Chicheley Hall
Encyclopedia
Chicheley Hall, in Chicheley
, Buckinghamshire
, was built in the first quarter of the 18th century in the Baroque style
. It is one of the finest country houses
in Buckinghamshire, described by Marcus Binney
in The Times
as "one of the dozen finest and loveliest English country houses that will ever come on the market".
on the site belonged to the Pagnell family of Newport Pagnell
, but was given by them to the church
. Cardinal Wolsey gave it to Christ Church, Oxford
, but it reverted to the Crown
, and was acquired by a merchant, Anthony Cave in 1545, who built a manor house in the form of a hollow square. By the time of the English Civil War
, the house belonged to the Chester family. The house was damaged during the war, and demolished afterwards. The present Chicheley Hall was built on the same site. All that remains of the old manor today is one Jacobean
over-mantel with termini caryatid
s, and some panelling
in the 'new' Chicheley Hall.
, but has more recently been attributed to Francis Smith, who is thought to have designed it for Sir John Chester
.
The principal facade
of the house is of nine bay
s on three floors upon a raised basement
; the central section of three bays projects. Massive fluted Corinthian
pilaster
s flank the central three bays. These are repeated at each termination of the facade and again divide the second from the third bay of each wing that flanks the central projection. The facade is symmetrical, however the curve-topped windows of the central projection are taller than the flat-topped windows of the wings, thus uniformity at roof level is achieved by an upward curve to the central section from the wings. These motifs, examples of baroque architecture
are exceedingly rare in Britain, where baroque was fashionable for a very brief period at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th.
The main door opens to a fine panelled Great Hall, in the manner of William Kent
with a classical double-height ceiling depicting Herse
and her sisters sacrificing to Flora. Through an arcade of marble columns, oak staircases lead to the upper floors. The most remarkable room is the 'secret' library
on the upper floor, with all shelving and books concealed behind what appears to be panelling, thus disguising the room's true use. The interior includes some of the finest woodcarving, joinery and plasterwork in any English country house of its period.
The house is surrounded by a park of 100 acre (0.404686 km²), including a lake, canal, and 25 acres (101,171.5 m²) of gardens, laid out by George London
and Henry Wise. An avenue of lime trees leads to the house, past an octagonal dovecote
. The River Ouse
lies to the east.
as its Special Training School No. 46. From 1942 until 1943, it was used for training Czechoslovaks
for SOE parachute missions. It was later used to train Polish
agents, and then became a FANY wireless
telegraphy
school. Fortunately, the fine interior was protected by hardboard
.
The house was purchased from the Chester family by David Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty
in 1952, son of First World War Admiral
Lord Beatty
, who brought memorabilia of his father. Beatty began a large restoration program and finally employed the renowned interior decorator Felix Harboard, famed for his work at Luttrellstown Castle
near Dublin. Harboard's masterful, classical
colour schemes accentuating moulding
and panelling perfectly suit the house.
Chicheley Hall remained the home of the 2nd Earl's fourth wife, Diane, after his death. She remarried, to Sir John Nutting, and was later the chairman of the Georgian Group
. Together, they ran the house as a venue for weddings and conferences. The house stood in for Bletchley Park
in the 2001 film Enigma
. It has also been used as a location in several other films and TV projects, including Pride and Prejudice
, The Meaning of Life, The Red Violin
, Black Beauty
, The Fourth Protocol
, A Village Affair (1995 TV Movie), Separate Lies
.
In 2007, Grade I listed Chicheley Hall was placed on the market for sale, with a guide price of £9 million. It was bought by the Royal Society
for £6.5 million, funded in part by Fred Kavli
. The Royal Society has spent a further £12 million renovating the house, and adapting it to become the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, a venue for science seminars and conferences. Outside of these scientific events the Hall may be used by others for corporate and social events.
Chicheley
Chicheley is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. The village is about 2½ miles north east of Newport Pagnell.The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means Cicca's clearing...
, Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, was built in the first quarter of the 18th century in the Baroque style
Baroque architecture
Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
. It is one of the finest country houses
English country house
The English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a London house. This allowed to them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country...
in Buckinghamshire, described by Marcus Binney
Marcus Binney
Marcus Binney, CBE is a British architectural historian and author. He is best known for his conservation work regarding Britain's heritage.-Early and family life:...
in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as "one of the dozen finest and loveliest English country houses that will ever come on the market".
