in blend and palace they have, well, it's totally over the top, isn't it?

14:11When you go there, it's completely over the top. And there's all of these symbols of war. There's cannons and cannonballs and lions and spears. Inside, there are paintings, trompe-roy paintings. So these kind of visual optical illusions painted on the walls. And that in itself is quite playful and silly because, you know, you're kind of joking about whether you're looking at what you don't, you know, you don't know what you're looking at quite um but also it's sometimes got sections where the kind of exterior architecture is positioned within the interior so all confusing and upside down that kind of thing um so it's it's a it's it's it's a fun kind of style i think and and blenheim is the the real baroque kind of vanbrugh's real um baroque masterpiece and vanbrugh is having a big year this year it's Vambrough 300 300 years since his death so it's you'll probably see a lot of Vambrough things happening maybe this is the first yeah he just kicks that off what's the um the kind of ratio between for example these places being the kind of primary seats of landowners who administered their land from these places but then also I know that a lot of people in London used these houses as ways to get away from the kind of pestilence of London at the time whenever there was plague smallpox whatever they would escape to these places hampton court palace was a really good example of that you know people think of hampton as sort of being more or less a part of london but actually back back then it was quite a journey so what's your sense of the divide between the two as a kind of place for play but also a place for business or actually working the land that you own the big thing about the countryside houses is they're connected to a lot of land so that would have been bringing in a huge amount of income um and and it was until recent times.

16:06So there is a very practical need for these country estates, which is the family income. The London house might be because you might have to do business in London. You might have to be at court, that sort of thing, or be seen in the presence of the monarch. So there are different roles for these houses, and people did move around a great deal. So some very wealthy families would have had many, many houses. And we see in later years when they weren't able to pay death duties, they would be able to just get rid of one because they had others in the portfolio. And people might have had various points, houses abroad as well in later years.

16:49But I mean, you see in the Tudor period that some of these countryside houses were, you know they were built to um expect a visit from the monarch say so that might have been an important role as well and i think um a lot of people went bankrupt yeah it did bankrupt quite a few people yeah um but i think that that says quite a lot because actually it indicates that this was okay you can have your house in london or whatever but this is you know probably the house which is attached to your title um this is the house which provides your income so this is you you know, much more of your identity and a demonstration of what your family, where your family is based and what they're connected to.

17:29How big of a difference did the empire make to the landscape of stately homes? Well, Henry VIII founded the Navy, right? Sure. And Henry VIII founded the Navy, or Henry VII did really, but Henry VIII is really credited with expanding the Navy. In the years that followed, Britain had connections all around the world because of this naval influence. Really began under Elizabeth I and then over the 1700s and 1800s. She was sending out privateers to go and raid Spanish. That's it, yeah. And also the East India Company was founded these years. With that, all kinds of products come through. So all kinds of things like with the slave trade, we had all kinds of products like coffee and sugar and cotton.

18:12And this brought a huge amount of wealth. In the 1770s, 80 % of foreign income came from the goods produced by enslaved people. So you can see how that, you know, these kind of expansions could provide Britain with a lot of wealth and that, you know, those products would have come into places like Liverpool and been processed and sold on and everything. So, I mean, our ability to have a navy and to have these connections all around the world really brought in huge amounts of wealth to Britain's story. And the stately home is with that. And when you see some of the objects in these houses, beautiful objects, materials from all around the world, you see these influences and these trade routes coming in.

18:56But having said that, many of the designs of places like Blenheim or any of the houses in the 18th century, they're still influenced largely by ancient Greece, ancient Rome. So connections that we've had for many, many years with Italy and Greece. So they'll have classical columns or they'll have pediments or they'll have colonnades. you know it's it's not really i don't think the connections with the rest of the world really influenced the design architecturally that much and it was still very much based in in what had been seen as the the pinnacle of art and architecture in the renaissance which was the ancient classical world but perhaps the the uh riches that came from the empire allowed the residents of these places to thrive within them i mean i imagine upkeep even back then was the kind of bette noir of any owner of a stately home.

