Property Notes, Anecdotes & Ephemera. Country House Property Blog from Lakes & Country

Stained Glass Work at Foxcroft

2007-07-05T09:15:00.000Z

Stained glass work to gallery window

The most prominent stained glass work at Foxcroft is to the arched gallery window over the principal staircase, with its detailed naturalistic motifs assumed to pictorialise Haverigg to which the window looks, meaning from the Old Norse, the ridge where oats are grown. The stained glass is in the tradition of Morris, Burnes-Jones and notably Holiday, who had completed his commission at Muncaster Castle just prior to Foxcroft’s construction.

Foxcroft is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Foxcroft

2007-07-02T09:14:00.000Z

Foxcroft is a fine example of Victorian domestic architecture, gardens and grounds concealed within a woodland shelterbelt and accessed by a long sweeping rhododendron drive. Located a short distance from the Hodbarrow peninsula, and the coastal habitat of Haverigg Haws, Foxcroft has the Black Combe massif to the north, and the duned beaches of Haverigg to the south, a landscape evocatively described by the poet Norman Nicholson.

A product of late 19th century prosperity, Foxcroft was built in 1884 for John Fox, associate of William Brockbank and deputy at the family-run Bank Springs Brewery, Kirkstanton. Alongside mining and shipping interests, the Brockbank family developed a profitable brewery dynasty, owning between twenty and thirty licenced properties in the Millom area until the 1950’s, when the estate was dispersed upon the death of the last surviving heir, Arthur Fox-Brockbank.

The house is of sandstone construction under a high-pitched slate roof, with tall corniced stacks, timber work to gable ends, pitched dormer, decorative string course, label moulds, ridge tiling and finials. A red sandstone tablet to fenestration has initials JF and the date 1884.

Foxcroft is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

William Brockbank

2007-06-28T09:13:00.000Z

Portrait of William Brockbank from photograph by J. Hargreaves of Millom. Original transcription published by The Whitehaven News, May 19, 1899.

Foxcroft is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Regency Splendour

2007-06-27T09:01:00.000Z

Birkby Lodge is a fine example of 19th century polite architecture in the Regency manner, a classic composite of house, interior and gardens surrounded by its own land. Ideally located on the Solway Coast, the property is tucked into a natural prominence with expansive views west to the sea and Galloway ranges of Criffel and Cairnsmore of Fleet, and east to the Lakeland ranges of Skiddaw and Grisedale Pike.

Noted by Pevsner in The Buildings of England: Cumberland and Westmorland (1967), Birkby Lodge is believed to date from 1844, occupying a site of much earlier provenance, being the original seat of the Bigland and Beeby family. Reflecting the maritime prosperity of early 19th century Maryport, Birkby Lodge stands along the promontary of fine mansions and villas overlooking the sea built during this period by merchants, ship builders and sea masters. Thought to have been built for the Scaife family, of Bigland and Beeby descent, the property finally passed out of the ancestral line at the end of the 19th century.

The house is of rendered sandstone construction under a hipped slate roof with deep overhanging eaves. Symmetrically ‘Regency’ in massing and proportion, the three-storey, three-bay house has a part raised basement with side railing entrance, Graeco-Italian portico of unfluted Ionic columns and blank arched window recesses to ground floor. Equally ‘Regency’ in its interior, the elegantly proportioned arrangement of rooms have shuttered sash windows with fine glazing bars, ornate fireplaces, decorative stucco moulding, cornicing and drapery of classical motif.

Carefully restored and furnished in the classical repertoire, the house is augemented by restoration of the formal gardens, and complemented by an ongoing programme of new planting, opening each year to the public as an NGS garden.

Birkby Lodge is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Black Combe

2007-06-25T09:05:00.000Z

Black Combe from Millom, early 20th century postcard.

The air clarifies. Rain
Has clocked off for the day.

