 Lanhydrock
Buried in the seclusion of the densely wooded Fowey valley, and surrounded
by hundreds of acres of parkland, Lanhydrock is eventually sighted after
a good downhill walk through the grounds from the car park. Looking
every inch like a solid, Victorian mansion, the highly decorative mid-17th
century gatehouse provides the first clue that all is not quite what
it appears to be.
In 1620 Sir Richard Robartes, the son of a hugely successful Cornish moneylender, bought the old monastic
manor at Lanhydrock, and began to build a traditional four-sided house
around a central courtyard. After his death in 1634, the house was completed
by Robartes' son, John, a sullen and difficult man by all accounts, who
was a prominent Parliamentarian during the Civil War. For the next 335
years, many of the successive owners of Lanhydrock became MPs, and took
an active interest in local affairs.
Few changes were made to
Lanhydrock over the next two centuries, apart from the demolition of the
east range in the 1780s, and the house gradually lapsed into a state of
disrepair. Remaining unoccupied for long periods of time, it suffered
greatly from neglect, and it was practically empty of its contents. When,
in the mid-19th century, the 1st Baron Robartes of Lanhydrock and Truro came to live at his ancestral home, he commissioned
George Gilbert Scott to modernise and remodel Lanhydrock. This Victorian
architect, one of the most renowned for his extensive restoration works
on medieval cathedrals, attempted to reinstate Lanhydrock as a comfortable
country house.
Just 20 years after the work
had been completed, fire destroyed all but the north wing of the house,
and the shock of this disaster killed Lady Robartes a few days later.
Distraught at losing both his wife and his home, Lord Robartes died
the following year. Their son, Thomas, had the house re-built with
a neo-Jacobean façade, but a traditional Victorian arrangement of rooms
internally. This work was undertaken by a local architect, Richard
Coad, who was a former pupil of Scott's and had previous experience of Lanhydrock
during the earlier modernisation programme. To enable Coad to incorporate
the required separation of family and servants dictated by Victorian
principles, it was necessary for him to build a whole new complex adjoining
the existing southern range of the house.
When Lanhydrock was presented
to the National Trust in 1953, it came with few contents, and much of
the current furniture represents a similar arrangement to what would have
been in use after Coad's rebuilding of the house. Internally, by far the most impressive
room is the gallery. Situated in the north wing, it very fortunately
survived the devastating fire of 1881, and the exquisitely carved plasterwork
ceiling is of outstanding quality. Among the large collection of books
is one of the four volumes of the Lanhydrock Atlas, a survey of Charles
Bodville Robartes' (the 2nd Earl of Radnor) estates in Cornwall
at the end of the 17th century, showing 40,000 acres on 258
manuscript maps. It was through his marriage that the family also acquired
Wimpole Hall near Cambridge, and most of the contents of the drawing room
came from that stately mansion. Many family portraits adorn the walls
of Lanhydrock but little else can be personally attributable to the Robartes. |
