England's Magnificent Lost Country Houses

For centuries, the country house stood as a defining feature of the English landscape. Built to display the wealth and status of the landed elite, their grand halls and extensive grounds were tended by small armies of staff and sometimes even rivaled royal palaces in their scale and splendor. Unsurprisingly, financing the upkeep of such luxurious homes has always been a challenge. Over time, many have crumbled under the weight of rising maintenance costs, or met their demise when the fortunes of their owners declined, leaving behind only scattered remnants of their former glory. Now often forgotten, these lost country houses included some of England's finest architectural achievements, remarkable not only for their proportions, but for their design and craftsmanship as well. Here, we'll rediscover the stories of three of them, from one of the most influential houses of the 18th century to one renowned for its magnificent interiors, and a colossal gothic masterpiece of the Victorian era. In the 17th century, the merchant Josiah Child emerged as one of England's wealthiest men. Through various ventures, particularly with the East India Company, he amassed an impressive fortune, which by 1673 allowed him to purchase his very own manor. Conveniently situated just a few miles from central London, it was known as Wanstead Hall and had previously belonged to royalty and to favoured courtiers. But it was Child and his sons who would escort the property towards its golden age. Josiah, at prodigious cost, created a grand park of walnut trees and ornamental lakes, before Richard Child, head of the estate from 1704, decided to pull down the antiquated Tudor Hall and replace it with a massive new house. Designed in the emerging neo-Palladian style by architect Colin Campbell, and furnished by the interior designer of the day, William Kent, it could hardly have been more fashionable. The 260-foot white portenstone facade, with its portico and Corinthian columns, greatly impressed visitors. One noted that the building more resembled a royal palace than a private man's property, without as well as within. Few depictions of the interiors have survived, but we can get glimpses of them in old paintings. In the assembly at Wanstead House, painted by William Hogarth around 1730, we are shown the long ballroom on the 25th wedding anniversary of Richard Child and his wife, Dorothy Glynn. A few years later, the family was depicted by Joseph Franz Nolikins in the bright and gilded salon. At the same time as the new house was being constructed, the gardens were again radically reordered, making them less formal in line with changing fashions. As part of this process, the lake system was greatly enlarged, and the grounds were adorned with numerous buildings, like a giant greenhouse, a grotto, and mock fortifications. Writers were united in praise of Wanstead, which soon became a famous landmark featured in every local gazetteer. Had it still existed today, it could have been one of England's greatest tourist attractions, but Wanstead House met an early end, little more than a century after its completion. In 1805, the house, along with the family fortune, was inherited by Catherine Tilney Long, who thereby became the richest heiress in the country. Soon, her newfound wealth brought a stream of suitors flocking to her door. They even included a member of the royal family, the aging Duke of Clarence, who saw an opportunity to pay off his debts by marrying her. But she ultimately turned him down in favor of William Wellesley Pole, a nephew of the Duke of Wellington. Their disastrous marriage would spell the end for Wanstead. William turned out to be both arrogant and cruel towards his wife, and quickly squandered her wealth. After just a decade, the money was all gone, and he'd even resorted to chopping down the estate's trees to sell for timber. When the creditors came knocking in 1822, William fled abroad, and in his absence, the contents of Wanstead House were sold off in a massive auction, lasting 32 days. Three years later, the building was demolished and sold for its materials, all for around £10,000, a paltry sum compared to the £360,000 it had cost to build. Soon afterwards, a broken Catherine died at the age of just 36. William continued to be chased by debt collectors for the rest of his life, and died in humble lodgings in 1857. An obituary described him as follows. A spendthrift, a profligate, and a gambler in his youth, he became debauched in his manhood. Redeemed by no single virtue, adorned by no single grace, his life gone out even without a flicker of repentance. The Duke of Clarence, on the other hand, survived his elder brothers to become King William IV. Had Catherine married him, Wanstead might have survived as a royal palace, and one of her children could have replaced Queen Victoria as the next British monarch. Today, only remnants of the once great estate can be found. Over time, it has been completely encircled by the leafy suburbs of East London, and its central area has been turned into a public park and a golf course. They retain some of the layout of the old garden. Apart from the lake