Eaton Hall, Cheshire

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Eaton Hall
Cheshire
File:Eaton Hall 2006.jpg
Eaton Hall
Location
Grid reference: SJ41406070
Village: Belgrave, Cheshire
History
Built 1989-1991
For: The Duke of Westminster
Country house
French château-style
Information
Owned by: The Duke of Westminster

Eaton Hall is the country house of the Duke of Westminster. It is in the little village of Belgrave in Cheshire, a mile south of the larger village of Eccleston. The house is surrounded by its own formal gardens, parkland, farmland and woodland. The estate covers about 10,872 acres.

The first substantial house on the site was built in the 17th century. During the early 19th century it was replaced by a much larger house designed by William Porden. This in turn was replaced by an even larger house, with outbuildings and a chapel, designed by Alfred Waterhouse. Its construction started in 1870 and concluded about 12 years later. By 1960 the fabric of the house had deteriorated and, like many other mansions during this period, it was demolished, although the chapel and many of the outbuildings were retained. A new house was built but its design was not considered to be sympathetic to the local landscape, and in the late 1980s it was re-cased and given the appearance of a French château.

The house has been surrounded by formal gardens since the 17th century, the design of which has changed over the centuries in accordance with contemporary ideas and fashions, as has the surrounding parkland. A variety of buildings are included in the estate, some decorative, others built for the business of the estate; many of these are listed buildings. The house and estate are not normally open to the public, but the gardens are open on three days a year to raise money for charity, and some of the estate's buildings can be hired for charitable purposes.

Halls

Eaton Hall has been the country house of the Grosvenor family since the 15th century. There is evidence of a two-storey house on a moated site in the estate in a 17th century estate map and an 18th century engraving. A survey undertaken in 1798 showed that the building was still present.[1]

It has long been the practice of the Grosvenors to replace and rebuild their seat, latterly with every new Duke. There have therefore been several halls on the site.

Samwell Hall

File:Eaton Hall by Kip 1708 edited.jpg
The estate, showing the Samwell Hall in 1708
File:Eaton Hall (Samwell).jpg
The entrance front of the Samwell house

The first substantial house was built for Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet. He inherited the estate at the age of 8 when he succeeded his grandfather, Sir Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Baronet, who died in 1665. The new owner commissioned the architect William Samwell to design the house. Building started in 1675; much of the stone used was brought from the ruined Holt Castle in Denbighshire. By 1683 the cost of building the house had risen to over £1,000.

An engraving of the time shows the house to have been a substantial square house with three storeys and dormers. The entrance front had nine bays and a portico. The engraving also shows the earlier moated house to the south of the new house.[2]

Porden Hall

File:Eaton Hall - Porden.jpg
Hall as designed by William Porden

By the time that Robert Grosvenor, then the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, and later the 1st Marquess of Westminster, inherited the estate in 1802, the Samwell Hall had become old-fashioned and in need of renovation. Grosvenor appointed William Porden to plan the improvements. Building started in 1803 and Porden (later assisted by Porden's son-in-law Joseph Kay) estimated it would take three years to build at a cost of £10,000. In the event it took just under 10 years and cost over £100,000. The previous house was encased and surrounded by "every possible permutation of the gothic style";[3] including turrets, pinnacles, arched windows, octagonal towers, and buttresses (both regular and flying).[4] Two new wings were added in the first stage, and in the 1820s more wings were added, by this time under the direction of Benjamin Gummow. The interior of the house was as lavish as the exterior, with more Gothic detailing. The hangings for the state bed included 97 yards of purple damask and 103 yards of sarsenet (fine silk) trimmed with gold lace. When the future Queen Victoria visited in 1832 at the age of 13, she wrote in her journal: "The house is magnificent".[5][6] Others described it as being "as extravagant and opulent as the very latest upholsterer-decorators could make it". A critic found it "the most gaudy concern I ever saw" and "a vast pile of mongrel gothic which ... is a monument of wealth, ignorance and bad taste".[5]

Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, succeeded his father in 1845 and commissioned William Burn to make alterations to the house. Burn raised the centre of the south front to make it look like a tower, and changed some of the external Gothic features.[5] The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described this house as a "spectacular Gothic mansion".[7]

Waterhouse Hall

File:Eaton Hall c 1880 - Waterhouse's version. Photo by Francis Bedford (died 1894).JPG
The garden front of the Waterhouse Hall about 1880
File:Eaton Hall 1907.jpg
The entrance front of the Waterhouse Hall about 1907 showing the main block and chapel

The 2nd Marquess died in 1869 and was succeeded by his son Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, initially the 3rd Marquess and from 1874 the 1st Duke of Westminster. He appointed Alfred Waterhouse to design another new hall. Again the core of the previous hall was retained; parts were refaced and re-modelled, other parts were completely rebuilt. A private wing was built for the use of the family, and this was joined to the main part of the hall by a corridor. Waterhouse also designed the chapel and a clock-house, and rebuilt most of the stabling.[8] The work began in 1870, took 12 years to complete, and cost £803,000.

