A castle for £27,000? Sounds like monopoly money today, but in 1907, Norris
Castle in East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, once a favourite holiday haunt of
Queen Victoria, sold for just that.
Today, the fourbed former gatehouse of the castle is on the market for
£750,000; the castle itself, built in the 1790s, would fetch about £6.5m if
it went on sale, according to Sam Biles, director of Creasey, Biles &
King, the local estate agency jointly marketing the gatehouse.
Or take Conkwell Grange, in Wiltshire. It was built in 1907 by Sir Guy Dawber,
at an estimated cost of £25,000-£30,000. Today, the elegant 10-bed, Grade
II-listed house is on the market with Knight Frank for offers over £10m.
Eleven thousand pounds back then would have bought a 23-bed “fine old country
seat” in 22 acres of parkland in the New Forest; Strutt & Parker
recently marketed Avonside, a seven-bed with coachhouse in the same area at
£2m; a house with 12 beds would probably fetch more than £5m today.
Bearing in mind that the average house in 1907 cost just £400, £1,500 would
have bought a pretty 11-bed “family residence” on the borders of a Cotswolds
market town. A similar property today would probably cost closer to £2.8m.
Thumbing through the advertisements of the day in Country Life — then, as now,
the bible of the moneyed country set — makes for illuminating reading — and
not just because of the prices (which, in any case, were often not mentioned
at all, perhaps because it was considered vulgar to talk money).
Descriptions of locations were often vague — one “charming old-fashioned stone
built residence” in Sussex, on sale for £3,000, was described merely as
situated “within a few miles of two of the most favourite watering places on
the south coast”. Others are described in the same issue as being “in one of
the southern counties”, “in a most desirable home county” or simply “in the
Shires”.
The wording, not surprisingly, comes across as quaint and the features cited
(“servant’s hall” or “accommodation for married coachman”), a reminder of an
age long past. In 1907, as now, though, the main selling points were view,
architectural style and ease of access to London.
Estate agents’ language was also equally euphemistic. A 150-acre estate, 45
minutes south of London, on sale for an undisclosed price, was the location
of a “pretty little old House, now quite suitable for a gentleman’s
occupation, but refined taste combined with educated judgment and a small
expenditure could transform it into an ideal home”. Which translates, in
current parlance into “could benefit from some cosmetic improvement” or,
perhaps, a “remarkable opportunity for an owner to put their stamp on the
property”.
The Edwardian era, according to Dawn Carritt, a director at Jackson-Stops &
Staff, was the golden age of such properties, when “the life of the big
country estate was still seen to be flourishing”. Anyone who was anyone in
British society had “somewhere in the country”; the most affluent even had
several. The Earl of Rosebery, for example, had Dal-meny in Scotland,
Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire and another home near Epsom just for the
racing season.
A century later, country houses are back in vogue again, with the market —
especially at the top end — in the midst of one of the most sustained
upturns for decades as a new generation of the super-rich plough their money
into country property.
According to estate agency Knight Frank, the prices of prime country house
properties rose 11.2% last year. Savills says the number of viewings of
country property priced between £2m-£5m last month was 49% up on January
2006; there has been a 58% rise in those costing £5m-plus.
“The country market is very strong at the moment,” says Rupert Sweeting, a
partner in Knight Frank’s country department. “What we have been seeing is
an upward spiral. You will probably find the property market has done better
than the stock market over the past 20 years.”
It has not always been like this, however. For the country house, the history
of the last century has been not only one of long ups — but also some
substantial downs.
Research for The Sunday Times by Knight Frank shows that while the price of
the average country house has increased just over 220-fold from £10,000 to
£2.2m over the period, the cost of property in Britain as a whole has gone
up by a factor of 500. Both have more than outstripped the retail price
index — which was up just under 80 times.
Take Norris Castle’s changing fortunes. Built for Lord Henry Seymour, it had
been leased to the Duchess of Kent, providing a holiday venue for both her
and her daughter, the future Queen Victoria. After it was acquired by the
Duke of Bedford in 1880, the castle often played host to other royal
visitors — Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a regular. At the time of its
1907 sale it was described by the agents as “one of the most picturesque
marine estates in the Kingdom”.
The first world war heralded a decline in the country retreat.
Like many other large rural homes, Norris Castle was requisitioned and
occupied by Canadian troops, before being acquired in 1917 by Edwin Parker,
who then sold on the estate in pieces. The castle has since been reunited
with much of its original land.
Norris was one of the lucky ones: many formerly grand houses were handed back
after requisitioning in such an appalling state that continuing to live in
them as before was not an option. Often they were turned into schools (such
as Stowe in Buckinghamshire or Sherfield Manor in Hampshire), hotels
(Cliveden and Hartwell House) or opened to the public as National Trust
monuments (Montacute House in Somerset, West Wycombe Park in
Buckinghamshire).
Many buildings simply did not survive at all. The economic dislocation of the
Great Depression of the 1930s, followed by the second world war, meant far
fewer people than before had the staff or money to keep a country house
going; it was often cheaper to destroy one in a poor state and use the
materials to build a replacement than to attempt repairs.
It was not just a matter of money. Attitudes to living were also changing,
especially among those who had gone away to war. “When you came back from
Burma or wherever, you’d think there was more to life than Little Snoring,”
says Peter Young, director of agency John D Wood.
