I can imagine few more agreeable excursions than a journey
to unspoilt Lincolnshire, visiting majestic Burghley near mellow-stoned Stamford, a comfortable night at the
venerable George Hotel there, a brief trip to Grantham to admire the lofty
parish church spire, combined with a solemn act of obeisance to honour the
birthplace of irreplaceable Margaret Thatcher and finally a short hop to Belton, late 17th century
seat of the distinguished Brownlow family until 1984.
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| Elizabethan Burghley House, Stamford |
Burghley House is
one of England’s show-pieces and is a great treasure house. It was built from
1566 to 1589 in three stages by William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley (1520-89),
indispensable Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I. His eldest son became
Earl of Exeter in 1605 (a second son, Robert Cecil, founded the Salisbury
dynasty at Hatfield House) and a descendant was created Marquess of Exeter in
1801, the present holder being the 8th Marquess. The House is now
owned by a Cecil family Trust and run by lady relatives of the 6th
Marquess as the last two Marquesses have resided in Canada.
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| 1st Lord Burghley, advisor to Queen Elizabeth I |
While externally the romantic towers and spires of the
Elizabethan original have been lovingly retained and the Great Hall within has
a striking 16th century double hammer-beam roof, Burghley has been remodelled regularly from the 17th
to the 19th century. There is a fine Chapel, embellished by a Veronese
Altarpiece. Indeed Burghley is famous for its large collection of paintings by
Italian Old Masters including Andrea Del Sarto, Carregio and Sacchi.
Unsurprisingly English painters like Kneller, Gainsborough and Lawrence are
well represented and there is memorable “Rent Day”, to warm any landlord’s
heart, attributed to Pieter Breughel.
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| The Second George Room, packed with art for a visit of George, Prince of Wales,. |
Burghley is of the scale and grandeur of a Palace and that
is what impresses. Aside from the celebrated paintings, ceramics and
tapestries, Burghley boasts some of the finest Baroque painted rooms in
England, principally the work of court painter Antonio Verrio (1643-1707) who
spent 10 years in the 1690s at Burghley (fortified by regular supplies of his
favourite Italian liver sausage!).
You get a foretaste of his work in a
staircase to the George Rooms.
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| Figures tumbling down from Verrio's ceiling |
Verrio’s masterpiece at Burghley is the vertiginous Heaven
Room, packed with classical figures from Mount Olympus and featuring many a trompe d’oeil
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| Verrio's Heaven Room at Burghley |
The richness of Burghley puts it in the same class as
Chatsworth and its historic connections allow it to eclipse the Rothschild
treasure houses.
The Cecils of Burghley have been a versatile family; the
6th Marquess was an Olympic hurdler, winning a gold at Amsterdam in
1928 and a silver at Los Angeles in 1932. He famously set a record by sprinting
round the Grand Court at Trinity College, Cambridge in the 43 seconds it takes
for the College clock to chime 12. He rather huffily refused to allow his real
name to be used in the splendid 1981 movie Chariots
of Fire because of various inaccuracies in the script and his fictionalised
character appears as Lord Andrew Lindsay played by Nigel Havers. It is ironic
that poetic licence should be frowned upon by the custodian of wildly poetic
and romantic Burghley! His successor, a brother, lived in Canada and became
Head of the cult, Emissaries of the Divine Light, to be succeeded by his son
both as Marquess and Emissary. Even Marquesses are allowed to be a little odd…....
Burghley also hosts the annual
Burghley Horse Trials, a red-letter date in the 3-Day Eventing world. Large
crowds assemble to see some jodhpured and helmeted Belinda ffitch-Twystleton
come a purler at the Cottesmore Leap; a tented village sells all manner of
life’s necessities, shooting sticks, tweedy hats, vast picnic hampers. It is
the well-heeled county set at play. Long may it prosper and cavort!
--------------------
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The pleasures of
Belton House are of a more modest kind. The Brownlow family and the Cecils
of Burghley inter-married and indeed 3 Marquesses were named Brownlow Cecil.
The lovely house completed in 1689 is attributed to Christopher Wren and it was
altered by James Wyatt in 1776.
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| Belton House, the archetypical English country house |
Built on an H-Plan, Belton is in the English Baroque style.
Austere without and elegant within, it has been described as: “an admirable
home for a well-to-do baronet of the later 17th century: spacious,
comfortable and dignified, restrained in taste and of superb masonry”. This
sounds like an understatement to me, as this house has Grinling Gibbons woodcarving,
William Kent furniture and paintings by Titian, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Tintoretto,
d’Hondecoeter and Hoppner. The photographs below give some idea of the house’s
elegance.
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| The Red Drawing Room, Belton |
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| The Staircase at Belton |
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| The Chinese Bedroom at Belton |
The
Brownlows were a dynasty of lawyers, gentry rather than aristocrats, though the
1st Baron Brownlow was at last created in 1776, on his retirement as
Speaker of the House of Commons.They gravitated towards the Court and Lord
Lieutenantcies.
The
Fates were unkind to the 6th Baron, Perry Brownlow. He was a great
friend and aide to Edward, Prince of Wales and Belton has many mementos of this
connection. Lovers Edward and Wallis Simpson stayed often at Belton and when
the Abdication Crisis broke in 1936, Brownlow supported schemes to permit a
morganatic marriage and even tried to lobby Queen Mary’s support (admission to the Presence declined!). Once
Abdication came, Perry turned down an invitation to the pair’s wedding in
France, earning the eternal enmity of Wallis, to help whom he had stuck out his neck.. He then read in the newspapers that he had ceased to be a Gentleman
in Waiting; when he phoned Buckingham Palace, he was curtly informed that his
resignation, which he had not proferred, had been accepted. Nobody close to
Edward VIII was welcome in George VI’s Court. Blackballed by both, Brownlow had
learned the ingratitude of princes!
After
300 Brownlow years, the land at Belton was sold and the House and contents were
donated to the National Trust in 1984.
SMD
8.11.13
Text
Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013
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