Marshcourt | |
---|---|
Type | Country House |
Location | Kings Somborne |
Coordinates | 51°06′02″N1°29′32″W / 51.10056°N 1.49222°W |
OS grid reference | SU 35660 33594 |
Area | Hampshire |
Built | 1901-1905 |
Architect | Edwin Lutyens |
Architectural style(s) | Tudor Revival |
Owner | Private |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
Official name | Marshcourt School |
Designated | 29 May 1957 |
Reference no. | 1093803 |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
Official name | Sunken garden on south of west wing of Marsh Court |
Designated | 7 February 1986 |
Reference no. | 1093807 |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Moat in front of forecourt of Marsh Court to the north |
Designated | 7 February 1986 |
Reference no. | 1093804 |
Official name | Marsh Court |
Type | Grade II* |
Designated | 31 May 1984 |
Reference no. | 1000149 |
Marshcourt, also spelled Marsh Court, is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Marsh Court, near Stockbridge, Hampshire, England. It is constructed from quarried chalk. Designed and built by architect Edwin Lutyens between 1901 and 1905, it is a Grade I listed building. [1] The gardens, designed by Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. [2]
Lutyens built Marshcourt for Herbert "Johnnie" Johnson, a trader/stockjobber on the London Stock Exchange, where he had accumulated a fortune of half a million pounds. He bought a hillside site overlooking the River Test [3] (on a ridge above a much older manor house in the valley bottom, Marsh Court Manor), and approached Lutyens after seeing his work portrayed in Country Life . They became lifelong friends. [4]
The house was built on the hillside, out of locally quarried chalk cut as ashlar, [5] known as clunch. Lutyens interspersed pieces of black flint and red tiles in the masonry. [6] The exterior design of the house is Tudor, with mullioned and transomed windows, [7] and twisted brick chimneys. [6] "Elizabethan bricks" were supplied by the Daneshill Brick and Tile Company, an enterprise set up by another Lutyens client, Walter Hoare. [8]
The north, entrance front on the higher ground is two-storey, [1] in an E-plan with the facades displaying predominantly horizontal lines. [7] The south, garden front is taller, [1] less symmetrical, and with emphatic vertical lines. [7] The west end of the south front is dominated by chimney stacks. [6] At the east end of the south front, a wing projects forward, enclosing a service courtyard. [1]
Internally, a long corridor runs east to west, with the main rooms all south-facing. [6] The interior design is neoclassical. [9] The oak-panelled hall features two friezes carved in chalk, with classical festoons. The dining room is panelled in walnut veneer. Ceilings have highly decorative plasterwork. [10] There are chalk fireplaces and even a chalk billiard table. [6] Lutyens also designed the light fittings. [11]
In the First World War, Marshcourt became a 60-bed military hospital, run by Johnson's wife, [12] a local widow who had been known as Violet Meeking before their marriage in 1912, and had been born Violet Fletcher. [13] She also ran a military hospital in Stockbridge. In 1919, Herbert Johnson instigated the construction of the Grade II listed Stockbridge War Memorial, designed by Lutyens and unveiled in 1921 by Violet Johnson, [12] and King's Somborne War Memorial, also designed by Lutyens, unveiled in 1921 and Grade II listed. [14] Violet Charlotte Johnson was awarded an MBE, for her services in the care of wounded soldiers, but died in 1921. Lutyens designed her Grade II listed memorial in Winton Hill cemetery, Stockbridge. [15]
In 1924–6, [16] Lutyens added a ballroom to the southeast corner of the house, in the same architectural style. [11] Johnson later installed a full-size organ there. [17]
In 1932, after falling on hard times Johnson sold Marshcourt for £60,000, having paid £150,000 originally. [18] It later became a preparatory school, [19] known as Marsh Court School. [1]
In 1993 Marshcourt was bought by the Belgian car importer Joska Bourgeois for £630,000. Bourgeois allowed the British businessman and politician Geoffrey Robinson to appear as the owner of the house, he would eventually inherit it after Bourgeois' death, some eight months later. [20] Robinson sold Marshcourt in 1999 to its present owners. [21]
Gardens with terraces, pools and pergolas surround the house, connected by paths paved in stone inset with herringbone pattern brickwork panels. Main gardens include the Piazza, a lawned area immediately to the south of the house, with a central sundial, and a sunken pool garden adjacent to the Piazza to its west. There are extensive views from a west-facing loggia over the Piazza and the sunken garden towards the Test valley, [22] an arrangement similar to an earlier Lutyens work, Orchards in Surrey, and other Lutyens houses. [23]
The sunken garden has a rectangular pool containing a dolphin fountain and surrounded by concentric stone steps and flowerbeds. It is Grade II* listed. [24] Sculptures of seahorses and tortoises around the pool were created by Julia Chance, the owner of Orchards. [25]
A dry moat running around the forecourt to the north of the house is crossed by a bridge. These were both designed by Lutyens, and are Grade II listed. [26]
An episode of the 2011 BBC series The Country House Revealed was dedicated to Marshcourt. [27] Marsh Court was used as the Churston residence of Sir Carmichael Clarke in "Agatha Christie's Poirot in the episode The A.B.C. Murders
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biography, the writer Christopher Hussey wrote, "In his lifetime (Lutyens) was widely held to be our greatest architect since Wren if not, as many maintained, his superior". The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described him as "surely the greatest British architect of the twentieth century".