The wind scolds in from Sligo,
Ripping the calico-grey from a pale sky.
Black Combe holds tight
To its tuft of cloud, but over the three-legged island
All the west is shining.

An hour goes by,
And now the starched collars of the eastern pikes
Streak up into a rinse of blue. Every
Inland fell is glinting;
Black Combe alone still hides
Its bold, bleak forehead, balaclava’d out of sight.

Slick fingers of wind
Tease and fidget at wool-end and wisp,
Picking the mist to bits.
Strings and whiskers
Fray off from the cleft hill’s
Bilberried brow, disintegrate, dissolve
Into blue liquidity -
Only a matter of time
Before the white is wholly worried away
And Black Combe starts to earn its name again.

But where, in the west, a tide
Of moist and clear-as-a-vacuum air is piling
High on the corried slopes, a light
Fret and haar of hazy whiteness
Sweats off the cold rock; in a cloudless sky
A cloud emulsifies,
Junkets on sill and dyke.
Wool-end and wisp materialize
Like ectoplasm, are twined
And crocheted to an off-white,
Over-the-lughole hug-me-tight;
And Black Combe’s ram’s-head, butting at the bright
Turfed and brackeny brine,
Gathers its own wool, plucks shadow out of shine.

What the wind blows away
The wind blows back again.

Cloud on Black Combe by Norman Nicholson

From Sea to the West (1981)
Norman Nicholson. Selected Poems 1940-1982, Faber and Faber.

Victorian Dower House

2007-04-23T15:31:00.000Z

Panelled Principal Hall with late 19th century cast iron enamelled stove in decorative fireplace surround

Park House is a fine example of mid-Victorian domestic architecture in the villa manner, popularised through the early work of John James Burnet (1814-1901).

Tradition has it that the property was built as a Dower House for the mother-in-law of the 6th Earl of Selkirk, Lord Daer, Dumbar James Douglas, of St Mary’s Isle, Kirkcudbright, heir of the illustrious Fifth Earl, Thomas Douglas, who founded the Red River Settlement in Canada, and Lady Selkirk, Jean Wedderburn, who effectively ran the north American operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company (1815 -1819). Prominent in the intellectual life of the time, friends of the Selkirk’s included Scott and Burns, both frequent visitors to St Mary’s Isle. Lord Daer had no heir, and the estate passed to his sister Lady Isabella Hope, whose husband was Hon. Charles Hope, who briefly occupied Park House in the 1890’s. Ownership of Park House finally passed out of the dynastic line in the early 20th century.

Believed to have been built between 1842 and 1866, the house is of granite construction under a hipped high-pitched double slate roof with sweeping dormers, high chimney stacks, rusticated quoins and label mounds to fenestration. Rectilinear in plan with a projecting asymmetrical wing at right angles, the massing has two fully unified front elevations, and with the absence of ornament, a design more villa than country house.

The original layout has a simplicity and clarity of proportion, being a classic composite of principal public and private bedroom accommodation off a central spinal hall to ground and first floors, complemented by garret service accommodation to second floor and secondary service quarters, liberally interspersed with closets. Later additions include a two-storey service tower of brick construction with weatherboarded outshut to east elevation.

The house retains much of its original fabric, including panelling, sashes and fireplaces.

Park House is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Two informative essays on Lord and Lady Selkirk in Manitoba, The Quest for a Usable Founder: Lord Selkirk and Manitoba Historians, 1856-1923 and Lady Selkirk and the Fur Trade, are available online from The Manitoba Historical Society.

New Naturalist Series- Galloway and the Borders

2007-04-22T15:50:00.000Z

NN’s distinctive dust-jacket design by Robert Gillmor

Conceived during wartime, the New Naturalist has provided expert accounts of Britain’s natural history for 60 years. Each volume in the series is a themed exploration of one particular subject, encyclopaedic in its breadth of knowledge, and beautifully illustrated with colour plates.

