Winterstoke

by L. T. C. Rolt

  One wonders what old Josiah Leeds thought of the magnificence of Winterstoke Place after the austerity of his own modest four-square house of brick at Darley Bank on the rare occasions when he called to confer with the Earl on some financial matter. For the two men moved in different worlds which met only upon the ground of a common business interest. George Hanmer, despite the wealth which coal and iron were bringing him, still the great landowner who thinks in the aristocratic language of the past; Josiah Leeds the industrialist, the man who thinks only of the present in terms of the hard realities of furnace or machine, but who may have guessed by a kind of sub-conscious awareness, that it is in his capable hands that the future lies. ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity …’ perhaps Josiah’s thought echoed Ecclesiastes, for although he was himself a craftsman who maintained an exacting standard of workmanship in his ironworks, the exercise of human skill to create so lavish a display had no place in his philosophy. To labour truly and earnestly was a good in itself which must result in the betterment of mankind. Its fruits would be enjoyed hereafter. It should be the purpose of wealth to oil the wheels of progressive commerce, not to be wasted in sensuous satisfactions and the pleasures of the eye. So might he have thought, and in so thinking, the current of the age was moving with him.

  Unlike his father, George Hanmer was no great patron of the arts. He was an outdoor man, a typical hard-riding, hard-drinking country squire of the period who, despite his great wealth, had as little to do with current fashionable fopperies as with the new commerce. We may admire in the Winterstoke Municipal Art Gallery to-day a painting by George Stubbs which was most probably the fifth Earl’s only substantial contribution to the treasures of Winterstoke Place. Painted at some time shortly before his death in 1770 it depicts the old man, a stocky, grizzled, bullnecked figure, mounted on a cob appropriate to his weight and attended by a bewhiskered henchman and a favourite hound. The group in the foreground, the gentle slope of the park, the noble house in the distance, the trees heavy with yellowing autumn leaves which can never stir nor fall, all seem bathed in a gentle golden light which, under repeated varnishings, seems almost sub-aqueous, holding this tranquil moment of the past in perpetual suspension like a fly in amber.

  But if George Hanmer made no other positive contribution to the beauty of Winterstoke he neither neglected nor marred it, having a simple but profound respect for his father’s good taste. Thus, when his nephew, Ernest Hanmer, succeeded to the Earldom (for George had remained a bachelor) we might suppose that he, likewise, would prize so rich and so mature an inheritance. But that young man had other ideas.

  Whereas the fifth Earl in his later years was often referred to with affection behind his back as ‘Old George’, his successor was invariably known as ‘His Lordship’ or even, with bitterness, as ‘His Majesty’. Nothing could more effectively illustrate the contrast between the two men. Ernest, sixth Earl of Winterstoke, was the issue of his father’s marriage, eminently successful in the worldly sense, to the Lady Arabella Sargent who was richly endowed in both senses of the term. Not only had her beauty and wit made her a toast of the town but she had inherited a considerable fortune and brought to her husband a magnificent house in Berkeley Square. Here young Ernest grew up. By the time he left England to make the Grand Tour he had, despite his youth, already become a figure in polite society. When Ernest arrived at Winterstoke in a mud-bespattered scarlet wheeled curricle to view his inheritance, the impression created by this languid young man with his foppish clothes, mincing walk and affected manners upon retainers accustomed to the bluff and forthright provincialism of ‘Old George’ may well be imagined. But, as Winterstoke would soon discover, appearances were never more deceptive. As his uncle’s major-domo rendered an account of his stewardship, Lord Ernest seemed to be more interested in the process of snuffing himself from a minute box of gold-mounted enamel. Yet his air of boredom was no more than a fashionable veneer. The new Earl was certainly vain, but he was also ambitious, strongly self-willed and remarkably shrewd. As he flicked imaginary specks from his immaculate cravat with a beringed hand and studied the motifs on the plaster ceiling above his head, he did not miss a word of what his steward had to say. That worthy realized this when, with cold precision, his new master gave his orders. When Lord Ernest returned to London the staff breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief, but the respite was short-lived. The visitation was the prelude to changes on the right bank of the Wendle greater than any which had taken place since the dissolution of the Abbey.

  The splendours of Henry Hanmer’s Winterstoke were by now nearly a century old. Taste had changed during ‘Old George’s’ long reign, and what had well satisfied his conservative tastes no longer appealed to a young man who had but lately made the Italian pilgrimage and who now regarded himself as a leader of fashion. To the eye of this aspiring young exquisite, schooled in the architectural ideas of the new Palladians and the refinements of the brothers Adam, the craftsmanship which we should admire, the richly-carved woodwork, the heavily-moulded coffered ceilings and Thornhill’s flamboyant murals, appeared as ostentatious and vulgar as an overdressed doxy. All must be changed. Thanks to a combination of his mother’s fortune, his late Uncle’s frugal habits and the revenue which coal and iron were now bringing to the estate, Ernest Hanmer could command immense wealth, and he proceeded to change Winterstoke Place in no uncertain manner.