The library was 90 feet long, the dining room with its ante room was 105 feet long, and the octagonal great hall contained an organ. For the interior, Henry Stacy Marks painted a frieze of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims for the morning room, Gertrude Jekyll painted panels for the drawing room, and in other rooms were paintings by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Reynolds.[9] Pevsner wrote that it "was an outstanding expression of High Victorian originality", and added "this Wagnerian palace was the most ambitious instance of Gothic Revival domestic architecture anywhere in the country".[7] The Daily Telegraph described it as "one of the most princely and beautiful mansions that these islands contain".[10]

In 1902 the 2nd Duke gave the large alabaster, porphyry and green serpentine chimneypiece from the Ante-Drawing Room as a wedding present to his sister Lettice, Countess Beauchamp.[11] In 1910 it was carefully dismantled and re-erected at her house, Madresfield Court, Malvern, by the architect Randall Wells, to become the focus of his new top-lit Staircase Hall, where it survives.[12]

During both World Wars, parts of the hall were used as a hospital. In 1943, the Britannia Royal Naval College moved to the hall from Dartmouth when the college there was bombed. It moved back to Dartmouth in 1946, after which the hall was used as an officer cadet training unit until the end of National Service in 1958.[8]

Dennys Hall and the present hall

By 1960 the hall needed repair and decoration, and dry rot was found in the roof. In 1963 Gerald Grosvenor, 4th Duke of Westminster, decided to demolish the main part of the Waterhouse building and the private wing whilst retaining the chapel, clock tower and stables.[8] A new building was commissioned by the Duke, who appointed John Dennys, his wife's brother-in-law, as architect.[13] Dennys had earlier worked on Saighton Grange on the Eaton estate.[13]

The intention was to build a modern, manageable home. The result was a rectangular, flat-roofed building, faced with white Travertine, its "whiteness [being] a stark contrast to the softness of the Cheshire landscape".[13] Its construction began in 1971, it took less than two and a half years to build, and cost £459,000. The exterior had a central porte-cochère on the entrance front. The house followed an asymmetrical plan, with two storeys plus a basement containing a swimming pool. A central two-storey hall gave access to the principal rooms, with the main reception rooms being on the first floor. The decor included wall coverings in silk and woodblock floors.[13]

Subsequently, the Dennys Hall was considered to be unsympathetic to its setting, and it was decided to change its exterior. This was undertaken by the Percy Thomas Partnership. Work on recasing the Dennys Hall to make it look more like a French château began in 1989 and was completed in 1991.[14] The result has not been widely praised; the 2011 Pevsner Architectural Guides|Cheshire Pevsner describes the building as "Château style, (Waterhouse's) Eaton style, but also Tesco style".[15]

Associated structures

File:Eaton Chapel 5.jpg
Eaton Chapel

Adjacent to the hall are the remaining structures designed by Waterhouse. To the north is Eaton Chapel; this, with its clock tower, is a Grade I listed building. The decorative scheme of the interior of the chapel is based on the 'Te Deum'; it involves stained glass and stone mosaic, and was developed by Frederic Shields.[16] Immediately to the north of the chapel is the Stable Court; this is listed at Grade II*.[17] The buildings in the Stable Court are in brick, red stone, and half-timbering, with red tile roofs. The west range has a half-timbered upper storey with two gables, and a central gatehouse with turrets which are polygonal at the base and circular higher up and have conical roofs. On each side of the gatehouse are two-storey arcades with gables above. In the courtyard is a statue of a horse by Joseph Boehm,[18] which is Grade II listed.[19] At the southeast corner of the stable yard is a postillion's house, dated 1873 and listed Grade II* listed.[20] In a lobby between the stable yard and the chapel is a Grade II* listed artificial grotto.[21] In the area around the Stable Court are further structures listed at Grade II. To the north is the Coachhouse Court, which consists of a coach-house, a covered court and a riding school. These were designed in the 1870s for the 1st Duke.[22] To the north of this are Eaton Hall Cottages, four attached cottages, which were designed about the same time.[23] In the forecourt between the Coachhouse Court and the cottages is a lodge, with gates, piers and screens.[24] Near to the cottages is the former engine shed of the Eaton Hall Railway.[25] To the east of the stable yard is a chapel-like sandstone game pantry dating from the 1870s.[26]