The latest volume Galloway and the Borders is a fitting tribute to its author, Derek Ratcliffe, who died shortly after completing the manuscript in 2005.

Ratcliffe’s first-hand account of this relatively unknown region is startling in its observations, at once a lament for the wealth of nature lost in our lifetimes, a celebration of a beautiful upland landscape, and an attempt to conserve it, in a rapidly changing climate.

Drifting masses of cumulus casting shadows over vast desolate hills carpeted in heather, block screes of grey granite and broad watersheds and peatlands—these are the abiding images which have made Ratcliffe’s images conservation icons—many of which liberally illustrate this volume, none more so than the images of vast waves of conifers breaking over the uplands of Kircudbrightshire.

Whilst Ratcliffe casts a broadstroke over the region, his real strength is illuminating the particular, whether its a ground nest of peregrine, a rare pyramidal bugle, a stonecrop on shore shingle, a waxwing in search of berries, or a young golden eagle feeding small young - the region is brought to life in all its affirmative diversity.

Published by HarperCollins
£45 (hardback) £25 (paperback)

Victorian Lake House

2007-03-15T11:54:00.000Z

Last property on left

Tucked into the picturesque Ullswater Valley by Glenridding pier, Crag Close is a classic slate-stone house with characteristic gabled elevations, rusticated quoins, projecting courses of through stones and cylindrical chimney stacks in the vernacular manner. As its name implies, Crag Close is set against a backdrop of terraced rock and fellside, with garden planted to RHS standard, elevated viewing point to Lake, and entertaining terrace off principal accommodation.

The house is fully restored and immaculately finished.

Vista from viewing point

Crag Close is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Threapland Hall - Terra Contentionis

2007-01-16T16:08:00.000Z

An evocative site of medieval provenance, Threapland Hall occupies a fold in the lay of the land above the village green, appearing from its Anglo-Saxon name of threap, ‘to dispute’, to have been at some early date a ‘bone of contention’, the terra contentionis. Although the nature of the original dispute is unknown, it is cognisant that the Manor of Threapland emerged as a ‘capita’ or residence of strategic import in the ensuing wars with Scotland, being associated first with Alan, lord of Allerdale and Ketel, his steward, and later, Michael de Hercla and William de Mulcaster, in the reign of Edward II. Granted to Henry de Malton in 1316, the manor passed through various prominent families, including the Skelton’s in 1392, the Salkeld’s of Whitehall in 1623, the Gregs of Mirehouse, to Roger Williamson Esq. in 1767. Affirming its status, Jackson’s ‘A Reminiscence of Threapland Hall’ was printed in 1694.

Threapland Hall is believed to date from the early 16th century, with probable origins as a fortified tower house, though the extant hall is more likely to be of transitional type (Perriam and Robinson, The Medieval Fortified Buildings of Cumbria, 1998). The rectangular form of deep roughcast walls, three storeys in height and connected at each level by a newel staircase set within one corner, and a garderobe at the other, is consistent with the period (Brunskill, Traditional Buildings of Cumbria, 2002).

As early as the 18th Century, Threapland Hall appears to have lost its manorial eminence and became a tenanted farmhouse, its remaining 167 acres being let then finally sold by Roger Williamson Esq. in 1802, passing thereafter through the farming families of the Holidays and Slacks until 1931, and marking a typically accretive period of alterations to the earlier hall. The medieval and Tudor hearths, fireplaces, doorways, windows and garderobe were blocked or concealed, and roughcast walls rendered. Further remodelling included the addition of a two storey wing and staircase tower during the 19th century. By 1967, the pre-eminence of the hall was lost and unrecorded in Pevsner’s Buildings of England: Cumberland and Westmorland.

With new ownership, the hall has been subject to thorough and sensitive restoration, revealing much of its original form. Of particular note, interventions to the fabric have recovered the previously sealed arched fireplaces to sitting room and kitchen, a Tudor fireplace and garderobe closet to second bedroom, and a Tudor doorframe with ribbed mouldings to master bedroom. Interventions to the roughcast walling include reinstatement of previously blocked window apertures to elevations and recovery of a former entrance to ground floor through retraction of partial banking.

