Among the 17th-century manor houses of Dorset, none is more charming,” wrote
the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner of Waterston Manor, on the
banks of the River Piddle. The novelist Thomas Hardy was so impressed that
he used it as the model for Bathsheba Everdene’s “bower”, Weatherbury Farm,
in Far from the Madding Crowd.
Hardy’s novel ends with Everdene marrying her shepherd, Gabriel Oak; and,
today, the house is preparing for another wedding. The heavy wooden front
doors of the Grade I-listed home – near Puddletown, and four miles from
Dorchester – are thrown wide open to the spring sunshine. Florists are
passing through the porticoed front hall out to the east lawn, where the
marquee is set up for 200 people – and the owner, Adam Tindall, 70, and his
girlfriend, Carol Hammick, are surprisingly calm. “Tomorrow is going to be
absolutely great,” says Hammick, a youthful 62; her son, Jamie, is the
bridegroom.
Tindall, meanwhile, is ignoring the flurry of activity, sidestepping the
kitchen, where his daughter, Julia, 38, is taking charge of catering
arrangements, to take a tour of his manor and some of its 26 acres. “It’s at
its best now, in spring,” he says. “We’ve just had all the daffodils and the
snowdrops. And it’s wonderful to see the leaves coming out on all the
trees.” The house is renowned locally for its fine specimens, including a
Persian ironwood, ginkgo biloba, ilex, and a magnificent copper beech.
Tindall, a former limeworks owner and mail-order entrepreneur, has been
preceded by a succession of illustrious names. The original Anglo-Saxon
structure on the site, now merely a footprint, was recorded in the Domesday
Book as belonging to King Harold, and passed into the hands of William the
Conqueror. Though Pevsner assigned the Grade I-listed house to the 17th
century, it has a hybrid nature: it is essentially Elizabethan, but various
alterations through the centuries and a fire in 1863, have resulted in a
medley of styles. “I like the architecture,” Tindall says. “It’s pretty rare
to get such interesting features on the exterior of a house.”
It is the east elevation’s carved-stone, classical frontispiece – dating from
1586, and “of considerable splendour”, according to Pevsner – that was one
of the property’s biggest attractions when Tindall bought it in 1976. In the
style of the early Renaissance, with three allegorical figures, it extends
three storeys up into the attic gable, its doorway framed by topiary.
Elsewhere on the exterior, semicircular bay windows, rounded archways,
balustradedparapets and Tuscan columns reflect different periods of
ownership.
Tindall was also drawn to what he describes as the “domestic scale” of the
manor, even though it has four reception rooms and covers 11,000 sq ft.
There are nine bedrooms in the main house, including a three-bedroom guest
wing, and four bathrooms, reached by a staircase described by Hardy as “of
hard oak, the balusters, heavy as bed posts . . . the stairs themselves
continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder”.
Although the master-bedroom suite, on the east side of the house, is not the
largest, the couple chose it because of the morning sun that streams through
its casement windows. Framed photos of Tindall and Hammick’s families are
intermingled around the room, making it hard to believe that the couple have
only been living together for eight years. The story of their coming
together is fit for a Hardy plot.
Hammick moved to Higher Waterston Farm – just up the road from the manor – in
1987 with her husband, Charles, of Hammicks bookshops, specialists in legal
publications. They farmed sheep for a while until Charles died suddenly, in
1990. Hammick stayed on at the farm, running holiday cottages, for eight
years. In the meantime, she became good friends with her neighbour, whose
wife had died just a year after Charles. Since her arrival, gardening has
been her thing, Hammick explains, busily arranging vast bouquets of flowers
in the dining hall downstairs, where a 17th-century still life by the
Flemish artist Frans Snyders presides.
The formal gardens – laid out by the architect Percy Morley Horder after the
previous owner, Captain Carter, had acquired the property in 1911 – include
an immaculate croquet lawn (“where the wedding guests won’t be tramping”,
Tindall insists). One of Morley Horder’s creations was the water garden that
runs out from the classic frontispiece, designed to centre on the copper
beech opposite.
It is the sunken garden, however, to which Hammick has dedicated her time. At
its best in June, it is enclosed by a sturdy yew hedge and planted up with
annuals and herbs. At its centre is a carved stone plinth that, like
everything about the place, has seemingly stood there for hundreds of years.
Yet Tindall suspects that the plinth’s Elizabethan gent who is set in stone on
it – his moustache just visible through the lichen and moss – originally
made up a fireplace jamb.
The grounds, which spread out to water meadows, woodland and a walled orchard,
also contain an outdoor swimming pool and a hard tennis court. But it is in
the “pleasure dome”, as Tindall calls the glass house, where the family
spends much of its time in summer.
Approached by a pollarded lime walk, this temple of indulgence, measuring 17ft
by 6ft, with decorative green-glass panes, is heavily scented by the
honeysuckle and herbs that grow in pots alongside a heated plunge pool.
Vines trail along the ceiling.
“I’ve been patching up this conservatory for years now,” says Tindall, who
abandons it in winter. “I’ve even got all the windows opening properly.”
Three small bridges cross the Piddle, which runs just behind the pleasure
dome. Here, the water is pure enough to drink and, along its sides,
bluebells and pink campions are flourishing; beyond, the oilseed rape is
yellow in the fields. It doesn’t take much to picture Julie Christie,
playing Everdene in John Schlesin-ger’s 1967 film adaptation of Hardy’s
novel, being courted by Alan Bates, as Oak.
Waterston Manor has the usual range of outbuildings and stable blocks, which
Tindall uses for storing tools and a couple of historic cars. In one is
parked his 1910 Wolseley, the wedding car he is to drive to the Puddletown
church. In another, slowly disintegrating, is his son Simon’s East German
Trabant – “the cardboard car” – which he drove back from Prague 10 years ago.
The house, thankfully, has seen a little more maintenance. “All we’ve had to
do over the years is keep it in good condition,” Tindall says. “If I’ve had
a leak, or a tile break, I’ve sorted it out immediately.”
The couple are moving west to Nether-bury, near the Dorset coast, where they
have bought a thatched farmhouse. However, they plan to base themselves in
its 80ft barn. “I’m looking forward to living out of just one room,” Hammick
says, “though, of course, it will be a huge wrench to leave here. It has
been a wonderful family home, with a lovely atmosphere, and it has been
great to have the space.” Between them, the couple have 13 children and
step-children, as well as a horde of grandchildren and step-grandchildren.
As if the wedding weren’t enough, the family are also planning a big sendoff
in June. Tindall plans on feeding all 300 guests himself: in the walled
kitchen garden that he created, he is busy growing broad beans and potatoes.
Two weeks ago, Captain Carter’s grandson came to visit, bringing with him a
leather embossed guest book, made specially for the house, but never used.
“The party might be the right time to finally fill its pages,” Tindall says.
“Now all I need is to get Julie Christie to come along.”
Waterston Manor is for sale for £4.25m with Knight Frank, 01935 812236, www.knightfrank.co.uk
See more of Waterston Manor by viewing the picture gallery at www.timesonline.co.uk/property
