Minimalist Georgian

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Wardour Castle, Wiltshire: entrance hall

Wardour Castle, Wiltshire: entrance hall

When I was reconnoitring a ‘Country Houses of Wiltshire’ tour some years ago, I was particularly kindly treated by Nigel Tuersley, who was then coming to the end of his magnificent renovation of James Paine’s Wardour Castle, near Tisbury.

Nigel has a distinctive career-trajectory – ecologist turned property-developer – with a particular love of Georgian architecture.  He took over this 75-room Georgian house, that had previously been used by Cranbourne Chase School and was built in 1770-1776 for the 8th Lord Arundell, and converted it into ten apartments, the biggest of which, in the rustic and piano nobile floors of the central block, he occupied with his wife and two children.

To resolve the dilemma of decorating and furnishing the vast rooms with their 24-foot ceilings designed by the most understated of Georgian architects, Nigel Tuersley commissioned the minimalist architect John Pawson to design his apartment.

When Nigel gave me free rein to photograph the place I had to use ambient light, simply because I couldn’t find the light switches.  When subsequently he allowed me to take not one but two groups of Nottingham University adult-education students to visit, he challenged us to find them.  They were concealed in the architraves of the doorcases.

Pawson’s intention, throughout the house, is to retain the smooth lines of Paine’s classical minimalism.  Bathrooms are grand rooms within grand rooms, and the kitchen contains everything you’d expect to find, though not necessarily where you’d look for it.

As Nigel Tuersley remarked to Victoria O’Brien [‘No-frills Georgian’, The Sunday Times, February 22nd 2004], at the time the house was commissioned and designed “it was considered inappropriate…to show your wealth in any sort of obvious way”.  It’s easy to make cheap jokes about minimalism but Nigel, whose development company is called Classical Order, says, “Minimalism is not a fashion or passing phase.  It’s as enduring a design aesthetic as classicism, and (at Wardour Castle) the two work seamlessly together.”

Nigel Tuersley has now moved out of Wardour Castle, and it belongs to Jasper Conran, who comes from a noted design dynasty.  The house, which Nikolaus Pevsner described as “the most glorious Georgian interior of Wiltshire”, attracts a succession of careful owners.

Wardour Castle is private, and is not open to the public.

Wardour Castle is one of the houses featured in Mike Higginbottom’s lecture English Country Houses – not quite what they seem.  For further details, please click here.

 

No light at the end of the tunnel

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Totley Tunnel, west portal, Grindleford, Derbyshire

Totley Tunnel, west portal, Grindleford, Derbyshire

Even if they’re not the slightest bit interested in trains, few visitors to the Grindleford Station café can resist peering down from the station bridge at the western portal of Totley Tunnel and reading from the signs that it’s 6,230 yards long and was built in 1893.  It was in fact the second longest railway tunnel in the UK until the construction of High Speed 1.

Even if you go down to the station platform and walk to the end, it’s not possible to see light at the other end of the tunnel.

This is because not only is there a slight curve at the Grindleford end, but there’s also a summit in the middle.  In the days of steam and loose-coupled freight trains this presented a considerable challenge.  Running a heavy coal-train north from Derbyshire, up the Hope Valley towards Manchester with controllable brakes only on the locomotive and the rear brake-van required skill and nerve.

When I first taught adult-education classes in transport history in the 1970s they repeatedly attracted retired locomen who explained the practicalities of train-driving with old technology.

The risk bringing the train down the grade in Bradway Tunnel from Chesterfield was that the loose-coupled loaded coal wagons would simply push the locomotive faster.  At the north end of Bradway Tunnel is a tight curve, with another short tunnel, that cannot be taken at speed.

Once past the curve and through Dore & Totley West Junction, the approach to Totley Tunnel is a sudden steep uphill gradient, and the weight of the wagons dragged the locomotive as it charged forwards at gradients of 1 in 100, 1 in 176 and then 1 in 150 – significantly steep for steam power.