Landscaped gardens, separate bank barn dating from the 16th century and a former coach house complete the picturesque complex.

Threapland Hall is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Cast Iron Decoration

2007-01-15T16:11:00.001Z

The aesthetic value of cast iron decoration in the Victorian period, illustrated in the context of Tallantire Hall [A Grade II Listed Lamp-Post, posted May 16, 2006], is given the full survey treatment by E. Graeme Robertson in Cast Iron Decoration. A World Survey. An authoritative work of reference, Cast Iron traces the flowering of ironwork forms in the 19th century, and compiles the variety and richness of cast iron decoration, its national variations, its relationship to architecture, and its contribution to the aesthetics of buildings.

Cast Iron Decoration. A World Survey by E. Graeme Robertson and Joan Roberson.
Thames & Hudson. Published May 2007. £35.00 ISBN 978 0 500 232545

The Chapel at Crawfordton House

2007-01-08T13:33:00.000Z

The school choir performing in the chapel, 1984

The private chapel at Crawfordton House is an exquisite example of High Victorian romanticism, believed to date from the late 19th century, and extended in the 1950's. Of timber-frame construction, with steeply pitched Gothic gables and leaded glass lights, the chapel is set in woodland and reached by a path flanked by specimen trees and Rhododendrons. The intimate interior retains an atmosphere of congregation, complete with ecclesiastical furniture and fittings.

Crawfordton House is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Crawfordton in Concert

2006-12-12T11:02:00.000Z

Reverse cover of LP

An intriguing piece of ephemera, Crawfordton in Concert was recorded at Crawfordton House in the summer of 1984 and performed by pupils and guest musicians during the course of the school year. At the time of recording, the school numbered 80 pupils ranging in age from 6 to 13½ years.

The reverse cover of the LP (pictured) is a collage of performance pictures, illustrating the interiors of the house and chapel in 1984.

“The school orchestra plays daily in our morning and chapel service, the choir sings in both Scottish and English prep school gatherings and performs by invitation at outside churches as well as leading our own Carol Service and Sunday services. A full opera is staged annually at Easter, and concerts are given at Christmas and at our Summer Speech Day”.

The recordings include music by Fiocco (1703-41), Baston (18th Century) and Fasch (1688-1758).

Crawfordton House is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

George Gustavus Walker of Crawfordton House

2006-12-11T10:33:00.000Z

The Annals of Glencairn

Extract from The Annals of Glencairn:
“Sir George succeeded to the estate of Crawfordton on the death of his father, Mr John Walker, D. L., in 1857. He afterwards purchased Jarbuck and the Hill of Peelton, and on the latter property he built in 1863-66 a handsome mansion, where he resided until his death on 5th August, 1897. Sir George’s public life began in 1855, where he joined the Dumfriesshire Militia, at the age of twenty-five, with the rank of Captain. He afterwards devoted a large part of his time to developing and perfecting the defensive forces of the country. In 1859 he appeared in the political arena as an independent candidate for the Dumfries Burghs, against the late Mr William Ewart. Although unsuccessful at the poll on that occasion, he was returned unopposed as member for the County in 1865 in succession to the late Mr Hope-Johnstone of Annandale. He had the distinction of being appointed Aide-de-Camp to the Queen in 1884, and knighthood was conferred upon him in 1892. The following appreciation by one who knew him intimately forms a fitting tribute to his memory:

There was in him an instinctive hatred of anything that bordered upon duplicity and time-serving, and he would condemn such conduct in language forcibly and true. He knew what he felt and meant himself, and he took care that others knew it also. Such thorough-going, outspoken honesty is especially valuable in a soft and selfish age, when principle often gives way to expediency, and men ask not what is right and what is true, but what is easy and profitable and likely to bring in a quick return...... As long as health and strength were given him he wrought loyally for others, for home and family, for country, and for Queen; now he rests from his labours, and his works do follow him.”₁

1. The Rev. Sir Emilius Laurie, Bart., B.D. In Memoriam Sermon.

Crawfordton House is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Crawfordton House- Essay in Scottish Baronial

2006-11-27T11:09:00.000Z

Crawfordton House, Moniaive. Archive sepia postcard.

