Hammerwood Park

Hammerwood Park from the south

Hammerwood Park is a country house in Hammerwood near East Grinstead in the East Sussex administrative division of England . The house was one of the first Greek Revival- style buildings in 1792 and the first independent work by Benjamin Latrobe .

history

The property before 1792

The land was part of an earlier estate called The Bower (believed to be named after an Atte Boure family known to have paid taxes to King Edward I in the 1290s ), a vast estate that included the East Parishes Belonged to Grinstead and Hartfield . Sometime in the 16th century, the owner family, the Bottings, founded an iron forge east of the pond in the valley south of today's house. The iron hammer presumably existed until 1558. Then Hugh Botting left "two tons of yron" in his last will; it worked until 1653, but by 1664 it was already ruinous. The dam is said to have been 200 meters long. In 1693 part of the sparse forest that bordered the Ashdown Forest was cleared to free up a plot of land for the construction of the predecessor of the current house. The property, which was once part of a deer park, later fell to other families and in 1766 the owner paid window tax on the 41 windows, making The Bower the fifth largest of the 150 controllable properties in East Grinstead. It seems likely that today's Bower House , a Tudor style farmhouse in the village of Hammerwood, has no direct relation to it. There was previously a building on the property that would become Hammerwood Lodge (foundations and walls west of the central block of the current house dated to before 1792) and this was believed to be the Bowers' actual home.

1790s: planning and construction

At the end of 1791 or beginning of 1792 Christian Ignatius Latrobe noted that John Sperling (1763-1851) was visiting Benjamin Harry Latrobe (his brother) in London. Sperling, who already owned a country estate in Dynes Hall , a 17th century country house with 200 acres in Great Maplestead , Essex , came from his wealthy family, who had made their fortune in the London fur trade after emigrating from Sweden , and was only a year older than Latrobe, who was then a student of Samuel Pepys Cockerell . Nevertheless, he commissioned Latrobe with the planning and construction of a new country house and hunting lodge on the grounds of The Bower . Sperling then chose Hammerwood Lodge as the name for the new house, presumably as a romantic homage to the hammer that was used in the ironworks that had existed in the area since the Middle Ages. Latrobe supervised the construction work from the fall of 1792, the proximity to Ashdown House , his second assignment with Forest Row , enabled him to use craftsmen and suppliers of building materials for both projects and also to oversee both projects at the same time.

Trinder describes the structure as “a large, Palladian central block ( corps de logis ), accentuated by a huge arrangement of flat pillars, which are flanked by wings with low arches and at the end of which are vestibules with four columns, while an asymmetrical wing for the servants to the northeast, which is hidden behind the main part of the house. ” Signs of Coade stone depicting scenes derived from the Borghese vase adorn both lobbies and the influence of the temples of Paestum , which are believed to have been on previous visits to Naples and Latrobe Delos is noticed by his students.

In 1795, Latrobe faced serious financial problems due to payment problems for another project. When his wife, Lydia Sellon , in November 1793 childbed died, he suffered probably a breakdown. Completely bankrupt and unable to pay some of his workers, he emigrated to the United States on November 25, 1795 . It is not known for sure whether Hammerwood Lodge was completed by then; it is possible that Sperling was overseeing the remaining work in Latrobe's absence. But the failure of a large investment in a distillery in Dublin cost the Sperlings £ 70,000 (equivalent to around £ 7.5m in 2015); artist and diary writer Joseph Farington reported that she and her partners "got over it with the huge edition." Between 1798 and 1800, Sperling was forced to give up both the Hammerwood estate and his London home and move to Dynes Hall .

1800–1921: The best of times

Around 1801 Magens bought Dorrien Magens (approx. 1768-1849), a London merchant and banker and future Tory member of parliament for the constituency of Carmarthen and later for the constituency of Ludgershall , the Hammerwood estate. After his death, he bequeathed the property to his son, John Dorrien Magens , who, as chairman of the board of the East Grinstead Railway Company (EGR), was responsible for building the connection between East Grinstead and the railway system at Three Bridges in 1855. Presumably the Dorrien Magens family had the house expanded, especially the northwest wing for the servants, and the census records from the 1840s show at least ten domestic workers for that period.