Earlier buildings
An ancient manor houseManor house
A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...
on the site belonged to the Pagnell family of Newport Pagnell
Newport Pagnell
Newport Pagnell is a town in the Borough of Milton Keynes , England. It is separated by the M1 motorway from Milton Keynes itself, though part of the same urban area...
, but was given by them to the church
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
. Cardinal Wolsey gave it to Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
, but it reverted to the Crown
The Crown
The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...
, and was acquired by a merchant, Anthony Cave in 1545, who built a manor house in the form of a hollow square. By the time of the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, the house belonged to the Chester family. The house was damaged during the war, and demolished afterwards. The present Chicheley Hall was built on the same site. All that remains of the old manor today is one Jacobean
Jacobean architecture
The Jacobean style is the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. It is named after King James I of England, with whose reign it is associated.-Characteristics:...
over-mantel with termini caryatid
Caryatid
A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese...
s, and some panelling
Panelling
Panelling is a wall covering constructed from rigid or semi-rigid components. These are traditionally interlocking wood, but could be plastic or other materials....
in the 'new' Chicheley Hall.
Current hall
The present hall was built between 1719 and 1723, with the interior fittings completed in 1725. The house was often attributed to the architect Thomas ArcherThomas Archer
Thomas Archer was an English Baroque architect, whose work is somewhat overshadowed by that of his contemporaries Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Archer was born at Umberslade Hall in Tanworth-in-Arden in Warwickshire, the youngest son of Thomas Archer, a country gentleman, Parliamentary...
, but has more recently been attributed to Francis Smith, who is thought to have designed it for Sir John Chester
John Chester
John Chester is a documentary filmmaker, TV director, and cinematographer. During his high school years he made student films in his hometown, the mainly seasonal resort town of Ocean City, Maryland, USA. but later lived in the Los Angeles area where he worked as a Production assistant on a...
.
The principal facade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
of the house is of nine bay
Bay
A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Bays also exist as an inlet in a lake or pond. A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight...
s on three floors upon a raised basement
Basement
__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...
; the central section of three bays projects. Massive fluted Corinthian
Corinthian order
The Corinthian order is one of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric and Ionic. When classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order...
pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s flank the central three bays. These are repeated at each termination of the facade and again divide the second from the third bay of each wing that flanks the central projection. The facade is symmetrical, however the curve-topped windows of the central projection are taller than the flat-topped windows of the wings, thus uniformity at roof level is achieved by an upward curve to the central section from the wings. These motifs, examples of baroque architecture
Baroque architecture
Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
are exceedingly rare in Britain, where baroque was fashionable for a very brief period at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th.
The main door opens to a fine panelled Great Hall, in the manner of William Kent
William Kent
William Kent , born in Bridlington, Yorkshire, was an eminent English architect, landscape architect and furniture designer of the early 18th century.He was baptised as William Cant.-Education:...
with a classical double-height ceiling depicting Herse
Herse
Herse is a figure in Greek mythology, daughter of Cecrops, sister to Aglauros and Pandrosos.According to Apollodorus, when Hephaestus unsuccessfully attempted to rape Athena, she wiped his semen off her leg with wool and threw it on the ground, impregnating Gaia...
and her sisters sacrificing to Flora. Through an arcade of marble columns, oak staircases lead to the upper floors. The most remarkable room is the 'secret' library
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
on the upper floor, with all shelving and books concealed behind what appears to be panelling, thus disguising the room's true use. The interior includes some of the finest woodcarving, joinery and plasterwork in any English country house of its period.
The house is surrounded by a park of 100 acre (0.404686 km²), including a lake, canal, and 25 acres (101,171.5 m²) of gardens, laid out by George London
George London (landscape architect)
George London was an English nurseryman and garden designer. He aspired to the baroque style and worked on the gardens at Hampton Court, Melbourne Hall and Wimpole Hall....
and Henry Wise. An avenue of lime trees leads to the house, past an octagonal dovecote
Dovecote
A dovecote or dovecot is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be square or circular free-standing structures or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source historically in...
. The River Ouse
River Great Ouse
The Great Ouse is a river in the east of England. At long, it is the fourth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The river has been important for navigation, and for draining the low-lying region through which it flows. Its course has been modified several times, with the first recorded being in...
lies to the east.