Crawfordton House, built between 1863 and 1866 for Colonel George Gustavus Walker, is an important essay in Scottish Baronial by prominent Victorian architects Peddie & Kinnear.

As noted by the RCAHMS, “in the mid 19th century, houses by this practice formed part of the new thrust for national romanticism in architecture with references to forms found in the tower houses and castles of the Scottish Renaissance period. The Scottish Baronial style, which was characterised by asymetrical elevations, corbelled turrets and crow-stepped gables, provided the semblance of fortified living on the exterior whilst insisting on the convenience and luxury of Victorian modern living on the interior.”

Crawfordton House is entered via an impressive main staircase - a familiar leitmotif of Peddie & Kinnear - which leads up to the principal rooms on the first floor, and family bedrooms on the second. As common to the period, servants’ quarters and services were set on the ground floor. The garden elevation exudes a Gothic air, with the house originally being the focal point of a picturesque landscape and estate.

Peddie & Kinnear would later develop their signature style at Threave House, and the practice went on to become one of the most prolific in Scottish architectural history, designing hundreds of buildings including churches, banks, offices and hotels, as well as many important public commissions, such as premises for hospitals, schools and town halls.

By World War II, Crawfordton House became a school, establishing an educational tradition at the property which continued until closure this year.

Crawfordton House is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409.

Extracts from the RCAHMS. Full article and details about the Peddie & Kineer Collection available at www.rcahms.gov.uk

Crawfordton House, circa 1960.
From The Francis Frith Collection www.frithphotos.com

Victorian Dream Palaces

2006-11-20T14:35:00.000Z

Bonhams Sale
Three British Artists: Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Henry Moore
Monday 27 November 2006

Of particular note is the sale of screenprints by John Piper, many drawn from the series ‘Victorian Dream Palaces’.

Though regarded by most as an offical war artist, The British avant-garde artist John Piper (1903-1992) also produced a substantive body of work on the country house which spanned his career.

While even the war was still in progress, Osbert Sitwell had employed Piper to paint views of his family mansion, Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, in the conviction that the end of the country house was inevitable. In visits between 1942-4 Piper painted more than fifty views of the gaunt Georgian house and it desolate temples, lodges and woodland. When the series was exhibited in January 1945, Sitwell introduced the catalogue:

“At the very moment the great English houses, the chief architectural expression of their country, are passing, being wrecked by happy and eager planners, or becoming the sterilised and scionless possessions of the National Trust, a painter has appeared to hand them on to future ages, as Canaletto or Guardi handed on the dying Venice of their day, and with equally immitable art.”

Studying a scene, he chose from its spectrum of colours those which seemed to represent its inner spirit, and intensified them. The pictures are as empty of figures as designs for stage-sets, but he succeeded in projecting a human presence in that intensity of colour.

The artist wrote of Seaton Delaval in 1945: “Ochre and flame-licked, pock-marked and stained in purplish umber and black. .... House and landscape are seared by the the east wind, and riven with fretting industrialism, but they still withstand the noise and neglect, the fires and hauntings of twentieth-century life. Its main block an untenanted stone shell, the Hall is somehow alive, unlike many stately homes”

The Bonhams sale includes Milton Enest Hall, Edttington Park, Flintham Hall, Harlaxton through the gate, Shadwell Park and Wightwick Manor from the ‘Victorian Dream Palaces’ series of 1977, as well as Buckden in a storm (1977), Willington Dovecote (1978), East Barsham Manor (1981), St Helen Hall (1981), Buckden Palace (1982), Carew Castle (1982), and Cannons Asby (1983), and others. Lot estimates are from £300 upwards.