system, the most evident survivals are the buildings known as the Temple, which once served as an exotic aviary, and the Grotto, which has been a ruin ever since a fire destroyed it in 1884. While the former site of the house itself has long stood empty, the building left a lasting impact on the architectural landscape of the 18th century. As an early example of Neo-Palladianism, it inspired many other buildings, and established the grand freestanding portico as a key ingredient for country houses. Among the stately homes that quote more or less directly from its design are Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, and Pryor Park in Bath, both constructed in the 1730s. Wanstead's influence even extended abroad, where it is said to have heavily inspired the design of Berlin's Opera House. It was built by order of Frederick the Great in the 1740s, and was the first prominent freestanding building of its kind in the world. Located in Watford, near London, Cassiobury House was a building whose exterior took on several forms over the course of its history. But what really made it stand out were the exquisite interiors, and its impressive collection of art. The first known house here began to be built in the late 1540s by Sir Richard Morrison, after receiving the land from Henry VIII. This Tudor iteration of Cassiobury was described as a fair and large house with 56 rooms, featuring characteristic bay windows, gables, and high chimneys. No images of it remain, but one of the wings would survive into the next phase of the building's history. In the early 1600s, the house passed into the Cappell family, in whose ownership it would remain for over 250 years. By the middle of the century, Arthur Cappell, the first Earl of Essex, made Cassiobury his family seat, and commissioned a lavish reconstruction of it by the architect Hugh May. The new house incorporated the original northwest wing, and was laid out on an H-plan popular during that period. While the exterior was arguably a bit plain, the interiors were exceptional. Here, May teamed up with the master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons, and the Italian painter Antonio Vario, to create a series of spectacular rooms, inspired by May's earlier work at Windsor Castle. This was Gibbons' first large-scale project, and the highlight was a superb staircase, adorned with pinecone finials, and featuring various natural forms, including swirling acanthus, oak leaves, and acorns. The final major transformation of Cassiobury came around 1800, when the fifth Earl of Essex took over. He commissioned the architect James Wyatt to remodel the house, removing two front wings and enclosing the remaining courtyard. Once again, the exterior was not regarded as particularly successful, being an unsatisfying neo-gothic, compromised by the proportions of the existing building. But the interiors continued to be praised. In addition to May's 17th century rooms, the new house contained a large number of spaces reflecting the latest fashion, and an extensive collection of paintings by great masters like Van Dyck, Canaletto, and Gainsborough. After visiting Cassiobury in 1816, the socialite Francis Calvert commented that it was more full of comforts, curiosities, and pretty things than any house I ever saw. The park, which comprised 693 acres, or 2.8 square kilometers, was also redone at this time by Humphrey Repton, who is often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown. Laid out as a classical English landscape park, it also featured impressive flower gardens, considered by Calvert to be the most complete in England. By the end of the 19th century, the upkeep of the house was becoming increasingly expensive. The 7th Earl, George Cappell, managed to keep the estate going by marrying a rich American heiress, but his death in a traffic accident in 1916 set in motion events that were to bring about the demise of Cassiobury. Death duties, a form of inheritance tax introduced in 1894, severely affected the family fortunes, and six years later, the estate was put up for sale by George's widow and her son, the 8th Earl. The contents of the house were sold to various museums and private collectors, mainly from the United States, while the building itself, along with the park, was bought up by a group of local businessmen who were interested in its development potential. For a few years after this, Cassiobury House stood empty, before it was finally demolished in 1927. Although much of the park survives, the former site of the building is now occupied by suburbs, leaving no sign of its former glory. However, many of the treasures of Cassiobury House found a new life in America. For example, Gibbon's ornately carved wooden staircase can now be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, while a large selection of Gibbon's panels and overmantels were bought by the American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. He installed them in his Ocean House mansion in Santa Monica, California, and although this building has now also been lost, the panels were sold once again, and are now located in a museum. Even Cassiobury's bricks were salvaged, and along with some