Inside the tunnel, you can’t see.  But there comes a point where the track levels and then dips downhill at 1 in 1,000.  You knew that was happening because the wagons would begin to bash together on their chain couplings pushing the loco as it headed towards the curve at the Grindleford end and, all too suddenly, the light at the end of the tunnel would appear.

This isn’t such a problem with modern traction, so I’m told.  A nudge of a control handle activates the brakes on every wheel of the train.  It’s all too easy to be nostalgic about the age of steam.

 

No mushrooms – ever

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Grindleford Station Café, Derbyshire

Grindleford Station Café, Derbyshire

One of the finest, and simplest, eating experiences in Derbyshire is the full breakfast at the Grindleford Station Café.

Grindleford is the first station westwards on the Hope Valley Line, which carries passenger services between Sheffield and Manchester.  This line between Dore and Chinley was a late link in the Midland Railway network, opened in 1894.  The station building, like others on the line, is a standard design, built in timber with stone footings and chimneys.

Its interior has been altered, and for well over thirty years it has housed one of the truly great hikers’ pit-stops.  Whether you walk, cycle, motor-cycle or drive it’s a rest-and-be-thankful port-in-a-storm.  You can of course reach it by train with no more effort than walking the ramp up from the platform to the bridge;  if you’re really decadent you can arrive by car.  (The station is a mile north of the village of Grindleford, on the B6521 road to Fox House.)

It was founded and driven by Philip Eastwood, a man who affected a truculence which would have been noticeable in the grumpiest eateries of Lower Manhattan.  His notices are legendary:  “Don’t even think of asking for mushrooms”, “Unaccompanied children will be sold into slavery”, “This is a serving hatch, not a gawping hatch” and “If you want to be a fire guard, join the fire brigade”.

Inevitably, some innocent customers took exception to this, but astute reviewers recognise that nobody builds a successful business by hating customers.  Review comments on http://russelldavies.typepad.com/eggbaconchipsandbeans/2004/07/grindleford_sta.html describe the service as “charmingly grumpy”, “curt but helpful”, “so awful it was wonderful”.  The place is so special its Wikipedia entry contains irony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindleford.

Philip Eastwood Snr died in 2007 at the age of 63, dancing at a party, and his son, also Phillip, then aged nineteen, promptly gave up his business-management degree-course and his plans for an athletic career to take on the family legacy, much to the relief of the rambling community.

The café continues, and Phillip Jnr has added to the notices, but long-standing visitors will sense that the new management has a gentler temperament, and some of the heart has gone out of the truculence.  A Sheffield Telegraph writer [‘Station café still on track’, January 13th 2009] even spotted one that ended with the words “Thank you”.

For cholesterol-on-a-plate breakfasts and lunches with chips piled high there is nowhere finer anywhere in the Peak District.  Don’t use the loo without making a purchase, and if you want to check if the hair-dryer’s still working, ask for mushrooms.

Update:  Phillip and Kulbir Eastwood celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of the Grindleford Station Café on October 27th 2018:  https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/how-much-loved-grindleford-station-cafe-has-survived-for-45-years-1-9410432.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 The Derbyshire Derwent Valley tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

People with pianos

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Titus Street, Saltaire, West Yorkshire

Titus Street, Saltaire, West Yorkshire

I’ve just finished reading a recently published architectural survey of Sir Titus Salt’s mill town, Saltaire, at Shipley, west of Bradford.

The story is well-known:  Mr Salt, as he then was, chose to remove the family woollen mill from the grossly polluted centre of Bradford to a green-field site in the Aire valley, with ample supplies of clean water, canal and rail connections and space to construct a model village.  The Bradford architects, Henry William Lockwood and William Mawson, built the mill, which opened in 1853, and constructed the village in seven phases up to 1875, the year before Salt’s death.

Believing firmly in temperance, though not himself a teetotaller, Salt declined to provide a public house, saying he saw no reason to spend money on something which would damage his trade.  In Victorian times, other Shipley folk supposedly looked upon Saltaire residents as the sort of people who had pianos in their front parlours.