To bid via the internet visit www.bonhams.com


Lot 183 East Barsham Manor. Screenprint, 1981		Lot 199 Red House. Screenprint, 1987


Lot 202 Royal Holloway College. Screenprint, 1981		Lot 203 Waddeston. Screenprint, 1989

Lacy's Lodge

2006-11-14T10:38:00.000Z

In sightline of the historic monument of Long Meg, Marion Lodge is a fine Georgian farmhouse set in pastoral policies with an exquisite vista of the Eden Valley framed by the Lakeland and Pennine fells beyond.

Formerly part of the Manor of Salkeld and Addingham Parish, it is plausible that the lodge was built during improvements made to the estate by Lieut. Colonel Lacy from 1790, as the property was extant in its current form by the incumbancy of Robert Hodgson at Salkeld Hall in 1836, and clearly titled as Marion Lodge by dissolution of the ancient parish in 1894.

The double pile house has a stairwell running full depth, flanked by symmetrical rooms to front and back in the Georgian manner, and is finished with stone render and projecting bay fenestration to front. Walls of coarse red sandstone, corbelled brick chimney stacks and chamfered jambs to doorways are illustrative of a building built at the vernacular watershed.

Marion Lodge is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409

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Grade II Listed Door

2006-11-13T11:08:00.000Z

The distinctive ornament found in the former Vicar's study of the Old Vicarage, Edenhall, includes an exquisitely finished door in applied baize, a coarse woolen material something like flannel, dyed red. In addition to its ornamental function, the baize is thought to have been used as a soundproofing device. The listed room also contains finely carved inset bookcasing with red leather shelf curtains and an ornately carved fireplace with surround of Caryatid mouldings.

The Old Vicarage is for sale through Lakes & Country 01228 516409

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Long Meg

2006-11-12T10:04:00.000Z

Long Meg - postcard circa. 1958

The monument of Long Meg, thought to date from the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age (2000-600 BC), is the third largest stone circle in the British Isles, and the sixth largest in the world.

Occupying a bucolic setting, the site comprises over 60 stones arranged in a rough circle measuring 357 feet by 305 feet, while the eponymous Long Meg - a 12 foot red sandstone monolith - stands a little way outside.

The monument was popularised through accounts of antiquarian travellers, and later, the poetry of Wordsworth and WH Auden.

A weight of Awe not easy to be borne
Fell suddenly upon my spirit, cast
From the dread bosom of the unknown past,
When first I saw the family forlorn;
Speak Thou, whose massy strength and stuture scorn
The power of years - pre-eminent, and placed
Apart, to overlook the circle vast.
Speak Giant-mother! tell it to the Morn,
While she dispels the cumbrious shades of night;
Let the moon hear, emerging from a cloud,
At whose behest uprose on British ground
That Sisterhood in hieroglythic round
Forth-shadowing, some have deemed the infinate
The inviolable God that tamed the proud.

William Wordsworth, 1822

Location and directions

Tallantire Hall - WWII Memories

2006-11-08T10:55:00.000Z

Tallantire Hall - postcard. circa 1905

Extract from WW2 People's War, an archive of World War Two memories - written by the public, gathered by the BBC. Full story is available at bbc.co.uk.

“In July 1940 we were removed to Tallantire Hall near Cockermouth in Cumberland. This was an enormous Victorian house which belonged to Mrs. Barraclough. We all got up at 4.30 and travelled by train to London. We had to cross London by underground. I remember sitting for what seemed like ages on a London platform and the noise of everything was tremendous. We had our names pinned onto us. I was given a pork pie to eat. It was absolutely delicious and I spent years afterwards trying to find one as nice. Never succeeded. Obviously I was starving. We arrived at Carlisle Station late that evening and travelled to Tallantire in a lorry arriving at midnight.