interior fittings, were used to build a new house of the same name in Bedford, New York. With over 150 bedrooms, massive stables, and a chapel with a 183-foot tower, Eaton Hall was one of the most ambitious examples of domestic architecture in Victorian England. But not even the vast fortune of the Grosvenor family was sufficient to sustain such a palace in the austere post-World War II era. In 1961, the colossal house, which had gradually been remodeled and expanded over centuries, was lost forever. Located in Cheshire in northwest England, the estate has belonged to the Grosvenors for over half a millennium. The first known house dated to the Middle Ages, and was a modest two-story structure surrounded by a moat. It still survived when this engraving was made in 1708, but by then, a much more substantial building had already been erected nearby. Made for Sir Thomas Grosvenor and designed by the architect William Samuel, it was set amongst elaborate formal gardens featuring parterres and canals, and used stone brought from the ruined Holt Castle in North Wales. When Robert Grosvenor took over the estate in 1802, Samuel's hall had become old-fashioned and in need of renovation. So he engaged William Porden to improve the building, and the result mirrored what happened at the same time at Cassiobury, only on a much grander scale. The previous house was encased and surrounded by every possible permutation of the Gothic style, including turrets, pinnacles, arched windows, octagonal towers and buttresses. Gradually, several new wings were added and an elegant formal garden was laid out, decorated with statues, stone urns and vases. The interiors continued the medieval style of the building and boasted lavish Gothic detailing. But the grandeur and opulence of the new Eton Hall received mixed reactions. 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. However, there were also many who praised it, not least the future Queen Victoria, who noted after a visit in 1832 that the house was magnificent. But the Grosvenors weren't done yet. They continually made alterations to the building, and already by 1870 the time had come for another major renovation. This time it was Hugh Grosvenor, the first Duke of Westminster who commissioned a new hall, built around the core of the previous one. His architect was Alfred Waterhouse, who specialised in the Gothic Revival style and is known for buildings like Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. At Eton, he used his expertise to create a fantastical and enormous house reflecting the Grosvenors' place among the super-rich of Victorian England. Built over a 12-year period, it would have cost around £100 million in today's value, and was big enough to host vast parties where guests would bring their own staff and be entertained on a lavish scale. The cathedral-like halls of this Wagnerian palace were adorned with medieval suits of armour, elaborate mosaic flooring and grand fireplaces featuring the Grosvenor coat of arms. Among the most noteworthy rooms were the salon, defined by a long frieze of the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the library, which contained numerous works of art in addition to the roughly 12,000 volumes that filled its shelves. There was also a drawing room with panels painted by Gertrude Jekyll, and a dining room which, with its ante-room, measured 105 feet or 32 metres long. When the family weren't entertaining, they would usually withdraw to a smaller set of apartments in their private wing. This building was connected to the main block via a passage, from which they could also access their very own chapel. Above it rose a majestic clock tower that commanded views from across the estate. Finally, the complex was completed by an impressive set of stables, built of brick, redstone and half-timbering. The house continued to be lived in and was modernized in the early decades of the 20th century, although during both world wars, parts of it were used as a hospital. From 1943 to 1946, the hall served as a naval college, after which it was sneezed by the military. When they finally left in 1958, the building was found to be in need of repair, and a few years later, the 5th Duke of Westminster decided to pull it down. But the former site of the Gothic Hall does not stand empty like it once did, nor has it been overgrown by suburbs like Cassiobury. Some structures, namely the chapel and the stables, were a spare destruction in the 1960s and are still standing, while the main block and the private wing were replaced with a smaller, more manageable building in the following decade. This structure was a luxurious modernist country house, complete with a flat roof, an asymmetrical plan and a basement containing a swimming pool. Although impressive, the design choice was controversial, and so around 1990, the building received a new exterior made to look more like a French chateau. Today, Eton Hall is still owned by the Grosvenors, who remain one of the richest families in Britain, with an estimated fortune of around 10 billion pounds. As a private estate, it is not generally accessible to the public, but the gardens can be visited on three days every year.