Hammerwood Lodge after Teulon's renovations, around the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century

John Dorrien Magens sold the Hammerwood estate in June 1864 for £ 37,250 (equivalent to about £ 4.2 million in 2015), of which £ 10,000 were just for the wood, to the banker Oswald Augustus Smith (1826-1902). In 1865 the Smiths commissioned the architect Samuel Sanders Teulon to remodel the house to their liking. In addition to other, smaller renovations, this included raising the roof of the central wing to accommodate a low third floor, although Latrobe's facade was to be retained. Work began on May 8, 1865; the students Snadon and Fazio commented that "Teulon integrated his additions into the existing building so carefully that it is difficult to recognize them at first glance."

Oswald Augustus Smith took care of the 500 hectare property with parks, fertile farmland and forests, installed gas lighting in the house and insulated the recently raised roof. Initially he financed a branch church for the three parishes of East Grinstead , Forest Row and Hartfield and in 1873 had a village school built for 100 children. In 1875 he had a rectory built and in 1880 St Stephan's Church in Hammerwood (designed by EO Loftus Brock ) for £ 7,431. The first vicar was Rev. Clement Colby Woodland of Corpus Christi College , Cambridge . In 1892 he financed the new construction of St Peter's Churc 'in Holtye to commemorate his late wife ( Rosa Sophia Vansittart (1832-1892)), in 1893 the construction of the Countess of Thanet's poor houses on Holtye Common and a new one at the end of the 19th century Building for the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead . In addition, much of the Hammerwood village , which still exists today (with a population of 438 at its prime in 1891), and some houses east of the Ashurst Wood village, were built during Smith's tenure on the Hammerwood estate as workers' houses for employees on the estate .

Rev. George Ferris Whidborne (1845–1910) bought the property in Hammerwood from Oswald Augustus Smith shortly before his death. He was impressed by the unusually extensive wildlife and moved his family from Dorset to Hammerwood. The Whidbornes lived in Hammerwood from 1901 to 1921. Whidbornes eldest son died in World War I ; all three received the Military Cross on different occasions . In 1919 the school that taught the Whidbornes' children burned down; St Andrews moved to Hammerwood until a new school building was found in Forest Row. Some men remember playing cricket on the lawn of the Hammerwood Estate as boys against Ashdown House, also a school . But in 1918 inheritance tax debts had forced Margaret Whidborne to sell 337 acres (nearly half of the estate). Three years later, another 520 hectares of farmland were sold; the furnishings of the house were cleared out and auctioned. Two floors of servant accommodation in the northeast wing for servants, which had been added in the 19th century, were demolished. With 128 acres of park and light forest around the house, the Hammerwood property was renamed to Hammerwood Park . Hammerwood Park slowly lost its role as the focus of local life.

1921–1982: decline and decline

An Auster Mk V after the war, of the same type as it was stationed in Hammerwood from November 1943, in wartime livery

In 1921 the remains of the property, consisting of the house and 131.6 hectares of land, were bought by Lt. Col. "Stephen Hungerford Pollen" CMG (1868-1935) bought after his exceptional military career. Pollen was ADC to Lord Lansdowne and Lord Elgin , Viceroys of India , won medals in South Africa and India and served in the Tirah Campaign in 1897 . As the first residents of the country house, he and his family were able to enjoy the advantages of electrical lighting and running water - the heating had already been converted to oil firing at that time. Of the servants, eleven or twelve, depending on the source, were left while the Pollens lived in Hammerwood Park, and pollen provided the land (and a quarter of the building cost) for the construction of Hammerwood and Holtye Hall. It is a strange encounter that Lt. Co. Pollen's ancestor, Richard Pollen , the daughter of SP Cockerell , the architect with whom Latrobe studied, married. After the death of Lt. Col. Pollen In 1935, the "Kirwan Taylor" family bought Hammerwood Park; they owned the property when the Second World War broke out. Like many other houses, Hammerwood Park was commandeered by the military for use by the fighting troops and 200 soldiers were stationed there (including the cricketer Denis Compton ) and a contingent of the Canadian army. The 660th Squadron of the RAF also operated from November 1943 from an airfield north of the park and the SOE flew Westland Lysander from the same airfield for a while .