  Although the work carried out by Henry Hanmer’s unknown architect had considerably altered the appearance of the house, involving as it did the rebuilding of the entire west façade with new fenestration as well as considerable changes in the interior layout, the original E-shaped ground plan of Richard Hanmer’s Tudor mansion had remained. If we compare contemporary engravings of the house in the two periods, their affinity is obvious. The rebuilding undertaken by Ernest Hanmer between 1773 and 1776 was far more drastic and transformed Winterstoke Place beyond recognition. That the young Earl should have employed James Wyatt rather than Adam as his architect was to be expected. For Wyatt’s completion of the Pantheon in Oxford Street in 1772 had made him the most fashionable architect of the moment, and the star of Robert Adam was beginning to set. Under Wyatt’s direction the central projecting wing of the three was completely demolished to make room for a great hall of Roman magnificence with a floor of inlaid stone and colonnades of scagliola pillars painted in imitation of yellow Sienna marble. This hall occupied the whole of the space between the east and west wings and extended to the full height of the building. Instead of presenting the gable ends of three projecting wings, the south front thus became a single block, but to match the shallow cupola which gave top light to the great hall Wyatt diversified his new façade by building out a central semi-circular bay with columns extending to the eaves. Moreover, to break the height of this central block and to make the composition the more imposing, colonnades were thrown out east and west which terminated in two identical octagonal pavilions. It is impossible to deny that this severe but impeccably proportioned façade of Wyatt’s possessed both dignity and grandeur. Yet compared with the three previous incarnations of Winterstoke Place, the Gothic, the Tudor and the Rococo, this, its final Palladian metamorphosis, seems to lack warmth and humanity. We feel that it is monumental rather than domestic in conception. And what, we may ask, as we survey this long façade of honey-coloured stone which the sulphurous exhalations of Darley Bank would so soon blacken, or stand in the cold, echoing magnificence of the pillared hall, does this monument celebrate? Pride and self-worship, the pride of its owner and the genius of its architect? Or is it a mausoleum, a portent of that twilight which was so soon to fall, unconsciously celebrating the fact that a brief golden age has reached an apogee whence there can be no advance and no return? Although, by contrast, they reveal the architect’s lightest and most delicate vein, when we pass through the lofty mahogany doors from the great hall into the superb range of ground-floor apartments, there is no escaping from the conviction that this house represents the end of an age.
Gone is the old robust and vigorous craftsmanship, so self-confident and assured that it seemed incapable of admitting the possibility of error. Here now are interiors made magical and unsubstantial by workmanship so ethereal in its refinement that we feel it may dissolve at a touch. Here, against backgrounds of pale colours are plaster and stucco mouldings of ribbon, scroll and classic vase so slight that they look as impermanent and fragile as the sugar decorations on a wedding cake. Here, instead of Thornhill’s bold murals, are faint, calligraphic arabesques and, in small roundels and lunettes above mantel or doorcase, formalized paintings of nymph, shepherd, and flying cupid from the hand of the Italian, Biagio Rebecca. And yet in this supremely sophisticated craftsmanship do we not detect, for all its high competence, a reticence almost amounting to infirmity of purpose? It is a suspicion which the grandiloquence of great hall and exterior façade cannot dispel. It is as though they enshrined a tradition of craftsmanship which, having put off its healthy flesh to become all intellect and spirit, is now about to die. From such attenuated elegance it proved to be but a short step to that meaningless and mechanical ornamentation of the next century which possessed neither spirit, intellect, grace nor even honesty, but was merely a medium of ostentation to be purchased by the yard. James Wyatt himself, for all his undoubted genius, belongs not to the golden age but to its decadence. Soon after his work at Winterstoke was finished he cast off the great English classical tradition as though it had become an old and unfashionable coat and began building in sham Gothic at Ashridge and Fonthill. His defection marked the beginning of an age when style, like ornament, would become a debased veneer supplied to order and applied to the façade of any given building with as much facility as a layer of stucco.

  Ernest Hanmer’s transformation of Winterstoke by no means stopped short at the house itself. Indeed, from the point of view of the social historian, the rebuilding of Winterstoke Place was the least important of his undertakings. The old formal gardens which had remained substantially unchanged since Tudor times were not at all in keeping with the young Earl’s ideas of Romantic Landscape. While Wyatt was busily engaged upon the new house, who better than Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to advise him upon the improvement of the prospect? It was quite obvious that the comparatively small extent of the gardens and park would allow Brown’s talents little scope. He must be given a more ample canvas to work upon, and since money was no object, this was soon provided. The first step was to promote a Bill of Enclosure. This provoked strong opposition from the villagers of Winterstoke, but, here as elsewhere, this last desperate defence of their ancient rights was of no avail. Common fields and rights of common pasture which, notwithstanding the encroachments of the first Earl, had survived since ‘time out of mind’ must now be ruthlessly filched away. The fact that the Winterstoke Enclosure Act marked the final stage in that process whereby the people of Winterstoke lost their age old roots in their own soil mattered nothing. They were at the mercy of a generation of landowners to whom the old conception of stewardship had become utterly foreign and who believed that each man possessed an almost sacred right to do what he would with his own. Where such a philosophy flourishes and there is no recognition of mutual rights and responsibilities, power must always prevail and never before had the landowners of England possessed greater power in their wealth and in their influence upon Government. If Ernest Hanmer wished to replan his estate in the contemporary mode, who should stop him? Who, indeed? The Enclosure Commissioners were corrupted, the Committee of the Commons which debated the Bill was packed and the Petition of the villagers against the Bill lay unopened on the table. It was a sorry, tragic story which was to be repeated many times throughout the length and breadth of England. So the sixth Earl of Winterstoke had his way and the commoners of Winterstoke became ‘the labouring poor’ or, as a later age would call them, a ‘proletariat’.

