Tasteful friends: a Lutyens country house in West Sussex, £5.5M

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It's lovely! The problem is that, after buying it, I would have funds left to buy my way into Britain. And there's little point in having a house like that if you don't live in it. :( Sigh...

I love it. Reminds me of something out of a Bronte novel.

It's got a real man cave!

It's beautiful. But even if I had the money to buy it, I certainly couldn't afford the taxes. Is it really from 1901, though? Or built in 1901 within the ruins of some Jacobean palace?

It’s stunning, and a real bargain compared to what the McMansions sell for here.

R5: Yes, all from 1901-1903. Lutyens had a talent for designing buildings that not only drew from past architecture (as any architect of the time did) but which had the feel of an ancient building, even in frankly modern aspects. He had a very modern sense of negative space that somehow makes his buildings look so well established, even ancient, but never in the sense of a replica.

Lutyens was brought into the project in 1902 after the client was dissatisfied with another architect's partly completed work. The earlier work was demolished and Lutyens started with at least a clean slate (not sure if any of the foundation work may have been reworked or if it's on the exact site of the aborted project.)

The Wiki article is short and well done, with some good links (the Country Life photo gallery of early images of the furnished interior.)

Love Lutyens, what a brilliant architect, evidenced by the fact that the house is Grade l listed. It’s gorgeous, that great hall is magnificent.

Five point five million pounds! How much is that in real money?

The prices of these houses run low, r9, because the Grade 1 listing means that not only is the owner totally restricted from making any changes, but that the owner must pay for Grade 1 level restoration if they want to make any repairs. So, for example, that means only Grade 1 level approved architects and the materials must be carefully sourced to exactly match the materials already present in the house.

Then there are the taxes, which run incredibly - and I mean incredibly - high on these properties.

It's was last on the market for $8.6 million. Still very low.

dream home

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How does one elegantly serve a meal with such distance between Dining Room and Kitchen. Does the server go the basement - traverse the house, and come up again in the dining room?

Covered plates?

And, this house was built in 1901, so there's a possibility there might be a dumb waiter outside the dining room.

A short visual guide to Lutyens work:

Good observation, R14. I started looking and thought that can't be right, not even for Lutyens: there's only one door into the dining room which is just wrong.

The answer is here, in one of the original plans—not the property agents'. The dining room was originally positioned much nearer the kitchen, where the "Sitting Room" is shown in the estate agent's plan.

Many of Lutyens plans are very odd, without the usual sense of progression as one enters from the front door. He rarely uses the typical sequence of vestibule, entry hall, grand stair all in one line front the front door, with doors to major rooms beyond. He creates choices and hierarchies and complicates things; it works in reality, but is very odd on paper.

Stunning!

R17 thank you - that's better!

r17 am I misreading that plan or is the kitchen on the same level as the dining room? (!!!)

Unheard of in great houses.

I can only imagine how ridiculously expensive it is to heat the place.

Yes, r21. And in the UK, heating is already very expensive even for much smaller houses. Now that real fireplaces are on the outs, it's a massive amount of money to heat a house this size.

OP -- Wouldn't that be "drawering room?"

R20: Depends on the time period for kitchens on the main level. By the mid-19thC is was done often, and increasingly after that and houses were segregated horizontally as well as vertically. The bigger and more specialized in room functions country houses became, the greater the desire to separate the heat and smells and noise of kitchens. Architect Robert Kerr wrote a lot about the division of work and public and family spaces. Here's a design for one of his biggest, Bearwood House, 1865, in Berkshire, with its own kitchen wing and kitchen courtyard (and miles from the dining room.)

Did they do the deed in the Deed Room?

Very interesting, r24. Thank you for that.

Wouldn't it always make the most sense to have the kitchen directly below the dining room? Then the heat can rise to some use, and the smells might make less of an impact, and the food can be brought straight up with minimal travel for the staff?

R27 yes thus our inquiries here

r24 the Wiki entry for Bearwood has an interesting entry on Kerr:

Robert Kerr (1823-1904) was an architect born in Aberdeen. His practice was never large, and his prominence owed more to his writings, specifically, The Gentleman's House: Or, How to Plan English Residences from the Parsonage to the Palace, published in 1864.[5]

Pevsner suggests that this gained Kerr the Bearwood commission in 1865,[4] a job that Walter's had originally intended to give to the, much more notable, William Burn.[6] The first part of Kerr's tome comprised an immensely-detailed guide to every aspect of the design of the mid-Victorian country house; sections included, "Privacy - defined and exemplified", "Salubrity - general rules", the "Boudoir - defined", the "Smoking room - position, access, prospect and ventilation, "Water closets - notes thereon", the "Soiled linen closet - position and arrangement" and "Flower gardens - several kinds".[7]

The second focussed on a series of plans of actual houses, and included Kerr's, often rather dismissive, comments on his predecessors and contemporaries. Vanbrugh's Blenheim Palace is considered "unsuitably grand",[8] while the planning of Paxton's Mentmore Towers is "incomprehensibly tortuous".[a][10]

The planning of Bearwood followed very closely the details of Kerr's book. Mark Girouard, in his pioneering study, The Victorian Country House, calls it a "synopsis [with] interminable offices, corridors, stairs and entrances".[11]

It’s gorgeous.