Recent history
During the Second World War, Chicheley Hall was used by the Special Operations ExecutiveSpecial Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
as its Special Training School No. 46. From 1942 until 1943, it was used for training Czechoslovaks
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
for SOE parachute missions. It was later used to train Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
agents, and then became a FANY wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
telegraphy
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...
school. Fortunately, the fine interior was protected by hardboard
Hardboard
Hardboard, also called high-density fiberboard , not to be confused with 'hardwood', is a type of fiberboard, which is an engineered wood product....
.
The house was purchased from the Chester family by David Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty
David Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty
David Field Beatty, 2nd Earl Beatty , known as Viscount Borodale from 1919 to 1936, was a British Conservative Party politician.-Family:...
in 1952, son of First World War Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
Lord Beatty
David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty
Admiral of the Fleet David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO was an admiral in the Royal Navy...
, who brought memorabilia of his father. Beatty began a large restoration program and finally employed the renowned interior decorator Felix Harboard, famed for his work at Luttrellstown Castle
Luttrellstown Castle
Luttrellstown Castle, dating from the early 15th century , is located near Clonsilla on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland. It has been owned variously by the eponymous and notorious Luttrell family, by the bookseller Luke White and his descendants Baron Annaly, by the Guinness family, the Primwest...
near Dublin. Harboard's masterful, classical
Classical architecture
Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...
colour schemes accentuating moulding
Molding (decorative)
Molding or moulding is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster but may be made from plastic or reformed wood...
and panelling perfectly suit the house.
Chicheley Hall remained the home of the 2nd Earl's fourth wife, Diane, after his death. She remarried, to Sir John Nutting, and was later the chairman of the Georgian Group
Georgian Group
The Georgian Group is an English and Welsh conservation organisation created to campaign for the preservation of historic buildings and planned landscapes of the 18th and early 19th centuries...
. Together, they ran the house as a venue for weddings and conferences. The house stood in for Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
in the 2001 film Enigma
Enigma (2001 film)
Enigma is a 2001 British film about the Enigma codebreakers of Bletchley Park in World War II. The film, directed by Michael Apted, stars Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet. The film's screenplay was by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel Enigma by Robert Harris...
. It has also been used as a location in several other films and TV projects, including Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV serial)
Pride and Prejudice is a six-episode 1995 British television drama, adapted by Andrew Davies from Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth starred as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Produced by Sue Birtwistle and directed by Simon Langton, the serial was a BBC...
, The Meaning of Life, The Red Violin
The Red Violin
The Red Violin is a 1998 Canadian drama film directed by François Girard. It spans three centuries and five countries as it tells the story of a mysterious violin and its many owners...
, Black Beauty
Black Beauty (1994 film)
Black Beauty is a 1994 film adaptation of Anna Sewell's novel by the same name directed by Caroline Thompson in her directorial debut. The film stars Andrew Knott, Sean Bean and David Thewlis. The film is also treated as an autobiography of the horse Black Beauty as in the original novel, and is...
, The Fourth Protocol
The Fourth Protocol (film)
The Fourth Protocol is a 1987 Cold War spy film starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan, based on the novel The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth.- Plot :The plot centres on a secret 1968 East-West agreement to halt nuclear proliferation...
, A Village Affair (1995 TV Movie), Separate Lies
Separate Lies
Separate Lies is a 2005 British drama film directed by Julian Fellowes who also wrote the screenplay, updating the 1951 novel A Way Through the Wood by Nigel Balchin that had already been turned into a stage play under the title Waiting for Gillian in 1957. The film stars Tom Wilkinson, Emily...
.
In 2007, Grade I listed Chicheley Hall was placed on the market for sale, with a guide price of £9 million. It was bought by the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
for £6.5 million, funded in part by Fred Kavli
Fred Kavli
Fred Kavli is a Norwegian and naturalized American physicist, business leader, inventor, and philanthropist. He was born in the village of Eresfjord, Nesset municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. Today Kavli lives in the city of Santa Barbara, California. He established The Kavli...
. The Royal Society has spent a further £12 million renovating the house, and adapting it to become the Kavli Royal Society International Centre, a venue for science seminars and conferences. Outside of these scientific events the Hall may be used by others for corporate and social events.
External links
- http://www.chicheleyhall.co.uk - The Kavli Royal Society International Centre at Chicheley Hall
- http://royalsociety.org/ - The Royal Society