Mentmore Towers

Mentmore Towers

Mentmore Towers is a mansion from the 19th century, in the village of Mentmore in the English county of Buckinghamshire is. The house was designed by Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law George Henry Stokes in the Jacobean style for the banker and art collector Amschel Mayer de Rothschild (1818–1874) as a country house and exhibition space for his collection. The mansion is considered to be one of the grandest homes of the Victorian era. Since the type and level of the interior should correspond to the collection exhibited therein, they are based on the Italian Renaissance . The house also contains salons and rooms in the gilded style of the late 18th century France . Originally the mansion was simply called "Mentmore". The architectural style is closely related to the Wollaton Hall designed by Robert Smythson . Mentmore Towers has been listed as a Grade I Historic Building by English Heritage . The park and gardens are classified as historical monuments of the second degree.

Mentmore was the first house of a real "Rothschlid enclave" in Aylesbury Vale , as other members of the Rothschild family later built their country houses in Tring in Hertfordshire and in Ascott , Aston Clinton and Halton in Buckinghamshire . Baron Mayer de Rothschild had bought land in the region since 1846.

architecture

The great hall in Mentmore. At the age of only 6 months, Hannah de Rothschild laid the foundation stone for the manor house on December 31, 1851.

Mentmore Towers ground floor. Many rooms are named after the collections that once contained them. 1: knight's hall; 2: White Salon; 3: dining room; 4: library; 5: Amber Room ; 6: enamel room ; 7: rise; 8: study room; 9: vestibule; 10: Green Salon; 11: South entrance hall; 12: Blarenberghe room ; 13: Du-Barry room; 14: billiard room; 15: smoking room / arsenal; 33: Italian garden; 34: servant yard; 35: courtyard of honor ; 36: south terrace; ST: smaller staircases for the servants. The other rooms are for the servants.

The country house was built between 1852 and 1854 for Baron Mayer de Rothschild, who needed a house in London. Paxton , who had previously designed the Crystal Palace , was responsible for the vaulted glass roof of the central hall, which should give the hall the impression of a round arched courtyard in a Renaissance palace. Stokes was the second architect and site manager. The construction work was carried out by the London company George Myers , which often did such work for the Rothschild family.

Earls of Rosebery

Baron Mayer de Rothschild and his wife died soon after the completion of Mentmore Towers. After the death of the Baroness, the daughter Hannah , later Countess of Rosebery, inherited the property. After her death from chronic nephritis in 1890 at the age of 39, her widower Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery , who was Prime Minister for two years from 1894, lived in the house. In the late 1920s he bequeathed the property to his son, Harry , Lord Dalmeny, who became the 6th Earl of Rosebery on the death of his father in 1929.

Both Earls bred several winners of classic horse races on the two breeding farms on the property, including five winners of the Epsom Derby . Crafton Stud and Mentmore Stud were less than a kilometer from the mansion and were designed along with the stable yard by architect George Devey , who designed many farmhouses in the nearby villages of Mentmore, Crafton and Ledburn.

Second World War

The wife of the 6th Earl of Rosebery, Eva, was interested in art and known to Kenneth Clark and other directors of the national art museum. The collections of the National Portrait Gallery were then stored in Mentmore during the war, along with some pieces from the Royal Collection , e.g. B. the Golden State Coach. Other works of art stored in Mentmore were e.g. B. the portraits from the Speaker's House in the Palace of Westminster as well as tapestries, furniture and the carvings of Grinling Gibbons from the Hampton Court Palace .

The collections were stored in the “battery room” - later also referred to as the “refuge” - part of the “gas house”, a group of outbuildings for the supply of gas and electricity to the property. Four people guarded the refuge at night and two during the day.

