A Gentle Revisitation of Days That Are No More
An article in the May 1990 edition of the now defunct Traditional Homes magazine marked The Landmark Trust’s silver jubilee. Julia Abel Smith records in History for Hire, “The organisation was founded in 1965 to save minor but important buildings, and to give them a new life by letting them out to holidaymakers. In co founder Sir John’s words, ‘The Landmark Trust was set up ‘to tackle projects too troublesome or unfashionable for anyone else.’” So there might be a midnight dash across a roof terrace to the bathroom or the need to duck under low ceiling beams. Julia notes that generally the Trust does not take on buildings that could be restored as permanent homes.
Some are urban oases such as Marshal Wade’s House in the centre of Bath. Others are coastal retreats like St Augustine’s Grange and St Edward’s Presbytery on the edge of Ramsgate. And at least one has a kilometre long drive and a view unbroken by any other buildings stretching across fields towards infinity or at least the far side of The Weald. That will be Obriss Farm betwixt pretty Edenbridge and even prettier Westerham. Except for the occasional plane streaking the sky en route to Gatwick, it’s hard to imagine the property is a mere 61 kilometres from The Ritz (London not Paris). A copse and an orchard and fields form a green and pleasant apron round this red house and attendant barns. The Trust lets out the 65 hectare farm for pasture.
Obriss Farm was bequeathed by Helena Cooper in 1990. It was formerly part of the Chartwell Estate which was bought by Sir Winston Churchill in 1922 and is now a major National Trust tourist attraction. The oldest part of the complex is the late 16th century dark stained weatherboarded bakehouse immediately behind the farmhouse – a standalone kitchen. The front half of the house also dates from Tudor times. It was doubled in size down the centuries. Later stables and a cowhouse to the west of the house and a wool store to the east have similar dark stained weatherboarding. A 17th century threshing barn is set back from the end of the lawn. The two storey plus attic house has tile hung upper floors on the side and rear elevations matching the roof tiles. Brick is used elsewhere.
The rectangular floor plan is simply laid out to accommodate five guests. Leaded casement windows, exposed timber frame walls and terracotta tiled floors provide a robust backdrop to antique pieces and comfortable furniture. Everything is so beautiful and simple. “The countryside was still in its summer green,” rhapsodises the poet Siegfried Sassoon in his 1940 autobiography The Weald of Youth, “and the afternoon roads hot and dusty.” That’s just one of many local interest books in the sitting room. On a warm summer weekend little has changed. Rabbits and pheasants and buzzards appear and disappear. Apples and blackberries and damson plums are ripe for picking. Local placenames are quintessentially English: Bardogs; Pootings; Puddledock.
Richard Harwood OBE KC, Joint Head of Chambers of 39 Essex Chambers, and Clarissa Levi, Art and Heritage Counsel of Wedlake Bell, host a podcast series Art and Heritage Law. The Landmark Trust at 60 episode is an interview with the historian and charity’s Director, Dr Anna Keay OBE. “We were established to do two things,” Anna explains. “Firstly, to rescue historic buildings in jeopardy in the UK, principally, and to repair and rejuvenate them. Secondly, and really importantly, to make them into places people can really enjoy and specifically through making them available for people to stay in for breaks – for holidays. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last 60 years.”
Anna expands on the origins of the Trust. “We were founded by two individuals, John and Christian Smith, both sadly now dead. They were quite involved in the conservation movement in the Sixties and of course this was a postwar time of unparalleled destruction and damage to historic fabric – partly the impact of war and partly a process of what was seen then as national renewal. The rate of Listed Building demolition in the mid 1960s – I always find this amazing – was 400 a year in England.” While the big institutions, notably The National Trust and the Ministry of Works, concentrated on saving stately homes, smaller properties were being overlooked.
Clarissa mentions how she likes Sir John Smith’s quote about rescuing troublesome and unfashionable buildings. Anna responds, “That’s us!” John Smith was an MP for a short time and was one of the people responsible for introducing the Planning Act 1965 which created Conservation Areas. “They started small,” Anna confirms. “The first two buildings they took on were quite modest vernacular buildings: Church Cottage and Paxton’s Tower Lodge, both in south Wales. They placed an advert in The Sunday Times in 1967 saying holiday cottages from The Landmark Trust available to rent and they went from there to completing three or four buildings every year.”