19:49Yes. So the... Yeah, so if you're fuelled by... Fueled definitely, like the wealth definitely come from around the world, but I think it's interesting that the style didn't really affect the style massively. Yeah, they didn't change it. Yes, yeah, exactly. And so entertaining has always been a big part of stately homes. Should we sort of touch on that a little bit? Sometimes with quite bad consequences to the houses themselves. But what goes on behind the doors of these places? Yeah, well, what springs to mind? I was staying in Chipping Camden recently, and it's this old Camden house that once stood there.

20:28And I was staying, you can stay, this is part of the Landmark Trust, which is a wonderful charity, and you can stay in... It's so good. It's so good, yeah. They did a TV show, which my wife and I are obsessed with, where they basically, it's like an old dairy farm, and so they suddenly turned into this amazing place you can go stay at. It's brilliant what they do. It is amazing what they do. So pick up the Landmark Trust. Huge fan. So they restore all of these amazing kind of ruinous historic structures around the country. And then they let them out short term holiday lets. Right. So I went to stay in one of them recently.

21:01And this was the remains of old Camden House. So this was originally a beautiful house in the Cotswolds, destroyed in the Civil War. That was another great period of destruction for lots of these castles and country houses. Yeah. So interesting, I was thinking about that when you were talking about how the sort of 14, 1500s when these were starting to emerge because sort of peacetime seemed to be coming, where then within a century, the Civil War was going to come and we'll be back at each other's throats. Yeah, they're all thinking we should have put a motive. Yeah, exactly. But in this, so with this house in Chipping Camden, the house doesn't exist anymore, but what does exist and what does remain, and for some reason they didn't bother to destroy us, is two buildings which stood either side of the house, incredibly ornate, with all sorts of quite wonderful architectural flamboyance.

21:51And these were banqueting houses, right? So they were built for the purpose of basically having dessert, a kind of after dinner party house, I suppose. And I just think that's so emblematic of, I suppose you never really, it's very hard to kind of think about our ancestors as having loads of fun and letting loose and everything. But they built two banqueting houses pretty close to each other, which is a real indication of how much they valued having a good time. And of course, the introductions of things like hunting and shooting just kind of developed this whole capacity to do it often. Yes, of course.

22:31Yeah. And have guests and have visitors. I suppose, you know, think about follies. Why do they come about in the 1700s? These are just buildings that are built as a folly. They are a folly in themselves. There is no point to them. They're just there for fun. But they were often used for entertaining. They were often dotted around the landscape as a way to perhaps, you know, you'd go there for tea or you'd go and have dinner there. But you'd also be able to demonstrate the estate and demonstrate the perhaps grounds designed by Capability Brown or someone like that, which might have another view, a vista of the house in the distance.

23:06so all of it is kind of different ways to show off the house yeah because also because obviously one of the things that everybody did back then was uh well certainly in the 18th century and 19th century was uh go riding routinely in the morning and so you'd want stuff further out from the house to be able to ride to and to show off and to sort of yeah so um this is where the whole idea of the morning suit comes from and so the jacket itself was designed to be ridden in because Those people would ride out in the morning and that's what you would wear. And now a word from our sponsors. In From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming included an ammo stacked attaché case where Q Branch had modified the, quote, careful handiwork of Swain and Adeny, end quote.

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26:44Leather is exactly that. It doesn't shout. It doesn't logo slap. It doesn't beg attention. But it does endure. And in a culture obsessed with speed, endurance is starting to feel rather luxurious. Britain had, because when people talk about the jet set in the 50s and 60s, we think of the Italians and the French and the Americans in the south of France. But before that, we had the period of the coterie and Britain in its real heyday of riches and the idle youth and the idle rich. and country houses played a big part in this. In fact, actually, Jesus Worcester, the TV show is a great demonstration of these amazing houses because Bertie's constantly going out to see his aunt in the top of the towers and things like that.

27:29But they were places where it wasn't necessarily always a Jane Austen kind of waltzing and chivalry and things. They became quite sort of, dare I say, risque and so there's a man named wolf bernardo he was one of the bentley boys he was the one who raced the the blue train from the south of france to london and beat it and his car was a bentley blower uh was the kind of star guest at the savoy and sat in the center of the big table as a kind of um sort of party to celebrate his his his race but no he used to hold huge parties up at his house and his house was called Arden Run. And in 1933, he had one of his big parties and burnt the whole thing down.