Saltaire is one of three major British industrial settlements that are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites – the other two being the Derbyshire Derwent Valley Mills [see Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site] and New Lanark.  Up to the early 1970s all three were unregarded, and piecemeal demolitions threatened their integrity.  At Saltaire the magnificent Wesleyan Methodist Chapel and the Congregational Sunday School came down:  their sites are now occupied, respectively, by an undistinguished modern replacement and a public car park.

The refurbishment of Salt’s Mill after its closure in 1986 was the work of Jonathan Silver (1950-97), who had built up a fortune in retail clothing and successfully invested in a 50% share of Sir Ernest Hall’s landmark redevelopment of the Dean Clough Mill in Halifax.  His offer to develop Bradford’s Manningham Mill as a home for the Victoria & Albert Museum’s South Asia textiles collection was turned down by the City Council [see Manningham Mills].  The huge Saltaire mill building is now home to high-tech industry, high-quality shopping and a diner, a café and the 1853 Gallery, showcasing the work of the Bradford-born artist, David Hockney.

Saltaire makes an excellent day out.  Salt’s Mill [http://www.saltsmill.org.uk] is the obvious starting place:  admission is free.  The Victoria Hall & Institute [http://www.victoriahallsaltaire.co.uk] is home to Pam and Phil Fluke’s Reed Organ & Harmonium Museum and what claims to be “Yorkshire’s finest Wurlitzer Cinema Organ”.  Across the river is the Shipley Glen Tramway (though its website http://www.glentramway.co.uk still shows 2009 opening times).

On the edge of Salt’s village is The Old Tramshed restaurant [http://www.theoldtramshedbrasserie.com/images/downloads/newsletter.pdf]:  as the name implies this is a sumptuous conversion of the front end of a former Bradford Corporation tram and, latterly, trolleybus depot, with huge glass windows where the vehicles entered, and the most implausible tramlines in the world outside where the smokers indulge their addiction.

That fills a long day, and probably the evening too.

The new study of Saltaire is Neil Jackson, Jo Lintonbon & Bryony Staples, Saltaire:  the making of a modern town (Spire 2010) [http://www.spirebooks.com/salt.html].

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2012 Yorkshire Mills & Mill Towns tour, with text, photographs and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To view sample pages click here.  Please send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Great Great Central

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Loughborough Central Station, Leicestershire (1977)

Loughborough Central Station, Leicestershire (1977)

Though the Great Central main line was eliminated by Dr Beeching’s programme of rationalisation in the 1960s it is still possible to travel extensive stretches of the route between Nottingham and Leicester, thanks to the efforts of a team of volunteers who have worked to reinstate the railway since the final British Railways closure in 1969.

At the moment there are two Great Central preservation lines, the Great Central Railway PLC running for 7¾ miles from Loughborough Central station to the outskirts of Leicester, and Great Central Railway (Nottingham) Ltd, currently operating a ten-mile stretch between Ruddington and Rushcliffe Halt at East Leake.

In between there is The Gap.  Even though the southern project was under way in the early  1970s, British Rail severed the line north of Loughborough Central in 1980, removing the bridge over the Midland Main Line.  Reinstating The Gap, as it’s called by GCR and GCR(N) members, will be a significant challenge, costing £15 million to reinstate 500 metres of railway.  Once it’s accomplished the two railways intend to merge and operate as an eighteen-mile main line railway.

Much of the route is double track – unique among British preserved railways and entirely appropriate to the generous layout of the last main line to London.  The energy for this expensive development was driven by David Clarke (1929-2002), a major benefactor with a particular enthusiasm for railway signalling, who wanted to preserve the techniques of main-line signalling in a way that more limited preserved lines could not achieve.

With authentic main-line signalling it is possible for steam trains to operate and pass each other at speeds up to 45 mph, while on most single-track preserved lines there is a maximum speed-limit of 25 mph and trains in opposing directions have to stop at passing loops.

Other exciting projects in development include a one-mile extension from Leicester North station (built near the site of the vandalised original, Belgrave & Birstall) south to Leicester Abbey, the location of the city’s industrial museum and space-centre, and an extension north to meet Line 2 of Nottingham Express Transit at Clifton.