  Needless to say, the arguments advanced in favour of enclosure at Winterstoke made no mention of the projects with which the name of Lancelot Brown was associated. Rather did they stress the agricultural improvements which would result. The great virtue of the old system of common field agriculture had been that the common grazing enabled a small farmer to carry more stock than he could otherwise support and so keep his arable strips in better heart when lying fallow. Again, the flocks and herds on the common pasture could be communally tended which meant a great saving in labour. The seizure of common pastures made the lot of most small farmers impossible even if they were lucky enough to obtain an award from the Enclosure Commissioners. But the enclosure arguments dwelt only upon the faults of a system of agriculture which was now condemned out of hand as ‘barbarous’ and ‘primitive’. The yield from the arable strips was too low and the system of free-ranging stock made selective breeding of livestock impossible. If the growing population of Darley Bank was to be adequately fed it was high time that the new ‘high farming’ methods were introduced at Winterstoke.

  That the old system of agriculture was open to valid criticism there can be no doubt. To see that a ruthless policy of confiscation was not the only way of solving the problem we need go no further than the neighbouring village of Emberley where we find the Winters still firmly rooted in the moated manor house of their ancestors; Lords of the Manor still, though now no longer titled. There was never an Enclosure Act for Emberley. The process of enclosure had taken place gradually through the years by the mutual consent of landlord and tenant. As a result we find many small farms on the Winters’ modest estate: Emberley Hill farm, High and Low Emberley, Upper and Lower Grange, Church, and the Hall farm. In addition, each householder in the village has a small holding sufficient for his needs.

  By contrast, on Ernest Hanmer’s much larger estate there were after enclosure only four farms: Abbey Farm, High Hanger, Ketton and Summersend. All had existed before enclosure but were rebuilt and enlarged by the Earl, for they now embraced between them all the land which was not either emparked or occupied by the Darley Bank Company. Whereas the activities of the Winter family occasioned no remark, the high farming methods practised on the Winterstoke Estate called forth pæans of praise from the agricultural experts of the day. Never were there fat beasts of such size as the Earl’s sleek Herefords, such sheep as his flocks of Leicesters, such pigs as his Tamworths. Yet it is a significant fact that the arable acreage of the estate declined as a result of enclosure, a circumstance which shows how specious was the advancement of the needs of the coal and iron-working community as a pretext for enclosure. For the great need of the poor smiths and miners of Darley Bank and High Hanger was cheap bread; the price of prime beef and mutton was far beyond their reach, while for bacon they looked, not to the Earl’s Tamworths but to the pig in their own sty which, for most of them, was now their only link with their rural past.

  The decline of arable acreage was not only due to a preoccupation with stock breeding. To a much greater extent it was due to the size of the area which was emparked. When we consider the work which Lancelot Brown carried out at Winterstoke on behalf of his patron we realize that few oriental despots ever wielded great wealth with less scruple or to more fantastic purpose than did Ernest, sixth Earl of Winterstoke. Altogether, Brown and his associates expended four hundred thousand pounds on his behalf, much of which had been won by the flames of the Darley Bank Furnaces or in the dark galleries of the High Hanger pits. To begin with, the area emparked included the whole of the old village of Winterstoke which, with the exception of the church, was so completely demolished that no trace remained. Its inhabitants were rehoused in a new and larger settlement of exemplary design but somewhat arbitrary planning which was sited some distance east of Winterstoke Place at the point where the way from Church Ambling and Emberley village met the valley road almost directly opposite Darley Bank Wharf. Here a new bridge over the river was planned to connect this transplanted Winterstoke with the growing industrial community at Darley Bank and Hanger Lane. Consisting of great spans of black iron cast under the direction of Da
niel Leeds at Darley Bank and set in massive stone abutments, this bridge was completed and opened in 1779. With the old village went the old road leading to St. John’s Bridge, and the medieval gatehouse to Winterstoke Place which, apart from the bridge and some remnants of fabric still to be seen at Abbey Farm, had been the only substantial memorial of Cistercian Winterstoke. Part of the original road became a driveway through the park. The road which replaced it swung to the north at the new drive gates and lodge just beyond the Bridge Inn, and followed the imperious sweep of the high park wall in a great semi-circle until it rejoined the old route near Abbey Farm.