Kilpeck Church, Herefordshire

I have wanted to visit Kilpeck Church in Herefordshire for some time to see its fine Norman carvings. I finally managed it on a cold but sunny December morning.

Although not part of South West England by normal definition, as Simon Jenkins comments in his England's Thousand Best Churches:

[Kilpeck’s] motifs are drawn from Scandinavia, Germany, Spain and Italy, and display the Severn Vale as a cultural crossroads of Romanesque richness.

The carvings date from the middle of the 12th century and are to be found around the south doorway:

The west side:

The chancel arch:

And remarkably in the corbels, mostly undamaged, which appear all round the exterior:

Simon Jenkins again:

The Kilpeck carvings demonstrate the vigour of the Saxon-Norman sculptural tradition. Themes and styles are drawn from the pilgrim routes across northern Europe, from Vikings, Saxons, Celts, Franks and Spaniards, the entire 'Northmen' diaspora.

Only some have much Christian significance. The interpretation of the carvings, the identification of similar works by the “Herefordshire School” of stone carvers and of analogues in other parts of Europe is a subject for serious scholarship, not a blog. Though I could imagine one devoted to nothing else. For the merely interested, Jenkins’ book is a start and Pevsner's Herefordshire (latest edition 2012) should be the next call. Visitors can find some useful information in the church.

The nearby and neatly extended Kilpeck Inn is of a much higher standard that might be expected in a fairly remote spot and its menu is a “cultural crossroads of Romanesque richness” too – focaccia, ciabatta, porcini, brioche, mozzarella, olives … and local suppliers, of course.

Rex Whistler and Laura Knight at Haddon Hall

Haddon Hall, near Bakewell in Derbyshire, is described in Pevsner’s Buildings of England for the county as:

… the English castle par excellence, not the forbidding fortress on an unassailable crag, but the large, rambling, safe, grey, lovable house of knights and their ladies, the unreasonable dream-castle of those who think of the Middle Ages as a time of chivalry and valour and noble feelings. None other in England is so complete and convincing.

Simon Jenkins, in his England's Thousand Best Houses, puts it in the top 20 with 5* (out of 5):

Haddon is the most perfect English house to survive from the Middle Ages. …. It has not changed because it never needed to change. … Those aristocratic curses of extravagance and infertility have not visted Haddon. The place is still owned by the Manners family, the Dukes of Rutland. To wander up the slope to the worn gatehouse steps and enter the ancient courtyard is as agreeable an experience as England can offer.

And he explains:

Through the 18th and 19th centuries, the Rutlands neglected Haddon in favour of the seat of Belvoir (Leics). This saved it from the drastic alterations that occurred to most houses over that period. Haddon’s restoration by the 9th Duke after 1912 and recently by his grandson have been deferential.

So it was a surprise during a recent visit to Haddon Hall to encounter work by two twentieth-century British artists, Rex Whistler and Laura Knight, and a reminder of the extent of aristocratic patronage, even in the 1930s.

The 70th anniversary last month of Rex Whistler’s death in combat during the Normandy campaign seemed to have passed without note. He was 39 and had had early success. Henry Tonks, his Professor at the Slade, remarked that he had only ever known three or four people with a natural gift for drawing, and Rex Whistler was one of them. Thanks to Tonks’ sponsorship, Whistler was able to produce one of his best known works, the mural The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, for the restaurant at Tate Britain when he was only 23. Various commissions followed from the wealthy and fashionable, so when in 1933 the 9th Duke of Rutland wanted to celebrate the end of his restoration work at Haddon he secured Whistler’s services to paint a landscape featuring the Hall to go over the fireplace in the Long Gallery. It shows the Duke and his son looking over their Arcadia:

Whistler completed his longest mural in 1937 for the Dining Room at Plas Newydd, A Capriccio (short title), commissioned by Charles, 6th Marquess of Anglesey. The Marquess’s wife was one of the daughters of Henry Manners, 8th Duke of Rutland. In 2013 a biography, In Search of Rex Whistler: His life and work by Hugh and Mirabel Cecil was reviewed admiringly and at length for The Times Literary Supplement by Matthew Sturgis. He points out:

The suggestion that Rex Whistler was the model for Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is properly dismissed here by the Guinnesses. Nevertheless, that sense – so well delineated in the novel – of a modest, conventional middle-class young man of talent and charm being drawn into an enchanted and perhaps emotionally dangerous aristocratic world does have strong echoes in the story of Whistler’s life.