From 1896 until 1947, the estate was served by the 15-inch gauge Eaton Hall Railway. The line ran from the hall to a depot at Balderton on the Chester-Wrexham line, and a spur went to Cuckoo's Nest, where there was a repair yard. Part of the old railway route was re-opened in 1996.

Grounds

File:Entrance Lodge, Eaton Hall, Cheshire (Seat of the Marquis of Westminster) by Henry Fox Talbot.jpg
Entrance Lodge, Eaton Hall, Cheshire by Henry Fox Talbot, c.1845

The estate covers an area of about 10,872 acres, within which about 1,235 acres of parkland and about 50 acres of formal gardens. These are listed at Grade II* on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.[27] The boundaries of the estate generally follow field boundaries but on the east side they follow the line of the River Dee.

History

In the 17th century, formal gardens were created around the Samwell Hall; these included such features as parterres and canals.[28] However they were costly to maintain, and in the later part of the 18th century fashions changed to favour a more informal type of garden layout.[29] Credit for designing the informal gardens at Eaton Hall has been given to Lancelot "Capability" Brown.[30] Although one of Brown's documents dated 1764 shows that payment was made to him by the estate, it also notes that a plan for the garden had been drawn up by William Emes. From this, Marion Mako concludes that, as Brown was an engineer as well as a landscape gardener, the payment was for an engineering project rather than for landscaping.[31] Emes had been influenced by Brown, although he had not been his pupil. With his clerk of works, Thomas Leggett, Emes worked in the estate for the next 10 years.[32] When Robert Grosvenor (later the 1st Marquess) inherited the estate at the beginning of the 19th century, it had become run-down. The marquess appointed John Webb, a pupil of Emes, to improve the garden and the landscaping. Among Webb's innovations were new terrace walls behind the house, the levelling of Belgrave Avenue and the planting of 130,000 trees along it, and a serpentine lake to the east of the house alongside the River Dee. He also arranged for the construction of greenhouses and a kitchen garden.[33]

File:EatonHall1857.jpg
Formal garden in the mid-19th century

Fashions changed again, and in the 1820s William Andrews Nesfield was employed to design new parterres. He also built more terracing and a balustraded wall. Statues, stone urns and vases on pedestals were added to the garden.[34] In 1852 the Camellia House was built; this was extended in 1870 to its final size of 385 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 18 feet high. The present kitchen garden was created the same year; this provided the food not only for the hall, but also for Grosvenor House in London. More greenhouses were built and, by about 1880, 56 gardeners were employed. There were other building works in the grounds. Waterhouse created a grotto between the chapel and the stable yard, and designed the Parrot House and a loggia (now known as the Temple). The Chester architect John Douglas designed the Dutch Tea House in the Tea Garden, and a number of service buildings in the estate. In 1897–98 Edwin Lutyens started to improve what had been known as the Italian Garden (and is now the Dragon Garden).[35]

Work continued in the gardens and grounds during the 20th century. The 2nd Duke commissioned Detmar Blow, a pupil of Lutyens, to re-design parts of the gardens. With Fernand Billerey, he removed the parterres, built a canal leading away from the house, added hedged compartments to the terraces, and a pond at the base of the terraces (now the Lioness and Kudu Pond).[36] During the Second World War, part of the parkland was requisitioned as an airfield, and in 1940 some of the garden buildings were damaged by a cluster of incendiary devices.[37] After the war, improvement of the gardens did not resume until the 1960s, when the wives of the 4th and 5th Dukes worked with the designer James Russell.[38] Since the early 1990s, the gardens have been further developed under the 6th Duke and his wife, Natalia, working with the garden designers Arabella Lennox-Boyd and Vernon Russell Smith.[39]