The Tower Hill Memorial is a pair of Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorials in Trinity Square Gardens, on Tower Hill in London, England. The memorials, one for the First World War and one for the Second, commemorate civilian, merchant seafarers and fishermen who were killed as a result of enemy action and have no known grave. The first, the Mercantile Marine War Memorial, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1928; the second, the Merchant Seamen's Memorial, was designed by Sir Edward Maufe and unveiled in 1955. A third memorial, commemorating merchant seamen who were killed in the 1982 Falklands War, was added to the site in 2005.
Wormley is a village in Surrey, England in the parish of Witley, around Witley station, off the A283 Petworth Road about 5 km (3.1 mi) SSW of Godalming.
The Free Church is a building located in Hampstead Garden Suburb, Barnet, London. It was built to a design by Sir Edwin Lutyens starting in 1911, and, like St Jude's Church at the opposite side of Central Square, is a Grade I listed building.
Sir Edward Guy Dawber, RA was an English architect working in the late Arts and Crafts style, whose work is particularly associated with the Cotswolds.
King's Somborne is a village in Hampshire, England. The village lies on the edge of the valley of the River Test.
Marsh Court is a hamlet in the civil parish of Stockbridge in the Test Valley district of Hampshire, England. It is in the civil parish of Kings Somborne. Its nearest town is Stockbridge, which lies approximately 0.7 miles (1.4 km) north from the hamlet.
Rochdale Cenotaph is a First World War memorial on the Esplanade in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, in the north west of England. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it is one of seven memorials in England based on his Cenotaph in London and one of his more ambitious designs. The memorial was unveiled in 1922 and consists of a raised platform bearing Lutyens' characteristic Stone of Remembrance next to a 10-metre (33 ft) pylon topped by an effigy of a recumbent soldier. A set of painted stone flags surrounds the pylon.
Little Thakeham is an Arts and Crafts style, Grade I listed private house in the parish of Thakeham, near the village of Storrington, in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England. Designed by architect Edwin Lutyens in 1902, the house was one of the first in which Lutyens mixed neoclassical architecture into his previously vernacular style. The exterior of the house is vernacular, but the interior has classical features, particularly in its large hall. The gardens, also designed by Lutyens, are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Munstead Wood is a Grade I listed house and garden in Munstead Heath, Busbridge on the boundary of the town of Godalming in Surrey, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of the town centre. The garden was created by garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, and became widely known through her books and prolific articles in magazines such as Country Life. The Arts and Crafts style house, in which Jekyll lived from 1897 to 1932, was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens to complement the garden.
Orchards is an Arts and Crafts style house in Bramley in Surrey, England. It is on Bramley's boundary with Busbridge and 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of Godalming town centre. Described by English Heritage as the first major work of architect Edwin Lutyens, it is a Grade I listed building. The gardens are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The property is privately owned.
Heathcote is a Neoclassical-style villa in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, England. Designed by architect Edwin Lutyens, it was his first comprehensive use of that style, making it the precursor of his later public buildings in Edwardian Baroque style and those of New Delhi. It was completed in 1908.
Tigbourne Court is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Wormley, Surrey, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Witley. It was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens, using a mixture of 17th-century style vernacular architecture and classical elements, and has been called "probably his best" building, for its architectural geometry, wit and texture. It was completed in 1901. English Heritage have designated it a Grade I listed building.
Mells Park is a country estate of 140 hectares near Mells, Somerset, England. It originated as a 17th-century deer park, probably created by the Horner family, who had been the owners of Mells Manor from 1543. The Horners expanded the park and planted extensive woodlands, resulting in a large collection of mature trees, especially 18th-century plantings of oak, lime and beech. The park is Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It contains Park House, also known as Mells Park House, a Grade II* listed building, built in 1925 in neoclassical style by the architect Edwin Lutyens, replacing an 18th-century house of the same name. It is c. 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Mells Manor House, which does not lie within the park.
Folly Farm is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Sulhamstead, West Berkshire, England. Built around a small farmhouse dating to c. 1650, the house was substantially extended in William and Mary style by architect Edwin Lutyens c. 1906, and further extended by him in vernacular style c. 1912. It is a Grade I listed building. The gardens, designed by Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. They are among the best-known gardens of the Lutyens/Jekyll partnership.
Mells War Memorial is a First World War memorial by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the village of Mells in the Mendip Hills of Somerset, south-western England. Unveiled in 1921, the memorial is one of multiple buildings and structures Lutyens designed in Mells. His friendship with two prominent families in the area, the Horners and the Asquiths, led to a series of commissions; among his other works in the village are memorials to two sons—one from each family—killed in the war. Lutyens toured the village with local dignitaries in search of a suitable site for the war memorial, after which he was prompted to remark "all their young men were killed".
King's Somborne War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the village of King's Somborne in Hampshire in southern England. The memorial was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1921; it is a grade II listed building.
Stockbridge War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the town of Stockbridge in Hampshire in southern England. The memorial was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1921; it is a grade II listed building.
The British Medical Association War Memorial, officially the War Memorial at British Medical Association House, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London, commemorates men and women of the medical professions from the British Empire and Commonwealth who died in the Second World War. The memorial was commissioned by the British Medical Association and designed by the sculptor James Woodford. Unveiled in 1954 by Sir John McNee, then President of the BMA, and dedicated by Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, it became a Grade II* listed structure in 1998.
Media related to Marshcourt at Wikimedia Commons