During the 1950s, a country house was lost on average every two weeks. In
1955, 76 houses were destroyed; Save Britain’s Heritage, a group set up in
1975 to counteract the demolition of historic buildings, says more than 400
houses were burnt, bulldozed or blown up from 1918-1975; by 1974,
applications to demolish country houses were being lodged at a rate of one a
day. According to The Latest Country Houses (1984), by John Martin Robinson,
between 1875 and 1975 1,116 country houses were destroyed.
“A staggering number of houses were pulled down, which today looks like
madness,” says James Laing, a partner at Strutt & Parker. “It was
inconceivable that anybody would ever have enough money to do anything other
than minimal repairs.”
Some of the properties lost were architectural gems. Adam Wilkinson, secretary
at Save Britain’s Heritage recalls the former Eaton Hall in Cheshire, “a
fantastic Gothic mansion”, which was destroyed in 1963. Earlier victims were
Coleshill in Berkshire, which burnt down in 1952 in what was described as
the most serious architectural loss of the decade, and the magnificent
Hamilton Palace in South Lan-arkshire, Scotland, demolished in 1922, of
which all that is left is the hunting lodge and the 10th Duke’s mausoleum.
We wince, but in some cases, the sorry tale of the once-grand houses left to
their fate still continues today. Gwylfa Hiraethog, a magnificent hunting
lodge built in about 1908 in Jacobean style, sits high on the Denbigh Moors
in Wales, and enjoyed landmark status after its construction.
Mark Baker, a local historian, estimates it would have cost a couple of
thousand pounds to build, and it was last sold in 1983 for £31,500. But the
building is now a ruin, and because it is so exposed, unless the material
that is still there is consolidated, it will be a pile of rubble before too
long, according to Baker.
But just as Baker is battling to save Gwylfa Hiraethog, including it in his
forthcoming book on heritage at risk in Wales, buyers are beginning to see
the attractions of investing their money in a country property.
Not far from from Gwylfa, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons in
Carmarthenshire, the Prince of Wales last year bought a country residence on
the Llwynywormwood estate. A century ago, the three-bed farmhouse, set in
192 acres of farmland, languished on the market for several years after the
death of its owner in 1907. Charles is believed to have paid between
£800,000 and £1.2m. The previous owners bought it for just £352,000 in 1998.
The beginnings of the revival of interest in the country house date back to
the 1960s, which, Laing recalls, was “not just a decade of pop music and
drugs”, but also a time of real growth, with people making real money. These
newly emerging nouveaux riches bought everything from boats to planes to
country houses.
“That kickstarted the renaissance of it being fashionable for people to live
in country houses and to commute, or live in townhouses and to weekend in
the country,” says Laing.
By the late 1960s, high levels of income tax, the introduction of capital
gains tax on second homes and a creeping fear of wealth tax conspired to hit
the country house market yet again. The stock market collapse of the
mid1970s all but finished it off.
Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979 marked the beginning of the modern-day
upturn in the country house market, with prices increasing year in year out,
barring a hiccup during the recession of the early 1990s.
So is 2007 just 1907 all over again? Not necessarily. Despite the influx of
overseas money into Britain, the market is still dominated by British
buyers, according to Sweeting.
These days, reflecting the enormous wealth that has become concentrated in
Britain’s financial sector over the past decade, many are City buyers flush
with bonus cash rather than members of the landed gentry of old. “When you
get your bonus, once you’ve bought a house in London, where are you going to
put the money?” asks Young. “You’ll buy a country house.”
Celebrities are buying, too: Young cites Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet, to whom
he sold a house in the Cotswolds in 2002, both of whom grew up in nearby
Reading. “They’re the perfect sort of people — new wealth —
they spent a fortune on their house,” he says. And then there are Madonna
and Guy Ritchie, who bought Ashcombe House, the former Wiltshire home of
Cecil Beaton, in 2001.
Unlike in 1907, when only the odd continental barons and counts would have
dipped a toe into the country house market, there are growing numbers of
international buyers — and today they’re most likely to be Russians and
Indians.
Lord Hesketh famously sold his family seat, Easton Neston in Northamptonshire
in 2005 for just less than £15m to the Russian-born trade tycoon Leon Max.
His reason, apart from spiralling costs, was that he did not want to pass on
the debt to his children.
Changing lifestyles have also affected the relative popularity of different
counties over the century. According to Strutt & Parker, in 1907, the
most expensive counties were Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey. The latter two
are still up there, but Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and
Gloucestershire have become increasingly popular in the past 20 years,
because many owners want to be within easy reach of London.
Schools, though, have also assumed greater importance, thanks to the growth in
popularity of day-boarding, where children return home at weekends. Sweeting
estimates any property within 20 minutes of a good school attracts a 10%-15%
premium. This, he believes, explains the growth in popularity of Dorset,
which although not convenient for the capital, has a number of leading
independent schools.
Regardless of time, money spent, or place, however, the lure of a country pile
has always been the cachet it bestows upon the owner.
Why else, in Anthony Trollope’s novel, The Way We Live Now, would Sir Roger
Carbury have been so proud of “that thoroughly established look of old
county position” that belonged to his manor house; or John Prescott, caught
playing croquet during the working day at Dorneywood last year, refuse to
give up his life of luxury?
Plenty of people are keen for a bit of cachet — Savills estimates 6,000
buyers are lined up to chase the 1,000 or so country mansions in the
£2m-plus bracket expected to be sold this year. So if you are thinking about
becoming lord of the manor yourself, you had better get in quick.
- The Norris Castle gatehouse is being jointly marketed by Hose Rhodes
Dickson, 01983 521 144, www.hose-rhodes-dickson.co.ukand Creasey, Biles & King, 01983 527 744, www.creasey-biles-king.co.uk
