The New British Eccentrics?

I have recently been inspired by several new books, including Clive Aslet’s The Story of the Country House, a birthday present from my daughter and a great account of how and why our architecture developed as it did. Recipes for Surfaces, by Mindy Drucker and Pierre Finklestein, a very comprehensive collection of how to create historic paint effects, bought second-hand online, and Ruth Guilding’s delicious Bible of British Taste which I am savouring, slowly, mostly on Sunday mornings with coffee and toast. Ruth’s narrative is both personally reflective and incredibly well informed, the result of a fantastic career that allowed her access to some of the most fascinating old properties and their equally fascinating owners, across the length and breadth of the British Isles.

Ruth, like me, was a Punk in the nineteen eighties as many of our generation were, but it seems somewhat surprising that such an anarchic beginning resulted in such a deep-seated passion for the conservation of the old houses that to many represent everything about the establishment, the very thing Punks were railing against. “God save the Queen and the Fascist Regime” and all that…

But the truth of the matter is, is that most of the people that grew up with the grave family responsibility of keeping a very old country house from falling down, or being turned into yet another wedding venue or a complex of luxury apartments, were anything but conventional.  The notion of the great British eccentric grew out of our aristocracy, and with it the timeless, maximalist interiors that are such fascinating compilations of generations of hoarded possessions. Some collected for obsessive interest, some as grandiose statements of previously acquired wealth. I say previously, because it would be my guess that very few of the houses lived in today by their historic families will still be cash rich. This is usually because of combined, often war-related death duties and the enormous cost of maintaining their property assets whilst keeping the wolf from the door.

This eccentric maximalist style is something that I cannot get enough of. No clutter- conscious interior designers anywhere to be seen, these rooms represent layers of time, through different fashions, different personal tastes, different technological developments such as the discovery of new colour pigments or mechanisation. They are a tome paying homage to everything that went before and I love it and want to recreate it here, albeit on a slightly more modest scale.

In the Bible of British Taste, Ruth attributes the beginning of the architectural salvage movement to what she describes as the Spitalfields Fogies, squatters and artists who moved into the almost derelict Georgian townhouses destined for demolition in the nineteen seventies. They lived without hot (and in some cases running) water and electricity, depending on candles for light and solid fuel fires in the original Georgian fireplaces for warmth. Significantly for us now, they recognised the exquisiteness of these beautifully proportioned buildings and began to share their understanding of the aesthetic value of the original architectural details, rescuing doors, panelling and fire-surrounds from skips as the developers moved closer. As a result, Ruth explains that antiques dealers began to buy the items from this new breed of Georgian appreciators, and with this turn in the tide in the value of such things, I remember a great wave of theft, savaging old properties, and denuding them of their handsome bone structure occurring as a sad result. But as architectural salvage dealers ourselves (everything purchased properly and above board, I hasten to add!) it’s interesting to know where, when and why it all began.

As regular readers will already know, we are attempting to restore Teindside House to its former, nineteenth century glory. To us, this means using sympathetic reclaimed materials, so that you don’t notice that they’re new, and creating an interior style that is style-less. Our collection of art is totally mixed, some created by talented family members, some period pieces bought at auction, some that would be considered modern and purchased on various holiday’s. Our collection of Victorian taxidermy is not everyone’s taste. Neither are my cabinets of skeletal curiosities. We have a ten-foot-long enamel Heinz tomato fish sauce sign and a giant antique Creamer hung on the walls of our temporary kitchen, where our barn-find scrubbed table is still in its barn-find condition, and we have a lithograph of Winston Churchill in the library. Ours is no regular house renovation, not a trade or new marble kitchen worktop insight.

To liken Ant and I to the archetypical great British eccentrics would be too affected, but when I think about it, we do take unusual decisions, and we do live in an alternative dimension to most good folk. My wood-fired cooker is now raging away with my home-grown tomatoes roasting and a good ole pasta bake finishing off for tea. Ant is down in the Steading yard, welding the broken feet back on to thirty panels of nineteenth century estate fencing, destined for delivery in Devon next week. The late afternoon late October sky is leaden and there is no wind. But crisp autumn leaves are scattered gold and shades of toffee and caramel across the stoned drive, and the robin, perched on the lawnmower handle is singing sharp and shrill... Its good to be alive.