When the members of these two ambitious lines have bridged The Gap, they deserve to rename their project the Great Great Central Railway.

Websites for the various components of the future Great Great Central are at http://www.gcrailway.co.uk and http://www.gcrn.co.uk.

The 60-page, A4 handbook for the 2018 ‘Waterways and Railways of the East Midlands’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £15.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Great Central

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Catesby Tunnel, Northamptonshire, looking north

Catesby Tunnel, Northamptonshire, looking north

The planning process for High Speed 2, the rail link from London north to Manchester and Leeds, is crawling inexorably forward, creating controversy in the conservation community and for Conservative MPs whose constituencies lie in its path.

A recent edition of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Building magazine, Cornerstone (Vol 31, No 4, 2010), likened the new line to the Iron Curtain, declaring that in bridging the North-South divide its path would split “East Britain from West”.

When it comes to the crunch, we all have a hidden Nimby [Not in my back yard] and nobody takes kindly to reductions in the value and amenity of their home and their community.

It’s noticeable that the proposed alignments make little use of the long abandoned route of the former Great Central Railway as a means of threading High Speed 2 through the environmentally and politically sensitive areas of the Home Counties.

The Great Central was the brainchild of a remarkable Victorian businessman, Sir Edward Watkin (1819-1901).  He was general manager (1854-1862) and chairman (1864-1894) of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, known to its despairing passengers as “Mucky, Slow & Late” and to its shareholders as “Money Sunk & Lost”.  He also had interests in the Metropolitan Railway, the East London Railway that ran through the Brunels’ Thames Tunnel, the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, the Submarine Continental Railway, promoted in 1881 with capital of £250,000 to build the Channel Tunnel, and the Chemin de Fer du Nord running from Calais to Paris.

His folie de grandeur was to turn the MS&L, a provincial line running east-west between Grimsby and Manchester, into the last main line to London, running 94 miles from Annesley Junction in Nottinghamshire by way of the Metropolitan Railway to a purpose-built terminus at Marylebone, passing through Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby and nowhere else of any importance.  Renamed Great Central in 1897, it cost £11½ million:  wits declared that money sunk and lost was “Gone Completely”.  It opened with no fanfare in 1899.

Its engineering was the steam-age equivalent of High Speed 2.  No curve was sharper than a one-mile radius and huge cuttings and embankments kept the gradients under 6%.  All the intermediate stations were built on island platforms with space for future quadrupling of the tracks.  The Marylebone terminus included spare land for additional platforms.  Overbridges, tunnels and station platforms were designed to continental loading-gauge to allow through running of European rolling stock if the Victorian Channel Tunnel had ever been built.

Watkin’s dream, of direct train services between Manchester and Paris via Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, the Thames Tunnel and a yet unbuilt Channel Tunnel, evaporated.  The entire line south of Sheffield and north of Aylesbury was closed in the 1960s, though much of the trackbed south of Leicester remains derelict but intact.

No doubt there are weighty practical reasons why high-speed trains can’t simply be sent up the old Great Central.  It’s ironic that Watkin’s visions (which also included a version of the Eiffel Tower started, but later scrapped, on the site that became Wembley Stadium) were so prescient, yet bore fruit in ways he’d have found hard to recognise.

To gain an idea of what is left of the Great Central route from Leicester southwards, see http://www.gcrleicester.info/index.html.  Better illustrations of Catesby Tunnel than the hand-held, daylit shot-in-the-dark above are at http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/tunnels/gallery/catesby.html, along with John Quick’s article at http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/routes/willoughby.html which indicates that a proposal to route one track of High Speed 2 through Catesby Tunnel alongside a new parallel bore was considered and rejected.

What was built of the Submarine Continental Railway Company’s 1880 Channel Tunnel is illustrated at http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/c/channel_tunnel_1880_attempt/index.shtml.