My wonder is about the swimming pool. It’s not as close to the house as it would be in the states. I’m guessing that, since it’s only plausible to be used two months of the year, it’s less of a feature. Nobody wants to look out at a covered pool for ten months.

R27: In a big house it would be big heat, and big smells, and big noise. In a house of any size you might have someone sleeping in the kitchen to keep the fires tended through the night and to guard against fire. Activity started early and lasted late. When very large houses began to be segregated by zones of use and users—public, family, and servants—it made sense to push the latter not for their convenience but for the comfort of the owners.

Dining rooms existed only from the 18thC, and only in very great houses; even palaces of enormous size very rarely had a room specifically designated for eating. Until the early 19thC rooms (and furniture) were less specific in their purpose, and rooms served multiple purposes, sometimes changing completely according to season or the number or importance of guests. For smaller groups of people tables were brought into whatever room the family wanted to eat in, designated dining rooms were quite rare even in palaces. The huge banquet size dining tables you see are from the late 18thC and later; before then only nuns and monks had great huge tables where everyone sat together. Libraries, drawing rooms (the counterpart to a dining room—the custom of women withdrawing to their own space and leaving the men to the dining room), other specialized purpose spaces and furniture appeared only in the late Georgian period. Specialized spaces went hand in hand with more specialized customs evolved into what we know as Victorian and Edwardian etiquette.

There are exceptions, but usually of extreme size and wealth. Castle Howard has a huge kitchen wing, an arm of its U-shape plan but the internal scheme of segregating the kitchen horizontally advanced over more than 100 years time that the house was being built and reworked between 1700-1810. For much of that period dinner was served in various rooms according to the situation, not in one or two designated dining rooms night after night. The big ceremonial dining room was reserved for special occasions and served double duty as picture gallery, etc.; otherwise people ate where they pleased. Tables that had been pushed against walls in corridors and rooms were brought into the center of a room and used for meals, or tea, or cards, and then taken away when done. Chairs were portable and easily moved around as needed. Bedrooms were only bedrooms by virtue of having a bed in them; otherwise they were used for entertaining friends, correspondence and business, eating alone, etc. The idea we have today of a dining room and bedroom having no intersection of use. When rooms did take on specific functions in the late 18th/early 19thC they sometimes went wild with it: map rooms, muniments rooms, deed rooms, and the same for servants: rooms for brushing clothes, rooms for storing silver, rooms for polishing metal...

Different times had different attitudes toward servants and the degrees to which they lived with them or attempted to set them apart and to ignore them. Little Thakeham was from a time when servants were pushed out of the way as much as possible. Central heating kept the house warm; fireplaces were for show and atmosphere. Look even at the servants wing in the exterior photos; not only is it a different scale and level or ornamentation but it's a different color, its subordinate nature called out emphatically. That was the usual scheme for its time.

I bet only one or two people on DL know how to pronounce the architect’s name. Hint: he’s not from NYC.

I actually live very near this house, OP...it’s been on the market for ages. I’ve never been that keen, looks a bit too “film set” for me.

This is my “lottery win” house. Georgian, and a bit dated inside but could be gorgeous.

I would like to Americanize the bathrooms and countertops/cabinets in the kitchen, but he rest fits the bill for people into Country estates. The price seems right given the size of the home and land. I really like it.

Mmm basking in the afterglow of delightful, tasteful and cultured architectural design history.

Threads like this are why I love Datalounge.

Also the one with Seth McFarlane’s “girlfriend”.

I'm right with r33, that home is lovely. I think Georgian Architecture is my favorite design style. Op's home is still gorgeous!

This one is a little over the top but I I love it.

Handsome house, R33.

A surprisingly odd but mostly good plan—a mid-18thC core with major internal changes after 1787, the big room (ballroom) added in 1801, and various later changes. I would not make any but some cosmetic changes. The huge kitchen being placed in the bow-ended room is not something I would have done, but it's a great space and not a hardship to live with. The decor is a little heavy with pale pastels and Laura Ashley-ish prints. Stronger Georgian colors and good brown furniture would bring the architecture into focus. Two shortcomings: somewhat strangely, only the ballroom seems to have a double aspect (though the plan is not very carefully detailed); and there are too many can lights recessed into the flat ceilings. Again, I could live happily with both things.

This thread is why I still pay for the Datalounge.

You history and architecture bitches make it all worthwhile.

I don’t get r32 - Wiki says his name is pronounced LUT-yənz.

What’s so obscure about that, Mary?

Do tell the correct way to pronounce it R32. Now I’m curious.

I love it. I don't want to clean it, but I love it. I trust that if I had the money for this type of home, I have the money for the taxes and the HELP.

R40, right? That’s how I would have pronounced it.

And what does NY have to do with it?

Love it

You’re all wrong.

Here you go! Now you have a fun fact for your next zoom meeting cocktails cocktails happy hour time etc.

[R43] I missed the NY comment. It’s because most men on here see NYC as the center of the universe, and only seem to know about things in NYC.

Lutyens was able to strip down historical styles to creat something entirely new. One of Britain’s most talented architects. Grade l listing basically means that house is to be preserved at all costs.

Have always loved Lutyen’s staircase at his spectacular Viceroy’s house in New Delhi. Love that it’s completely open to the sky.

I appreciate Lutyen's morph of modernism and classicism but I always get a tiny overlap, it's emotional, with fascist morphs of same.