When you enter a Landmark Trust property, after being bowled over by the architecture, there’s a distinct interior look to admire. Anna says, “Essentially it’s an old English country house vibe slightly merged with a sort of Arts and Crafts quite spare approach which is totally born of personal taste. It’s timelessly lovely.” Old Turkish rugs, oak furniture, comfy sofas and pictures of local scenery or historical characters create a formula that works along with branded details like clothes hangers and soap. Richard remarks, “It comes over in the fabulous book for the 50th anniversary by Anna and Caroline Stanford that the Trust was a personal mission of the Smiths but also how they would pull their friends and contacts into how things were designed and how things were thought through.”
She observes, “The irony is that such is the strange world for demand of different types of furniture and paintings and stuff from the past that if you were to go into John Lewis to buy a new dining room table it would cost way more that if you were to go to an antiques fair and get one from a bloke in a field.” Old pieces are more sustainable, often better made and look more at home in period properties. What Anna calls “a whole cycle of positives”.
There are three core criteria for choosing to take on a new building. It must be of really special historical or architectural significance. It must be at genuine risk and not saveable by the market. And it must be financially viable under the Trust’s model. “Our work not only involves the physicality of trying to save somewhere but also trying to untangle complicated tenure or freeing a building from the status that may in part be why it’s got into such a bad state.” Clarissa comments, “I love the reimagining of buildings for places to have a lovely holiday in that were never intended to actually be stayed in. I am thinking of when I was a child I went to stay with family one time in the Landmark Trust’s Pineapple. It blew my mind – it still does really!”
The charity also plays a wider role. Over to Anna again, “The Trust has shown how adaptable buildings can be ever since it was converting old industrial buildings to domestic use in the Seventies. Now of course we’re all used to the idea of an old mill becoming flats but in the Sixties that was unthinkable. As well as being a lovely thing for people to stay in them it can be a way of showing how changes can be made sympathetically that will hopefully inspire other adaptations.” A philosophy of care guides each restoration (and often a conversion is involved) from the outset. The Trust considers what are the special characteristics to enhance and preserve. This founding principle is referred to when practical decisions need to be made. The volumes of the original space and its former use are respected and celebrated.
Anna says, “Projects take a long time so we always have some we are just about to finish on and hang up the curtains and others right at the beginning and we’re trying to do the land acquisition. One we are working on at the moment which is a really exciting is a World War II project: what was RAF Ibsley down in the New Forest. It was what was known as a ‘watch office’. The building is derelict and in a really bad way.”
“Another big one that we’re right at the beginning of and we’re so excited about has been a cause célèbre of heritage at risk for actually 50 years is a house called Mavisbank. It’s just outside Edinburgh – it’s not a remote building. The house was designed by William Adam, father of Robert Adam, the progenitor of that amazing dynasty of architects. His client was John Clarke who was one of the people who signed the Act of Union between England and Scotland. Mavisbank is really the first great neo Palladian house in Scotland and has been derelict, roofless and in the most dangerous state for decades now. It was nearly demolished in the Eighties. The compulsory purchase order is under way and all being well by the end of the year we will be the proud owners of a totally derelict 1720s house!”
Anna concludes, “We’re thrilled to be part of the rescue of these buildings but we’re only a part of the journey. Those people who come to stay in our buildings or financially support our campaigns or write letters of support – they are travelling with us. It’s a real mass movement activity. We haven’t got a shares portfolio; we don’t have a mega investor. We are literally a charity that survives on the support people give us because they choose to and the fact that people can stay in our buildings. The pioneering spirit of the Edwardian philanthropists is in our DNA.” Richard ends the podcast, “What you’ve set out is not only the philosophy of heritage but also the way you go about it, the way you think about buildings and how they should be rescued and brought back into use.”
Browsing through more books in the sitting room, Sir William Addison could easily be referring to Obriss Farm in Farmhouses in The English Landscape, 1986, “Eventually the prudent yeomen of The Weald realised how destructive of every local interest reckless felling of timber would be if it continued much longer. So what was called half timbering was introduced, with thinner timbers wider apart built into the structure in square or oblong panels to be filled with wattle and daub in the East Anglia manner. But in Kent, as early as Elizabeth I’s reign, tiles were being used for wall cladding in half timbered buildings as well as for those built up to first floor level in brick. In the later years of the 17th century weatherboarding came into competition with hanging tiles for wall cladding.” Half timbering can best be seen in the south wall of the single bedroom at the rear of the house: it was once an external wall.
And Roger Higham nicely sums up the county in Kent, 1974, “There are at least three good reasons why Kent makes a fit literary and photographic subject: firstly, it is large; secondly, it is diverse; and thirdly, it is accessible. A fourth reason perhaps transcending the first three, could be suggested: its importance.” The last reason could apply to an article and even more so when it focuses on Obriss Farm in The Weald.