 

The Padley Martyrs

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Padley Chapel, Grindleford, Derbyshire: interior

Padley Chapel, Grindleford, Derbyshire: interior

North Lees Hall was built by the Jessop family, associates of George, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, probably in the 1570s.  Lord Shrewsbury was staunchly Protestant, and had a political need to distance himself from the Catholic captive queen, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom he guarded for fourteen years.  The pressure to demonstrate adherence to Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant settlement was at its most intense in the late 1580s, the period of Mary Stuart’s execution and the Armada, and Lord Shrewsbury made a particular point as Lord Lieutenant of enforcing the recusancy laws that oppressed practising Catholics.

The resulting atmosphere of paranoia and persecution must have been akin to modern totalitarian regimes.

At that time North Lees was leased to Richard Fenton, one of the original Twelve Capital Burgesses of Sheffield and a Mayor and alderman of Doncaster who lost influence in the late 1570s because of his Catholicism.  By 1580 he had chosen to retire to obscurity at North Lees:  on his way through Sheffield his baggage was searched and revealed “books and other furniture for Mass”, a discovery which aroused no immediate comment but was doubtless carefully noted.

On Candlemas Day, 1588, acting under the Earl’s orders, one Roger Columbell –

…went to the Northelees and took Mr Fenton, and searched his house, but found no suspicious persons.  He used himself very obediently and came with him willingly to Haddon where he shewed a protection and desireth if it may stande with your Lordship’s pleasure, to have the benefit thereof for the liberty to be in his owne house,…And if this cannot be graunted him then his humble request is that he maye have respit to goe to his own howse for a week to take order for his things, and, chiefly, to comfort his doughter [sic], who was broughte in bed the same morninge and seemed amazed at his soden apprehension.

It seems likely that Richard Fenton was not released to return to North Lees until he left detention in London late in 1589.  He was repeatedly imprisoned until his death around 1604.

A couple of miles away, Padley Hall, outside Grindleford, belonged to Sir Thomas Fitzherbert, a recusant who in 1588 was found to be harbouring two priests, Nicholas Garlick (c1555-1588), Robert Ludlam (c1551-1588), who along with a third priest, Richard Simpson (c1553-1588), were subsequently martyred at Derby on July 25th of that year. These three – energetic and determined men in the prime of life – were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.

Sir Thomas Fitzherbert, who was also arrested, died in the Tower of London in 1591.

Padley Hall itself gradually declined until in the late nineteenth century much of it was ruinous.  In 1933 the remaining barn was converted into a Roman Catholic chapel to commemorate the Padley Martyrs by the Sheffield architects, Hadfield & Cawkwell.

Padley Chapel is usually open to visitors on Sundays through the summer.  Its website is still under construction but details of opening arrangements are at http://www.derbychurch.net/find/detail.php?OrgRef=padleychapel.  The nearest Tourist Information Centres are Bakewell [01629-816558] and Castleton [01433-620679].

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 The Derbyshire Derwent Valley tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

No sign of Mrs Rochester

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North Lees Hall, Derbyshire

North Lees Hall, Derbyshire

North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in Derbyshire, is a highly significant building, built for the Jessop family of Broom Hall who belonged to the sphere of influence of George, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, custodian of the captive Mary, Queen of Scots and long-suffering husband of Bess of Hardwick.

Many of the Earl’s associates built “high houses”, with tall turrets, gridiron mullioned windows and skied chambers and galleries.  The plasterwork at North Lees Hall includes the arms of the Rodes family of Barlborough Hall;  other families with Shrewsbury links and comparable houses included the Sandfords of Thorpe Salvin Hall and the Hewitts of Shireoaks Hall.

Because North Lees Hall was more or less continuously let from the mid-seventeenth century until after the Second World War it was hardly altered, but at times unoccupied.  Sometime before 1792 the tenancy came to one Thomas Eyre, whose descendants stayed here until 1882. Their occupation had an interesting effect:  a whole procession of scholarly visitors assumed a quite spurious connection with the ancient and prolific Catholic family of Eyre.  The resulting legends are extremely attractive.

