Kew Palace

This weekend, I had the fantastic opportunity to go on a photographic course at Kew Palace, in Richmond. It was run by Historic Royal Palaces and led by photographer Emily Harris. I love taking pictures of architecture, as I hope my Facebook and Flickr pages show, but I was useless at photographing indoors and this course was specifically for learning how to capture historic interiors with a digital SLR camera. We were a select group of 7 and had the small but perfectly formed “Palace” to ourselves as the place is officially closed to the public in the autumn and winter months.

Kew Palace is one of HRP’s more recent restorations. I had the privilege of visiting it half way through the restoration/conservation back in 2006, so it was a pleasure to see the place in a more finished state. Not that it is has been completely returned to resemble a royal residence. While some rooms have been painstakingly decorated and furnished to show how the house may have looked in about 1808, there are whole rooms untouched, with bare floorboards and unfinished walls. These allow you to see how the walls were constructed, layer by layer and give a fleeting look at the earlier, 17^th century fabric of the building behind.

Kew Palace has its origins in the 16^th century, with a Tudor undercroft as testament. It used to be called The Dutch House as it is constructed in the unmistakeable Dutch style and inside is laid out over 3 floors with the undercroft below and servants living quarters in the attic.

The exterior structure we see today was built in the 17^th century, the home of a wealthy merchant and was then converted to be a home for King George III his wife Queen Charlotte and 10 of their 15 children. Spending my day there, I learned that the house was mainly for the children and the Queen. George lived in an extension to the house, long since demolished. This was because George III was the unfortunate monarch who suffered from the disease “Porphyria” which manifested itself mainly in apparent raving madness.

But in his moments of sanity George and his wife were a devoted loving couple, who enjoyed the relative simplicity and small scale living at Kew with their children. Not that it was much fun for 3 of their daughters who lived there; liking its remoteness and their lack of a social life to being in a nunnery!

When one’s abiding passions are historic buildings and photography there isn't much about an historic interiors photography day at Kew that I could fault. In fact there wasn't. As a result, I like to think I can now take a mean interior shot and that this’ll translate in the research I prepare for my clients. But above all, my abiding memory will be having such privileged access for a whole day in one of Historic Royal Palace’s most beautiful and remarkable buildings.

Some of the photographs I took from the day will be posted on the Historic Buildings Research Facebook page and on my Flickr page too.

A Home Fit for Heroes - and Pirates!

A few months ago I researched the history of Hammonds Place for a client. I have written an article about my findings in the current edition of "Listed Heritage" the magazine of the Listed Property Owners Club. Here in Building Storeys is an abridged version of that article. I hope you find it interesting.

Hammonds Place, in Burgess Hill, Sussex, was described by Nikolaus Pevsner in his book Buildings of England, as “The Best Building in Burgess Hill”.

The untold story of Hammonds Place was scattered far and wide, in the form of maps, deeds, letters, drawings and photographs. My research took me to both the West and East Sussex Archives, local government records and libraries, as well as the Royal Institute of British Architects Library, the National Archives and the National Monuments Record in Swindon. Using these sources, combined with a personal inspection of the house and grounds, I was able to bring the full story of Hammonds Place together for the first time.

Hammonds Place was built in the 1400s as a hall house on a north-south axis. It was virtually rebuilt in about 1500 on a west-east axis, retaining some elements of the original hall, creating a larger timber-framed structure.

By 1566 the house was in the possession of the Michelbornes, an influential and well-to-do local family. The Michelbornes made some extensive home improvements to “Hamonds”. They added to the timber-framed structure three further additions in brick, to the east, south and west, to create a fashionable Elizabethan quadrangle. The house became a manor house befitting an estate of over 200 acres.

During the house’s Elizabethan heyday, its owner Edward Michelborne was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I and was one of the founders of the East India Company. It was only when Sir Edward was accused of abusing his position by carrying out acts of piracy in the Pacific that his star waned. He was forced to leave Court and he retreated to Hammonds Place to live out the last years of his life.

My research found that the Michelborne family was associated with Hammonds Place until the 18^th century and by the 1780s the house was considered to be one of the finest in the county and was drawn by the notable artist and engraver Samuel Hieronymous Grimm (see picture below).

By the 1820s the new owner, Robert Podmore, decided to build a new manor house on the estate called Clayton Priory, just south of Hammonds Place. It is thought that bricks and other materials were taken from Hammonds to help with the new construction and subsequently the old manor house fell into disrepair. It was occupied by tenant farmers during the latter half of the 19^th century, but it wasn’t until the 1890s that a new tenant restored and repaired the house adding a contemporary extension to the 16^th century timber-frame and brickwork. My research revealed this tenant to be Thomas Arrowsmith Meautys, a local JP, who is remembered locally for the fact that he lost all three of his sons in World War I. The house bears a small memorial to them on the wall of the 16^th century porch of the house.

By1933 the Dutch Ambassador, Jonkeer Marinus Van Der Goes had taken a lease on the house, following extensive improvements in 1930. He lived at the house for about 5 years. In 1930 this part-medieval, part-Elizabethan, part-Victorian house was augmented with an Art Deco single-storey extension. The house is an unusual combination of eras but one that it seems to have grown into with ease.

Today Hammonds Place is no longer the manor house of a 200 acre estate. Over the centuries plots of land have been sold or reapportioned and now the house and gardens are a virtual island in a sea of 20^th and 21^st century developments. But it is a fine and beautiful building and it acts as an echo of times past, as every historic building does.

Building Mystery

I’m researching a 15^th century house in West Sussex. So right now I am in Chichester at the West Sussex Record office. The timber-framed building has all the evidence of having been a medieval hall but with a “modern” extension  ie 16^th  century in limestone.

The records have revealed an estate map of 1783 which shows the building at its height with a limestone quadrangle, which is now sadly reduced to 2 sides. Victorian maps show it greatly reduced.

Now I have to find who lived there before 1566 and therefore when the oldest part of the building was constructed. But I also need to find out why most of the Elizabethan stone extension disappeared in the early 19^th century.   

I'll keep you posted!