Hammerwood Park fell into disrepair at the end of the 20th century and was boarded up in 1976. View from the south 1982.

View from the north 1982.

After the war, John Chattell († 1931) bought the property and divided the house into 11 apartments. But brown rot and putrefaction became an increasing problem and soon the house was uninhabitable. The description as a historical building (written after a visit in 1953) stated that it was “empty and boarded up”, and it was listed as a historical building of the 2nd degree (later changed to the 1st degree). In 1973 the rock band Led Zeppelin bought Hammerwood Park in hopes of converting it into a music center, recording studio, and apartments. Even though the house appears at the beginning of the film The Song Remains the Same , in which band members are shown driving up the driveway to the house and shooting Nazi zombies with machine guns from a vintage car, they did not advance their plans. Vandals stole three tons of roofing, damaging the roof in 14 different places, allowing a lot of water to enter and damage the structure of the building. Brown rot and rot increased so that the house became increasingly unstable; the bathroom on the first floor, which was previously held in place by the pipes, collapsed, the bathtub fell into the salon below and the 18th century parquet floor there was flooded. Then the house was boarded up in 1976 and put up for sale in 1978.

1982 – today: restoration

After four years unsuccessfully for sale, the house was advertised in Country Life magazine in June 1982 . David Pinnegar , a 21-year-old, newly graduated physicist, bought the property, which at the time was in very poor condition and comprised only 12 acres of overgrown garden, in July of that year to restore it and open it to the public do. Even if you have aged over your youth, the house was opened to the public in April 1983 and the restoration, which was largely carried out by volunteers, won the '' Amodio Prize '' of the IBI ( International Burgen Institute , today Part of Europa Nostra ) and in 1987 a silver medal from the Société d'encouragement au progrès in Paris. In 1984 the house received a rare copy of the Parthenon frieze by Brucciani & Co , which is on display in the old kitchens (now the Elgin room). The Western Europe storm in 1987 caused damage to the house and garden. The British Army's 656th Squadron of the Army Air Corps helped deliver the new roofing on a Westland Lynx in 1988 in an operation funded by Blue Peter . Apart from a small grant from English Heritage and the Ministry of the Environment, there was no further government support because the property is privately owned. The restoration, which cost more than £ 140,000 from 1982 to 1989, was funded almost entirely from entrance fees. This made it the largest private restoration project in Europe at the time. The work continued into the new millennium and the restoration continues to this day.

Hammerwood today

Today the house and garden belong to the Pinnegar family and are open to the public on guided tours in summer or by appointment. Tours focus on the historical context of the house, the ancient mythological and religious origins of the Greek Revival style, connections to Freemasonry , the agricultural revolution , the Picturesque movement, and attempts at interpreting the Borghese vase and the Parthenon frieze. A collection of musical instruments such as pianos , harpsichords , two organs and a modified electronic organ from Makin with five manuals are used for an annual concert program. The electronic organ was in use at St Columb's Cathedral in Londonderry for 12 years while its predecessor was being repaired after the Northern Ireland conflict, and is now particularly used to perform the music of French Romantic composers such as Vierne and Widor . Its expansion from three to five manuals with more than 150 keys made it one of the largest instruments of its kind in Europe with more than 25,000 key combinations. The other manuals are tuned unequal , e.g. B. well-tempered or medium-tone , moods in which classical and romantic composers in particular wrote.