Just after the Long Gallery, in the Great Chamber, is this ‘sketch’ by Laura Knight, seen a year ago at the National Portrait Gallery:

It was drawn in 1934 in preparation for an oil painting of Kathleen Manners, the 9th Duchess of Rutland. The painting is at Belvoir Castle, presumably on view to visitors. Although the NPG show made do with the sketch, perhaps the painting will be made available to the Dulwich Picture Gallery for the Laura Knight exhibition planned for the winter of 2015-16 and marking the 50th anniversary of her Royal Academy retrospective.

Footnote 

This Penguin Guide to Derbyshire and the Peak District, “Revised and Reprinted, 1949”, says about Haddon Hall that it “is considered by some to be the most lovely medieval house in England. The house is now open to the public daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m, admission 2s”. For current opening times please consult the Haddon Hall website and also note that the basic admission price is now £10 (“2s” or Two Shillings is the pre-decimalisation equivalent of £0.10, so a 100-fold increase in 65 years ). Actually, £10 is good value, given the quality of the house and its contents and the gardens. On the other hand, the equivalent of £10 for a paperback of 169 pages, with maps but no illustrations, certainly was not!

High Cross House, Dartington

Machines for living in:

Le Corbusier, Stuttgart 1927 and Lescaze 1932 (right)

In a post in June about the Bauhaus exhibition then running at London's Barbican Art Gallery, I mentioned that one of the first International Modern houses to be built in the UK was at Dartington in Devon (SW England). I’ve now had the opportunity to visit High Cross House which is the property of the Dartington Hall Trust, but, as the National Trust (NT) puts it: “… we are excited to be presenting it to the public under our management, working in partnership with the owners …”. The public reopening under NT auspices was in March 2012, and to quote the owners:

The National Trust will work with Dartington, owners of High Cross House, and others to build a community-led sustainable model of management and programming which will make High Cross House a local hub for contemporary arts and a new face for the National Trust.  

Following an initial period of showing the house as a “blank canvas”, there will be a rotating programme of exhibitions and installations by nationally recognised ‘names’ and emerging local artists. There will be simple organic catering on-site and an Art, Craft and Design led retail offer. 

Vaughan Lindsay, Dartington CEO, said: “We’re very excited by this new partnership with the National Trust. We hope the partnership will bring many new visitors to the estate to enjoy High Cross House, explore Dartington’s glorious grounds and gardens and find out more about our charitable programmes in the arts, social justice and sustainability”.

Philadelphia Savings Fund

Society Building (1929-32)

Leonard Knight Elmhirst (1893-1974) was the second husband of Dorothy Straight, née Whitney, (1887–1968) who had inherited her father’s fortune at the age of 17. In the 1920s the Elmhirsts took over the derelict Dartington Hall estate near Totnes in Devon as a vehicle for experiments in rural regeneration and in education. The latter would include the Dartington College of Arts (1961-2008) and the Dartington Hall School (1926-1987). In 1930 the Elmhirsts appointed William B. Curry as the School’s Headmaster. He had previously been head of the progressive Oak Lane Country Day School in Philadelphia. Oak Lane’s nursery had been designed by William Lescaze (1896-1969), a Swiss architect who had settled in the US after the First World War. This 1929 school building established Lescaze's reputation and he went on to design the first International Style skyscraper in the US (left). Curry persuaded the Elmhirsts to commission Lescaze, although based in New York, to design the Headmaster’s private accommodation, High Cross House, which was completed in 1932 and became one of the first Modernist buildings in Britain.