28:20Good gracious. Yeah. Shocking. Yeah. So it was... People got up to all sorts of mischief and it was ruinous consequences. Yeah, it wasn't just civil wars that were bringing these houses down. Yeah, exactly. It was outrageous parties. Yeah, exactly. Was there, do you think, in your mind, a kind of heyday for the stately home in terms of not only when they were being built but when they were the sort of social centre of britain's i think society a big moment and a big theme that we should definitely talk about is the grand tour which is when young men who were aristocratic heirs they would soon inherit these great estates or perhaps even had at that point would go out to Italy, often Italy, Greece, perhaps other places in Europe to France, and they would go and become cultures in terms of learning about the kind of the artistic gems that were out there.

29:18But they would also buy lots of objects from which were actually antique objects or even great works of art from the Renaissance. and they would bring them back to their houses and they would furnish their houses with these wondrous pieces of art. And so lots of the houses that we see today, if you go and walk around stately homes, much of the art, much of the interior decoration has come from those trips. And that is why lots of them have a particular kind of slant towards the classical world, partially because when they then returned to their country house, they would also ask them to redesign it in this way that was inspired by ancient Greece, ancient Rome.

29:59So I do think that that was a moment where perhaps the idea in our mind of what a stately home or a country house might be was kind of consolidated because there was a real style. We're probably talking about 1780s, 1790s. That was a real style where lots of them were designed in a very, very particular way. I mean, a really important architect at this time was Robert Adam. When he was younger, he went to Split and he looked at the Palace of Diocletian. And he did lots of drawings and kind of recorded what he found there. And lots of that inspired his work and his designs. And he went on to design lots of important buildings, including parts of Edinburgh Newtown as well.

30:49So it's not just the country houses, it's also the kind of urban architecture as well in this period. And lots of parts of London, you know, there was a street called Robert, the Adelphi, the Adelphi bit, you know, which is by the Strand. That was all this big kind of complex by the Adam brothers. But Spencer House as well was a big design around this time. So because there are such a thing as London Stately Homes, aren't there? So you've got, as you say, Spencer House, Apsley House. Yeah, there was Burlington House. um i know well london used to be covered with all these massive houses yeah um devonshire house was an amazing one and and yeah lots of them because people don't realize when they go visit the royal academy yes they're visiting burlington house yeah and that's which when you think about it and you think about all of those young aristos in london yeah having those massive houses and just going to different parties around london yeah it must have been outrageous yeah um and So, I mean, because this is a thought that's occurred to me, because you were talking about the sort of hesitation from these people to constantly upgrade things.

31:54And at one point, though, there would have had to have been various things for sort of hygiene purposes or technology purposes, like plumbing, wiring, things like that. when that happened did that cause a sort of an issue for the owners did they have to do lots of rebuilds or was it was it fairly straightforward to do i i just thinking about it because they're quite it's quite a big thing you never build a house now and say in five years i'll put in plumbing this is true i mean i think they were rebuilding things all the time right um and they were constantly building new houses um in in that period uh sometimes they might have been on the site of and i mean blenheim palace is on the site of woodstock palace which is a medieval palace so they were constantly knocking down and rebuilding and everything was kind of going all the time so even though it might have been rooted in very old architectural styles and you know things perhaps a style that to us doesn't look like it's changed much they they were constantly editing and changing things and moving things around were the royal houses that we know today as sort of were they notable in were they particularly advanced but i mean certainly buckingham palace was you know was only built you know queen victoria moved in well after she was it was the house of buckingham i think that's why it's called that so it was a private it wasn't a royal house originally and then they bought it and then they they moved in so she was at kensington palace and she moved around a lot yeah so kensington palace was queen victoria's that's where she grew up yeah um but yeah buckingham palace is obviously the the big one now um and well the the historic royal palaces they are they are now known are the town of london hampton court buckingham palace and kensington palace that's like the organization that manages them um and hollywood house as well in in scotland there's windsor castle and of course windsor castle yeah um so there's quite a few around yeah yeah yes you know sandring and so forth yeah um and so but were was there the expectation the royals would always have the pick of the bunch that's why blenheim palace is interesting because before that point i think the royals did have the largest houses right they had the most impressive houses and it would be quite something to try and upstage them you know it would be the not done thing so the great houses would be places like hampton court palace um or there was a great palace on Whitehall, which no longer survives.