The property is also regularly used as a backdrop for television, movies, fashion and photo shoots. There were z. B. Knife Edge , London Boulevard (2010) with Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley , but also made music videos for Led Zeppelin , The Darkness , Victoria Beckham , Mel C and Cheryl Cole . The property also served as the backdrop for the drug documentary Sacred Weeds in 1998 . Hammerwood Park also shot fashion for Prada and John Lewis catalogs , Vogue, and editorials for other magazines such as B. Country Life .

Park and gardens

Hammerwood Park is on the south slope of a hill that offers sweeping views from southeast to southwest. The south facade of the house can be seen well from the valley, in which a stream runs and where the iron hammer, after which the property was named, once stood. A lake with winding banks, which has been artificially dammed by the brook, is obviously part of Sperling's landscape park; Although it is not shown on the 1795 Gardner & Gream map, it is visible in the 1808 Ordnance Survey drawing . It lies on the valley floor and open parkland extends on both sides; the next 2-3 miles down the stream you can still see the hills in the distance. Latrobe's students, Fazio and Snadon, mention Latrobe's 1794 reference to a "very precise" knowledge of Humphry Repton (1752–1818), the English landscape architect , and point out that many details of Hammerwood's landscape park (including unobstructed views to the south, the much further than the boundaries of the 1792 estate) coincide with Repton's ideas. The influence of Capability Brown is also noticeable and counts of the annual rings on the oaks that fell victim to the Western Europe hurricane led to the tree planting being dated to 1793 and 1796 (which indicates that the landscaping of the landscape park actually took place).

Additional formal terraces and informal ornamental gardens were laid out in the 19th and 20th centuries, initially replacing the earlier escape from parkland up to the front facade of the house, which maps showed until 1841. Oswald Augustus Smith , who bought Hammerwood in 1864, probably had the ornamental gardens laid out on the east side of the house. As the cousin of the politician Augustus Smith , who planted the Tresco Abbey Gardens on the Isles of Scilly with rhododendrons , he also introduced these plants to Hammerwood, where they can still be seen today. The Smiths also planted model trees in the gardens and laid gravel paths through the bushes, scrub and sparse forest to the east - you can see them on the map of the Ordnance Survey of 1873. In 1927 a yew garden was laid out below the south terrace; it has been restored and is now a registered helipad . Until the middle of the 20th century, the slopes of the valley south of the lakes were largely forested. Today, much of this land is farmed as arable land after it was largely cleared in the 1950s. Only a few scattered trees remain from the extensive plantings seen on the 1808 map.

During the period of decay, a large part of the gardens was also heavily overgrown, including the kitchen gardens and the greenhouses on the north side; the park served as a pasture and the library as a feed silo. Most of the ornamental gardens south and east of the house have been restored and replanted; the work was carried out by volunteers from the National Trust Activities Group (NTAG) and the London Wildlife Trust . When it came to replanting trees after the Western Europe storm in 1987, the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust , the Men of the Trees , the Countryside Commission, and the South East Electricity Board (SEEBOARD) did it. The park and gardens have been part of the High Weald Area of ​​Outstanding Natural Beauty (High Weald AONB) since October 1983 ; they have been listed as historical gardens of the 2nd degree since 1987.

Entrances and driveways

The landscaped park created by Sperling and Latrobe in the 1790s also includes a winding driveway that extends from Ashurst Wood to the south facade of the country house. In his study of Hammerwood, Trinder mentions that when approaching the house on this driveway, the pillars of the central block create an optical illusion that makes the house look larger than it actually is, as the temple fronts are optically integrated on the sides. He describes the combined efforts of Sperling and Latrobe as "a collective ego trip for a small price - the house, which was modest in size for the time, was designed to look big." From the mid-19th century ( probably from the time of the railway connection from East Grinstead) the southern driveway was used less than the route from the station via the East Grinstead - Tunbridge Wells road (first B2110, now A264) and the avenue through the village of Hammerwood.