There were no air raids, no bombs but Italian prisoners of war worked for the local farmers. They wore jackets with patches on the back. They were extremely friendly to us children. We had to walk two miles to school in Dovenby and two miles home and thought nothing of it. At first my mother had to make sandwiches for 26 children to take each day but later school dinners were provided. They were dreadful and we were not allowed to leave anything on the plate. The vegetable was boiled nettles which were very dark green and very strong.

The schoolmaster and his wife Mr and Mrs Haston had previously retired but were brought back. The village school had to cope with the addition of 26 children. Our lessons consisted of arithmetic, war geography and singing. Nothing else at all. The Haston's son was killed. In 1944 we moved once again.”

Judy Robson

Tallantire Hall - Coat of Arms

2006-11-07T10:50:00.000Z

The shield shows the arms of BROWNE. This is the shield with three birds in a vertical line down the shield and a lion on left and right sides. These arms were used by the Browne family, seated in Totteridge, Hertfordshire in the time of Henry VIII. Possibly the family's most illustrious branch were the Earls of Kenmare, a title that became extinct in 1952.

John Allen, Armorial Identification Service

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

2006-11-06T11:48:00.000Z

Xenakis is considered to be the most influential composer of the second half of the 20th century. His music is elemental, primordial, yet thoroughly of the present.

Xenakis’s mass conception, and in turn, stochastic music, was based upon what he called a “principle of indeterminism”. The explanation of the world, and consequently of the sound phenomenon that surrounds us, or sound which may be created, required an enlargement of the causal principle, the basis of which is formed by the law of the great numbers.

Natural events, such as the collision of hail with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field are sonic events made out of thousands of isolated sounds: this multitude of sounds, seen as a totality, is a new event. By using the statistical laws of these events, operating at a zero level of causality, Xenakis believed it was possible to create something entirely new that hadn’t existed before, but as with the familiarity of hail on the hard surface, it has the memory of something ancient, a Markov chain.

As the ancient Greeks used the structure of fugue to inform architectural order, Xenakis engaged in the translatability of stochastic method: “coda used in music and architecture are closely linked and can be substituted for one another”. Such cross-fruition emerged between 1948 and 1960 when Xenakis worked in the studio of Le Corbusier, designing in majority part the Couvent de la Tourette and Philips Pavilion. The undulating glass panes devised for the facade of la Tourette were the result of research into rhythmic patterns, whilst in the Philips Pavilion Xenakis realised the basic ideas of Metastasis, the seminal work which launched his new music to the world in 1954.

“His starting-point is not an artificial note that has detached itself from nature in order to give expression to subjectivity, but in an ‘objective’ world-noise, a ‘sound-mass’, which does not bubble up from the heart but comes upon us from outside, like rain or the voice of the wind. This world of noises in Xenakis’s compositions has become ‘beauty’ for me - a beauty without sentimental barbarism and purged of effective dirt” - Milan Kundera

Selected Discography
Synaphai-Aroura-Antikhthon - New Philharmonia Orchestra (explore)
Music for Strings - Ensemble Resonanz (mode 152)
Works for Piano - Aki Takahashi (mode 80)
Ensemble Music 2 - ST-X Ensemble (mode 56)
Kraanerg - ST-X Ensemble (Asphodel)
Iannissimo! - ST-X Ensemble (Vandenburg)
Anastenaria-Troorkh-Ais - Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks (WWE)

Floating House

2006-10-30T13:46:00.000Z

An exquisite take on the erstwhile houseboat, La Maison Flottante is currently floating on the Seine river and is moored at the "impressionist island" in Chatou. It was conceived by the Bouroullec brothers together with architects Jean-Marie Finot and Denis Daversin. It has "an aluminium skin enveloped by a wooden trellis that delimits the long alcove laid onto the rectangular platform of the boat (23m x 5m). Large flower pots placed on the terraces are the starting points of creepers that should invade the walls and roof. In the near future, plants will cover the whole, thus integrating the building with the landscape of the shores and providing further intimacy to the residents".

www.bouroullec.com

New Country House at Lowther

2006-10-12T15:52:00.000Z

The recent granting of planning permission on appeal for a new country house at Lowther has to be applauded as a resounding triumph of provenance over ignominy of the Lake District Planning Board.