Sale and dissolution of the collections

The possible purchase of Mentmore Towers by the public purse with the help of the National Land Fund was the wish of Roy Strong , the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum . He hoped that Mentmore Towers, with its 19th century decorative arts, could have become part of his museum, as Ham House is for the 17th century and Osterly is for the 18th century. However, the government refused to spend such a large amount of money from the fund, and the sale did not materialize. After the death of the 6th Earl of Rosebery in 1973, the Labor government under James Callaghan refused to accept the contents of the mansion for the payment of inheritance taxes, which could have become one of the finest museums in England for European furniture, art objects and Victorian architecture. The government was offered the house and its contents for £ 2 million but turned it down. After three years of fruitless discussion, the estate's trustees sold the manor's contents in a public auction for over £ 6 million. Paintings sold included works by Gainsborough , Reynolds , Boucher , Drouais, Moroni and other world-famous artists. Among the furniture were pieces from Riesener and Chippendale . Works by the best-known German and Russian gold and silversmiths as well as enamel work were also auctioned. This Rothschild / Mentmore collection is said to have been one of the finest in the world in private hands, apart from the collections of the British and Russian royal families. The sale of the Mentmore collection is described as a turning point for the conservation movement. The Roseberys removed many pieces from Mentmore and took them to their Scottish family home, Dalmeny House near Edinburgh . These include tapestries, porcelain from Sèvres and a horse statue “King Toms” by Joseph Boehm . King Tom was Baron Mayer de Rothschild's first breeding stallion.

Maharishi Foundation

Mentmore Towers became the headquarters for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's educational charity, the Maharishi Foundation , in 1978 . From 1997 the Natural Law Party also rented rooms in the manor house. The building was also offered for sale in 1997, but did not find a buyer until 1999 in the investor "Simon Halabi".

Simon Halabi

Mentmore Towers Ltd was founded under Halabi to restore the mansion to a luxury hotel with 171 suites, 122 of which were in a new building on the slope below the mansion. But in September 2004, Jonathan Davey , who lived in Mentmore, obtained an injunction from the High Court of Justice to suspend construction until a normative review process determined whether the planning permission had been legitimately granted. In March 2005, the High Court ruled that the planning permission granted by the Aylesbury Vale District Council was “incontestable” and legally in order. Still, the project seemed to be done, as Halabi's real estate empire was in serious trouble due to the collapse of the real estate market. English Heritage put the mansion on its list of historic buildings in danger as work on the roof and chimneys was urgent. There is a risk of storm and rain entering the mansion, which is one of the best examples of Victorian style and craftsmanship in Britain. Halabi's real estate company, Buckingham Securities Holdings , also offered to redevelop the In & Out Club (79-81, Piccadilly, London, also known as Cambridge House , once inhabited by Lord Palmerston ) before becoming the Naval and Military Club '' has been. Both properties were to be transformed into Europe's first 6-star hotels, one in the city and the other as a house in the same style in the country with a 36-hole golf course. In 2005 the original architects from ERP were replaced by those from AFR, but in 2007 the development project had to be abandoned entirely. In 2004, Hotel Design Inc. was hired to plan the interior design for both houses, which in 2005 led to the presentation of the two properties as a private members club with a hotel (the PM Club ).

The final proposal - introduced after the London property was sold to Rueben Brothers in 2009 - was to renovate the original Mentmore Towers building (without a new extension) as a conference center and spa hotel.

Golf course

Most of the historic park was sold in 1944 and returned to agricultural use before becoming the Mentmore Golf and Country Club in 1992 , which consists of two 18-hole golf courses - the Rothschild Course and the Rosebury Course . Although both properties - Mentmore Towers and Land and Mentmore Golf and Country Club - are owned by the same owner, they are run separately.

In movies

The mansion has appeared in many films, e.g. B. Terry Gilliam's films Brazil and Slipstream , in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut , in Philip Kaufman's biographical film Quills - power of obsession over de Marquis de Sade , in his films The Mummy Returns , Ali G in da House and Johnny English - The Spy who sifted it and in Christopher Nolan's film Batman Begins , where the mansion served as the Gothic Wayne Manor .

