Deep Calls Unto Deep
“We now behold a spacious mansion of pleasing colour, diversified and varied in its features, replete with interior luxuries, and exterior beauties,” wrote John Britton in his 1826 Historical and Descriptive Account of Deepdene. Architect William Atkinson and his connoisseur and collector client Thomas Hope’s Italianate country house with its must-have belvedere, a palazzo in the Surrey Hills, vanished in 1969. Mole Valley District Council has restored the remnants of the early 19th century landscaping. A replica of one of the two Coade stone lions that once guarded the entrance to the house now stands on a lawned terrace overlooked by a timber tower. Thomas Hope designed a Grecian style family mausoleum following the death of his seven year old son in 1815. The landowner himself would be buried there 16 years later. A beech avenue blazes through a hilltop woodland reserve. The edges of the estate were developed with impeccable taste at the turn of last century: property porntastic stockbroker’s Tudor snuggles in wooded gardens: homes sweet homes.