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References

  1. ↑ Anon. 2002, p. 2.
  2. ↑ Anon. 2002, pp. 2–3.
  3. ↑ Newton & Lumby 2002, p. 22.
  4. ↑ Newton & Lumby 2002, pp. 22, 24.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Newton & Lumby 2002, p. 24.
  6. ↑ "Queen Victoria's Journals". Lord Esher's typescripts. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W). 16 October 1832. http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/search/displayItem.do?FormatType=fulltextimgsrc&&QueryType=articles&ResultsID=2738799936786&ItemID=qvj00077&ItemNumber=1&PageNumber=1&volumeType=ESHER. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Pevsner & Hubbard 2003, p. 208.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Anon. 2002, p. 6.
  9. ↑ Newton & Lumby 2002, pp. 27, 29.
  10. ↑ Newton & Lumby 2002, p. 29.
  11. ↑ <John de la Cour>. "Madresfield Court Guide Book". https://www.elmley.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/madresfield-court/guidebook.pdf. 
  12. ↑ Pevsner, Nikolaus (1968). Worcestershire. The Buildings of England.. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 de_Figueiredo & Treuherz 1988, pp. 87–95.
  14. ↑ Anon. 2002, p. 10.
  15. ↑ Hartwell et al. 2011, p. 347.
  16. ↑ National Heritage List 1330615: Eaton Chapel north of Eaton Hall (Grade @ listing)
  17. ↑ National Heritage List 1330616: Stable Court north of Eaton Chapel (Grade II* listing)
  18. ↑ Pevsner & Hubbard 2003, pp. 209–210.
  19. ↑ National Heritage List 1136244: Equestrian statue and plinth at centre of Stable Court (Grade II listing)
  20. ↑ National Heritage List 1136231: Former postillion's house at south-east corner of Stable Court (Grade II* listing)
  21. ↑ National Heritage List 1129928: Grotto in recess right of lobby between stable yard and chapel
  22. ↑ National Heritage List 1129929: Coach House Court north of Stable Court yard with riding school and yard walls (Grade II listing)
  23. ↑ National Heritage List 1136257: Eaton Hall Cottages 30 metres north of Coach House Court (Grade @ listing)
  24. ↑ National Heritage List 1129923: Lodge, gates, piers and screens to forecourt between Coach House Court and Eaton Hall Cottages (Grade @ listing)
  25. ↑ National Heritage List 1330617: Former Eaton Railway Engine Shed north of Eaton Hall Cottages (Grade @ listing)
  26. ↑ National Heritage List 1330231: Game Pantry east of stable yard (Grade @ listing)
  27. ↑ National Heritage List 1000127: Eaton Hall (Grade @ listing)
  28. ↑ Mako 2009, pp. 5–12.
  29. ↑ Mako 2009, p. 12.
  30. ↑ Pevsner & Hubbard 2003, p. 210.
  31. ↑ Mako 2009, pp. 12, 14.
  32. ↑ Mako 2009, p. 14.
  33. ↑ Mako 2009, pp. 16–21.
  34. ↑ Mako 2009, pp. 21–22.
  35. ↑ Mako 2009, pp. 24–29.
  36. ↑ Mako 2009, p. 31.
  37. ↑ Mako 2009, p. 33.
  38. ↑ Mako 2009, pp. 33, 36.
  39. ↑ Groves 2004, pp. 70, 72, 74.
  • Anon. (2002), Eaton Halls, Eaton: Eaton Estate 
  • de Figueiredo, Peter; Treuherz, Julian (1988), Cheshire Country Houses, Chichester: Phillimore, ISBN 978-0-85033-655-9, https://archive.org/details/cheshirecountryh0000defi 
  • Groves, Linden (2004), Historic Parks & Gardens of Cheshire, Ashbourne: Landmark, ISBN 978-1-84306-124-3 
  • Newton, Diana; Lumby, Jonathan (2002), The Grosvenors of Eaton, Eccleston, Cheshire: Jennet Publications, ISBN 978-0-9543379-0-2 
  • Mako, Marion (2009), The Gardens at Eaton Hall, Eaton: Eaton Estate 
  • George Ormerod; Thomas Helsby (Ed.) (1882), The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (2nd ed.), London: George Routledge and Sons 
  • Hartwell, Clare; Hyde, Matthew; Hubbard, Edward; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2011), Cheshire, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-17043-6 
  • Taylor, Keith; Stewart, Brian (2006), Call to Arms: Officer Cadet Training at Eaton Hall 1943-1958, ISBN 978-0-9554528-0-2 
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