1982 filming director Howard Guard the video for Avalon by Roxy Music in Mentmore Towers, with Sophie Ward played the lead role. It was also used as a location for Mike Oldfield's video for Magic Touch (directed by Alex Proyas , 1987/88), Enya's video for Only If… (1997), the Spice Girls video for Goodbye (1998) and the video for the band ATC on Thinking of You (2000). The mansion also appeared in the episode Cherubim and Seraphim of the Inspector Morse series , Oxford Homicide Division as the location for the rave party.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Hall: Waddesdon Manor . Harry N. Abrams, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8109-3239-3 , p. 16.
2. ↑ Michael Hall: Waddesdon Manor . Harry N. Abrams, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8109-3239-3 , p. 31. There the two architects are referred to as a team.
3. ^ Henry Russell Hitchcock: Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries . Pelican History of Art. London, Penguin Books, London 1958, p. 73.
4. ^ Mentmore House . Images of England. ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 5, 2015. 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Michael Hall: Waddesdon Manor . Harry N. Abrams, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8109-3239-3 , p. 37.
6. ^ ^{A b} Michael Hall: The Victorian Country House, from the archives of Country Life . Aurum Press, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-84513-457-0 , p. 153.
7. ^ Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe: Lord Rosebery . John Murray, London 1931, p. 116.
8. ^ Mark Girouard: The Victorian Country House . Yale 1978.
9. ^ Mentmore Towers.  ( 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. In: English Heritage list. English Heritage , Retrieved February 5, 2015.  
10. ↑ Virginia Cowles: The Rothschilds, a family of fortune . First Futura Publications, London 1975, ISBN 0-86007-206-1 .
11. ^ ^{A b} Marcus Binney, John Robinson, William Allan: SAVE Mentmore for the Nation. SAVE Britain's Heritage. London 1977.
12. ^ John Martin-Robinson: Requisitioned: The British Country House in the Second World War . Arum, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-78131-095-3 , p. 5.
13. ^ The Builder Magazine, 1852.
14. ^ Michael Hall: The Victorian Country House, from the archives of Country Life . Aurum Press, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-84513-457-0 , p. 16.
15. ^ ^{A b c} Leo McKinstry: Rosebery, a statesman in turmoil . John Murray, London 2005, ISBN 0-7195-6586-3 .
16. ^ ^{A b c d} John Martin-Robinson: Requisitioned: The British Country House in the Second World War . Arum, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-78131-095-3 , p. 128.
17. ^ John Martin-Robinson: Requisitioned: The British Country House in the Second World War . Arum, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-78131-095-3 , p. 129.
18. ^ ^{A b} Peter Mandler: The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home. Yale University Press, Yale 1999, ISBN 0-300-07869-2 , pp. 472 ff. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
19. ↑ Sotheby's: Mentmore Volume I-V . Sotheby, Parke, Bernet & Co, London 1977.
20. ^ Nigel R. Jones: Architecture of England, Scotland, and Wales. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005, ISBN 0-313-31850-6 , pp. 296 ff. Accessed February 5, 2015.
21. ^ Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Christopher Simon Sykes: Great Houses of Scotland. Laurence King Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1-85669-106-3 , pp. 93-99. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
22. ^ Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Christopher Simon Sykes: Great Houses of Scotland. Laurence King Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1-85669-106-3 , pp. 100 ff. Accessed February 5, 2015.
23. ↑ ^{a b} Louise Jury: Stately home for sale: could suit yogic flyer or maharishi . The Independent, May 13, 1997.
24. ↑ Revealed: Buyer of the In and Out Club . Sunday Business, November 12, 2000.
25. ^ EPR Architects, Mentmore Towers . ERP. ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 6, 2015. 
26. ^ Mentmore Towers . English Heritage. ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 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 February 6, 2015. 
27. ^ Mentmore Towers. Di Camillo Companion. Retrieved on February 6, 2015. ( Memento of February 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
28. ^ The Dark Knight Location Travel Guide . Empire Online. Retrieved February 6, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Mentmore Towers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Mentmore Golf and Country Club website