The decision was right on two accounts. Firstly, it is wholly appropriate that a new country house of such architectural merit under PPS7 should be built at Lowther, given its regional significance. And secondly, the inspector rightly accepted the appellants' argument that the design showed a subtle and original handling of the Classical language, within the context of the “uninterrupted evolution of the Lowther estate for nearly a thousand years.”

The decision is a vindication of the English planning system correctly interpreted, over a short-sighted provincial board obsessed with perpetuation of misguided stasis in the Lakes. The decision will not only rejuvinate one of the county's finest country estates, but on a wider level, act as a precedent for others.

Designed by architect Craig Hamilton, one of a new generation of architects working progressively in the Classical manner, the new house will have something of the character of a towered Palladian lodge and will be sited in the old deer park at the historic heart of the estate. Parkland will run up to the new house, with deer grazing right up to the steps of a loggia. New gardens, both immediately adjacent to the house and in a new walled garden, have been designed by Rupert Golby.

Many believe the built environment within the Lakes to be at a watershed. With such a landmark decision so confidently looking to the future, just maybe the tide is turning.

Lowther Estate www.lowther.co.uk
Craig Hamilton www.intbau.org

Camerton Hall - 1919 Particulars

2006-08-21T15:39:00.000Z

These Particulars of Sale for the auction of Camerton Hall in 1919 offer an insight into the property and its constitution at the beginning of the 20th Century. Of particular historical interest are the sepia photographs of the hall, gardens and pleasure grounds.

Evidence of a property on the site goes back to 1675, with an 'old ruinous tower, standing ... at the foot of Seaton Hill'. Reports suggest that remnants of the former structure were incorporated into the existing hall, which was substantively rebuilt in 1833, and enlarged in 1886. The 1919 photographs show the property near enough in its current form.

Camerton Hall is on the market for £1.45m through Lakes & Country.

Charms of Lincolnshire

2006-07-31T15:42:00.001Z

The transvestite potter Grayson Perry, 2003 Turner prize winner and Newsnight regular, has cast his offbeat eye on the bulcolic for a new show at Victoria Miro. The Charms of Lincolnshire is based on obscure art and artifacts from the county collections, interpreted in his own signature ruse. Unlike the idyll lament perpetuated by country museums and shows, Perry’s is a more nuanced affair - at first glance charming, on closer inspection unsettling - the sinister lurking in the corners of the rural mindset, Perry’s familiar doublecrossing. So there’s a cute cream ceramic rabbit - look closer - and it’s written over and over again with the line “God, keep my children safe”. A lark’s lure - that strange object with its shining mirrors, used to charm the birds from the skies before shooting them dead. A crown turns out to be decoration for a coffin. A gravemarker resembles a dagger propped against the wall. Wax dolls, suspended from litte nooses. In rural Lincolnshire, Perry implies, innocence is as routinely corrupted as everything else; always his arguable theme. As certain as was the Victorian sun - there is a black hearse and a rusty childs coffin - intended to be “a non-triumphal monument to all the children who have died too soon”. And of course, there are Perry’s pots - bellicose urns with scenes of rural savagery blooming with flowers bearing faces screaming on the petals. Yet despite the darkness of a past where life was often cut short, the show evokes objects often overlooked, an admiration for the beautifully crafted and eloquent, even in objects of death and sorrow.

The Charms of Lincolnshire, Victoria Miro, N1, runs until Aug 12.