A more famous connection came from the 1845 visit of Charlotte Brontë, who is often assumed to have based Thornfield Hall at least partly on North Lees in writing the novel she entitled Jane Eyre – “…three stories high, of proportions not vast, though considerable…battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery.”  She may have taken her heroine’s family name from the occupants, and named the nearby fictional village Morton after the actual landlord of the George Inn, Hathersage.

After the Second World War the house was neglected, and at one stage was used for storing grain.  It was converted it into holiday accommodation by Lt-Col Hugh Beach.  It was purchased by the Peak Park Planning Board in 1971, and in 1987 it was leased to the Vivat Trust, who restored and reopened it as self-catering holiday apartments in 1989.  A further restoration took place in 2002, and it is now let as a residence.

Other sites associated with Jane Eyre are described and illustrated at http://walk2read.com/books/jane_eyre.html.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 The Derbyshire Derwent Valley tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

No place to rest

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Tower of Elphinstone, Dunmore Park, Scotland (1982)

Tower of Elphinstone, Dunmore Park, Scotland (1982)

Before the Murray Earls of Dunmore built Dunmore Park House, the place was called Elphinstone, after the family that had lived there in the sixteenth century, and the residence was a substantial 57-foot-high tower, alternatively known as the Tower of Elphinstone or Elphinstone Tower.

A curious structure with enormously thick walls, and major rooms on the first, second and third floors, it seems to have been unoccupied after the 3rd Earl of Dunmore bought the Elphinstone property in 1754, until in 1836 the barrel-vaulted ground-floor room was converted into a mausoleum.

In 1840 the two-storey service wing was cleared away to give space for St Andrew’s Church, a modest Gothic building with a bell-turret.

By the time I visited the place in 1982 the Tower had collapsed, and St Andrew’s Church had been completely demolished, leaving free-standing wall monuments surrounded by thin air.

Since then, the Tower has been neglected and vandalised, and the Falkirk Local History Society’s website [http://www.falkirklocalhistorysociety.co.uk/home/index.php?id=126] indicates that it may not survive for many more winters.

The corpses that had been interred in the vault have apparently been removed, but not – so it seems – the coffins, which were left to tempt passing vandals.  The 2009 state of the place, and also the ruins of Dunmore Park House, are illustrated at http://urbanglasgow.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1532&start=0.

It’s not a pretty sight.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Victorian Cemeteries, please click here.

 

 

Could have done more

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Dunmore Park House, Scotland (1982)

Dunmore Park House, Scotland (1982)

When I stayed at the Dunmore Pineapple in 1982, we walked across the park to the ruins of Dunmore Park House, which was built for George Murray, 5th Earl of Dunmore (1762-1836), son of the builder of the Pineapple, by William Wilkins (1778-1839).

Wilkins is best known for his work in the Greek Revival style such as the National Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge and the Yorkshire Museum in York.  He could turn his hand to other styles, however, and had built Dalmeny Castle in what was called ‘Tudor Revival’ for the 4th Earl in 1817.

It follows that Dunmore Park House, built for the same family in the same style as Dalmeny, is an architecturally significant building.  The Murrays left Dunmore in 1911, but the house remained a home until 1961.

When we explored it in 1982 it was already derelict, having been abandoned after a short spell as a girls’ school in 1964.  Since then, it has become entirely a ruin, and remains the subject of seemingly intractable planning debate, which figures on the Scottish Buildings at Risk register http://www.buildingsatrisk.org.uk/BAR/detail.aspx?sctID=1393&region=Falkirk&div=&class=ALL&category=AT%20RISK&Page=1&NumImg=5.  (See also http://www.ads.org.uk/what_we_do/design_review/reports/295_restoration-and-residential-development-of-dunmore-park-house.)

The house is illustrated at http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=5742, a series of images shot in 2007.

Edmund Burke’s sonorous remark that “The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing” is customarily applied to more grave and significant matters than planning policy, but the fact remains that while private owners and public bodies prevaricate, a worthwhile and once habitable building disintegrates.