The 1989 description of High Cross House in Buildings of England Devon probably owes more to Bridget Cherry than Nikolaus Pevsner:

A stark geometric composition, the smooth rendered exterior concealing a structure of brick cavity walls with steel beams for cantilevers and wide spans (instead of the reinforced concrete originally specified, which was beyond the local builders). Long two-storey range to the road (originally painted grey-blue in contrast to the impractical white of the rest); entrance between garage and servants' wing and kitchen. Metal casement windows, mostly in horizontal bands. The main rooms project irregularly into the garden. Here the composition is more interesting: low SW study with rounded end and generous terrace on its flat roof serving the guest rooms over the garage; taller SE living room and adjoining dining room on a higher level.   

… The interior reflects the same aesthetic of abstract geometry: no mouldings - the smooth pressed steel doorcases were imported from America - the occasional curve, the play with different levels and with asymmetry, seen to good effect in the fireplaces with dark tiled surrounds, large marble lintels, and off-centre flues. The walls were originally painted in different tones (yellow and white in the hall, white and grey in the living room), not dead white throughout. ...

which contrasts with Pevsner’s much briefer comment in the earlier version, South Devon, published when High Cross House was only 20 years old:

… in 1933 [sic] the modern style arrived [at Dartington, buildings]… concrete plastered white, and as appropriate to Devon as they would be to California or the River Hudson, a symbol of enlightened internationalism, as it also directed the original staffing of the various departments of the Trust.

As well as the Headmaster’s House, Lescaze, together with Robert Hening, the Dartington Hall estate architect, designed a gymnasium, boarding houses, cottages and houses and the Estate Offices.

Visiting High Cross House today one comes away with the feeling that it would benefit from more curatorial input. Surprisingly the ‘retail offer’ does not extend to a Guide and although in one room visitors could tear off free descriptive sheets, the full set was not available except by photographing displayed copies. Contemporary (ie 2012) art from emerging local artists and craftspeople gives some life to what would otherwise be an empty building, as does the café, and generates some revenue presumably - I have commented here before about the maintenance problems posed by Modernist buildings (left)!  Admission is £7.20, by the way,  for non-NT members. But without too much effort or enormous cost, surely it would have been possible to recreate at least the Headmaster’s Study (below)? I can appreciate that despite the NT’s fascination with kitchens, in this case the latter’s restoration is probably impossible.
 

Is it that High Cross House, although located still in Dartington, is actually in a cultural no man’s land – the owners are happy to see the NT taking day-to-day charge, but the NT doesn’t want it to consume considerable resources by comparison with its other responsibilities?  Devon is a long way from London and Modernism (let alone Postmodernism) is a probably minority interest among the NT members who are Devonian residents or holidaymakers. The local NT’s Twitter output, NT English Riviera @NTRiviera, conveys the flavour. Perhaps Julian Fellowes could introduce the International Style and some Dartington location shooting into a future series of ITV's Downton Abbey, the current one now having reached the 1920s. There is a good precedent. In Evelyn Waugh's first novel, Decline and Fall, published in 1928, the socialite Margot Beste-Chetwynde wants to demolish her family house and commissions a young Modernist, Professor Silenus, to replace it with "Something clean and square." Modernism is no longer modern, after all.


High Cross House, Dartington, Devon, SW England, Sept 2012

UPDATE AUGUST 2015

Things have moved on since the post above was written three years ago.  The National Trust is no longer involved with High Cross House which remains the property of Dartington Hall Trust.  Downton Abbey finished its run without a flirtation with Modernism.  However there has recently been an opportunity to rent High Cross House through The Modern House estate agents.  They were looking for offers of £2500 per month and "...  potential tenants will need to make some alterations before moving in (a kitchen, for instance, will need to be installed)".  The informative brochure includes some archive images from Country Life: