Sidney's Place: WOBURN ABBEY and RAGLEY HALL: The Stately Homes of England (4)

[This is the fourth in a series of articles describing some English Stately Homes and their connections]

Woburn Abbey and Ragley Hall were both built in their present form in about 1750; both have been in the possession of great families, the Russells and the Conway-Seymours; both were reduced to a ruinous state by the 1950s and both have been restored after great expense and effort by their family owners. Woburn is much the larger of the two, but Ragley is arguably the more beautiful, if one can ever isolate that elusive, quicksilver quality of “taste”.

Woburn Abbey

Although Woburn Abbey, at Woburn, Bedfordshire was built on the site of a Cistercian monastery, no abbey relics survive and it came into the ownership of the Russell family, Earls of Bedford in the 16^th century. The Russells were Whigs, often in conflict with the Crown and supporting Parliament. An heir was executed in 1683 for allegedly participating in the Rye House Plot to assassinate Charles II. He was posthumously pardoned by William and Mary and by way of compensation the Earldom became a Dukedom – there have since been 15 Dukes.

Woburn as we see it now was built between 1750 and 1760 using Henry Flitcroft (“Burlington Harry”) an apostle of Lord Burlington’s fashionable Palladian style. Henry Holland redecorated and remodelled some rooms in the early 1800s.The agricultural estate was consolidated generating large rents, but the most valuable asset was the Russell property in London which became the Bloomsbury area, still carrying family names of Russell, Woburn, Bedford and Tavistock. This great wealth still saw selfish Dukes neglecting their birthright and when the 13th Duke Ian Russell inherited in 1953, he faced a run-down building and death duties of £5,500,000. He turned Woburn into a tourist attraction, introducing fun-fairs, shops and a large safari park featuring rhinos, tigers, lions, bears and so on. Millions came but at some cost to the dignity of Woburn.

The Abbey is absolutely packed full of treasures. Sumptuous furniture, porcelain and portraits abound and in Queen Victoria’s Bedroom we get a flavour of the extremely elaborate decorative scheme of Flitcroft completed in 1760 based on drawings of ruined Palmyra.

Woburn, Queen Victoria's Bedroom

In Queen Victoria’s Drawing Room there are lovely Dutch paintings by Cuyp, van de Welde, Jan Steen, David Teniers and Van Dyck. Lavish rooms follow, sometimes with English sometimes with French or Dutch themes. Typical is the State Saloon with a Rysbrack chimney-piece, rococo chandelier, Irish silver, Meissen porcelain and modern murals chronicling the Russells. The mainly French Blue Drawing Room has silk hangings, Sevres porcelain and a fine Claud Lorrain landscape.

Woburn, The Blue Drawing Room

The procession of acquired riches culminates in the Canaletto Room, a private dining room embellished with 21 views of Venice bought by the 4^th Duke in 1732 while on the Grand Tour – three other Canalettos are hung elsewhere.

While the Abbey is certainly a treasure house, somehow the place does not lift your spirits. The décor is heavily ponderous and there is simply too much of everything – the human touch is missing – it is a wearying temple to ostentation and acquisitiveness.

Woburn, The Canaletto Room

The Russells were a prominent Whig family and they produced one Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, twice in power under Victoria and most famous for introducing the 1832 Reform Bill. He was an honourable but not politically adept Premier, easily out-manoeuvred by his more charismatic rival, Lord Palmerston.

Lord John was the grandfather of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), later Earl Russell, the famous empirical philosopher who did most of his serious academic thinking in the 1910s, wrote very popular books on ethical matters in the 1920s and 1930s, was a pacifist campaigner all his life and into the 1940s, opposed nuclear arms and the Vietnam war, supported Cuba and ended up the talisman of the extreme Left.

Bertrand Russell

Goat-like in his sexual habits, he treated his wives and many mistresses abominably. He had a brilliant mind but had personal blind-spots, thanks perhaps to a cold-hearted inherited arrogance or perhaps to a strain of family madness evident in several other Russells.

-------------------------------------------

It is with some relief that we leave the grandeur of Woburn and the oddities of the Russells for the cultured purlieus of Ragley Hall and the more relaxed, if hardly saintly, merits of the Conway-Seymours.

Ragley Hall

Ragley Hall, near Alcester in Warwickshire, was begun in 1680 by Robert Hooke, the cantankerous polymath but loyal colleague of Sir Christopher Wren. The Hall was much beautified in 1750 by the Scots architect James Gibbs and in 1780 by James Wyatt. The Conway-Seymours, a venerable family whose forbears included Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII who died in 1537 giving birth to Edward VI, has owned the Hall since its inception. The Earl of Conway became the Marquess of Hertford in 1793 and there have been 9 Marquesses since. Some neglected the Hall and its estate so that it had become almost a ruin after WW2; the 8^th Marquess moved back to Ragley in 1956, spending years repairing and restoring it to the pleasure of its many visitors.

Ragley, The Great Hall

The Great Hall is the finest part of Ragley, designed by James Gibbs in the High Baroque manner he had seen in Rome. The central ceiling medallion represents Britannia and the plaster-work is strikingly beautiful. Many of the suite of rooms have delectable, lightly decorated ceilings by Gibbs, enhanced by 18^th century furniture and family portraits appropriate to a country house family. James Wyatt’s contribution was notable as he added the stately portico but also decorated the charming Red Saloon, with its damask wall-hangings and Dutch paintings.

Ragley, The Red Saloon

Ragley is all that a Stately Home should be, full of fine things but understated, a real home rather than a tourist attraction, a place of pride but not of ostentation.

The Marquesses of Hertford have been generally respectable except in the case of the 3^rd Marquess, Francis Charles (1777-1842). 15 years older than the Prince Regent, he nevertheless became an intimate of “Prinny” and was a debauched Regency rake. His tongue paralysed, he allegedly lived in Paris with a retinue of prostitutes even in his dotage. He had been a Tory MP but his great redeeming feature was his love and knowledge of art. He scoured the Paris salerooms and founded the fabulous Hertford family collection.

His son and heir, Richard, never set foot in Ragley but lived all his spartan life at the lovely Chateau de Bagatelle in the Bois du Boulogne, Paris, then owned by the family. Richard was also an avid art lover and greatly added to the Collection. He died in 1870 and bequeathed all he could, excluding Ragley which went to a cousin, to his illegitimate son Richard Wallace. Wallace, who had acted as aide and secretary to his father, left the Collection to his widow on the basis that it be donated to the nation on her death and it became a great national treasure in 1897.

The Wallace Collection, in Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1, is in many peoples’ opinion the finest museum in London. Its range of 18th century French paintings by Boucher, Fragonard and Watteau is unrivalled: the Great Gallery of Old Masters is extraordinary and the wealth of pottery, furniture, snuff-boxes, clocks and objets d’art is of a remarkably high standard.

The artistic contribution to the nation of the Marquesses of Hertford was truly munificent.