The southern driveway was barely used when the house fell into disrepair, and so it was partially broken up into farmland over the course of the 20th century and blocked by recently planted hedges. The former entrance lodge, the Dog Gate Lodge , has been preserved to this day together with the bridge on the side of the former iron hammer, which led the driveway over the feed channel of the Ziersee in the valley floor. The road that leads east out of Ashurst Wood (now a dead end ) is still called Hammerwood Road. There are also two child driveways to the house, one from the northwest and one from the northeast. Both are no longer in use today, but can be seen on the Tithe Map from 1841.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Weald . Retrieved April 28, 2016.
2. ^ Wealden Iron Research Group . Retrieved April 28, 2016. Type "Botting Forge" in search box.
3. ↑ The Weald . Retrieved April 28, 2016.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} The 18th century parkland . Retrieved April 28, 2016.
5. ↑ Dr Nicola Bannister: Medieval Deer Parks and Designed Landscapes in the High Weald, Historic Landscape Characterization Analysis Stages 1 & 2 . High Weald Joint Advisory Committee, September 2009. pp. 14-17.
6. ↑ Jonathan Small: Pre-1792: origins . Archived from the original on April 22, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 28, 2016. 
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Michael W. Fazio, Patrick A. Snadon: The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe . JHU Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-801881-04-6 . Pp. 86-140.
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Michael Trinder: Latrobes Doric Revival at Hammerwood Park . Essay. Cambridge University, Cambridge April 1993 . Retrieved April 28, 2016.
9. ↑ Talbot Hamlin: Benjamin Henry Latrobe . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1955. pp. 44-46.
10. ^ CD Lewis: The Influence of Archaeological Publications in the Emergence of a Greek Revival Style, 1759-1809 . Bachelor thesis, School of Architecture, University of Cambridge, Cambridge 1962.
11. ^ Gabriel P. Weisberg: The Documented Image: Visions in Art History . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse January 1987. p. 247.
12. ↑ Talbot Hamlin: Benjamin Henry Latrobe . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1955. pp. 34-54.
13. ^ Hammerwood Lodge census records . theweald.org. Retrieved April 29, 2016.
14. ↑ Dorothy Hatswell: Secret East Grinstead . Amberley Publishing, Stroud September 2014. ISBN 978-1-445639-52-9 .
15. ^ Forest Row: Local Attractions . Retrieved on August 9, 2015.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
16. ^ Hammerwood genealogy and history . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
17. ↑ Holtye genealogy and history . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
18. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} 1792 to WWII: House and Home at Hammerwood . Archived from the original on March 17, 2016. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 2, 2016. 
19. ↑ Lt Col Stephen Hungerford Pollen: obituary . Archived from the original on April 26, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 2, 2016. 
20. ^ What the servants said . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
21. ↑ Hammerwood Park listing text, November 1952 . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
22. ↑ ^{a b} 1989 news piece with before / after shots on the day President George HW Bush moved into the White House . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
23. ↑ Local news report which suggests 'most of his friends and family think him foolhardy' . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
24. ^ Volunteers at Hammerwood Park . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
25. ^ Heritage and Tourism Consultant . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
26. ↑ Meg Carter: How the other half lives . The Independent. August 30, 1997. Retrieved May 2, 2016.
27. ↑ 1988 Blue Peter and the Army Air Corps help Hammerwood Park . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
28. ↑ Hammerwood Park: Visiting . Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 2, 2016. 
29. ↑ Hammerwood organs specification . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
30. ^ Hammerwood Park: Concerts . Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 2, 2016. 
31. ^ London Boulevard (2010) filming locations . Retrieved May 2, 2016.
32. ^ Hammerwood Park: Filming . Archived from the original on March 31, 2016. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 2, 2016. 
33. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Hammerwood Park garden list entry . Retrieved May 3, 2016.
34. ↑ Anne-Noëlle Pinnegar: Hammer Wood Park Guidebook . 1992.

Web links

Commons : Hammerwood Park  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 '52.3 "  N , 0 ° 3' 34.2"  E