Save our Clandon
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The Clandon Polemic
September 2023
John Thorneycroft LVO FSA RIBA
In 1986 and again in 1992 I contributed to the decision making process over the choice of options following the fires at Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle so it has been of great interest to me to read of the strong feelings aroused by the National Trust’s new proposal to present the house to the public as an ‘exciting exploration’ of the ‘standing archaeology’.
It is all too easy for us professionals to be captivated by a fascination with the multi phase layers of a ruined interior but to sell this to the public as ‘broken raw beauty’ seems both suspect and rather self indulgent.
Just after the fire at Clandon, I was taken aback at Lord Onslow’s extreme (though, in that immediate aftermath, understandable ) view of his gutted ancestral home as the death of a close and as yet unburied family member.
Even then, our appetite for historical detail can be surprisingly limited. As an added complication, association with certain historical narratives can put people off the past. It’s an experience comparable to having the enjoyment of a novel or a piece of music destroyed by knowing too much about its creator. Despite these realities, when heritage professionals advocate sites to the public, they tend to give greatest emphasis to their historical associations.
So it was welcome to read (Telegraph 23.09.23) of Constance Watson’s indignation that the Trust has reneged upon its duty, to her family and the public to reinstate the interiors, in order to satisfy some unconvincing and experimental agenda.
She contrasted this with the triumph of craftsmanship achieved for the Trust at Uppark which I remember, from my site visits, had been left after the fire an almost total disaster of chimney to basement magnitude.
The Trusts video of the salvaged state bed at Clandon still standing in its ravaged but recognisable setting is persuasive evidence that some ‘tactical exaggeration’ is in play over the extent of the loss of interiors at Clandon
At Hampton Court the project team arranged for public walkways to be threaded through the wrecked state apartments while work was in progress. This was a great success but intended as a public relations exercise to show the ‘before’ as a appetiser for the unveiling of the achievements of the ‘after’
The Trust’s roof walkway installed during the work at Dyrham may have influenced their present thinking together with the presentation of the ruined interior of the roofed shell of their Seaton Delaval Hall, gutted by fire back in 1822.
In all I have just been reading it seems that the Trust may be using such precedents as a pretext to seize the opportunity to curry favour with what they perceive as the current zeitgeist..
The fires at Hampton Court, Uppark and Windsor provided a unexpected opportunity for the skills of our UK craftspeople to emerge, shine and thrive in their meticulous restoration of historic interiors. The Trust is ensuring that there will be no such opportunity with the interiors at Clandon.
For all those who were looking forward to the earlier promise of an ‘Uppark solution’ at Clandon there is a crumb of comfort in the longer term knowing that the envelope will be weathered, repaired and stable.
Some day calmer and less politically saturated heads could remedy the Trusts present misunderstanding of their role and short work be made of dismantling their interventions, consigning them to just another phase of the building’s history.