Dumfries House (latest news!)

[Nemesis]

A bit of a heritage disaster in the making here:


http://tinyurl.com/ysw3jp
[Open in new window]

 

[plumbers mate]

This is in Scotland ie not the South so I doubt there will be any big hoohaa or fundraising for it.
Anyway the Olympics which every single person in the UK is desperate to go and see will get all the cash.

Cynical?

Me?

 

[Nemesis]

Oh, I think there is a big hooha going on.

 

[alice]

Negotiations broke down over some, not all, fixtures!

Now there's Scots thrift for you.

alice

 

[Nemesis]

As there were confidentiality agreements signed, I think it's not the whole picture.

It would, however, be dreadful for the contents designed for the house to be flogged off.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1329133.0.0.php#comments

And this letter from the Herald is interesting:

Your correspondents David Price and Gilbert Bell (Letters, April 16) explain exactly why Dumfries House and its furniture collection must be saved for the nation. One might add that the cost of acquiring this unique asset, estimated at £20m, equates to the construction price of one-fifth of one mile of the M74 extension, which the Scottish Executive is determined to build in defiance of the findings of a public inquiry. And, of course, £20m is mere loose change when measured against the seemingly uncontrollable budget for the London Olympics, or the billions devoted to maintaining weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde.

If the National Trust for Scotland has failed in its secret negotiations for Dumfries House, we are in danger of demonstrating yet again that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Rosemary Burton, Sanquhar House, Sanquhar.


More about what is happening to try and rescue it all:

http://tinyurl.com/2dugmp
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[Nemesis]

From Heritage Link newsletter today:

SAVE to save Dumfries House

SAVE Britain's Heritage, indomitable as ever, has launched an ambitious bid to forestall the imminent break-up of one of Britain's greatest treasure houses. Dumfries House in Ayrshire. The Palladian masterpiece by the Adam family contains the best collection of early Chippendale furniture and the most complete collection of Scottish furniture in the world.

The contents are due to be sold at auction in July, and the house is on the market. But SAVE believes that Dumfries House, never previously open to the public, offers a unique opportunity to boost the economy of the local town of Cumnock and indeed the whole East Ayrshire District through a major increase in tourism and employment. Following the failure of the National Trust for Scotland to reach agreement with the owner, SAVE has prepared an alternative plan for vesting Dumfries House in an independent charitable trust which will preserve it intact and open both house and estate to the public. Dumfries House would earn its keep not only through visitors to the house and park but through holiday lets of buildings on the estate, including parts of the house not open to the public, the Home Farm, the laundry, stables and coach house and the four gate lodges. Accommodation would also be available for educational purposes.

SAVE argues that if the Christies sale of contents proceeds in July, museums will seek large grants to purchase major items. As in the break-up of Mentmore Towers in 1977, public bodies will spend as much on saving a series of choice items at auction (and through stops on export) as is needed to save the house intact. To implement the proposal SAVE is seeking to raise £25m to cover acquisition of the house estate and contents, £10-12m from the NHMF with the remainder to come from private trusts and benefactors. Contact the Secretary, Adam Wilkinson, at SAVE if you can help in any way.

The SAVE report drawn up by Mark Gibson Action Plan for Dumfries House with support from the Pilgrim Trust and the Georgian Group is available by email from SAVE.

(It's basically a business plan I gather...)

 

[Nemesis]

The Scotsman:

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=648902007

The Art Newspaper:

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=624

PS The National Heritage Memorial Fund isn't the lottery.

 

[Nemesis]

Well, SAVE started with nothing, now has seven million - hopefully more will follow... it's all very complex but can only try.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/6661635.stm

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1404420.0.0.php

 

[Nemesis]

The Scotsman this morning:


Call for taxpayers' cash to save £25m stately home as national treasure
TIM CORNWELL
ARTS CORRESPONDENT
AN 18th-century stately home called a "time-capsule of the Scottish Enlightenment" should be saved for the nation with the use of taxpayers' money, MSPs have said.

The Scottish Executive faces growing calls to save Dumfries House, an East Ayrshire estate, and its unique Chippendale furniture collection. Both are heading for auction within weeks.

A private consortium led by the Art Fund, an independent art charity, yesterday said it had raised an unprecedented £7 million towards the estimated £25 million needed to buy the estate.

The Executive and the Lottery-backed National Heritage Memorial Fund will now be asked to contribute the rest of the cash, it said. But time is running out to make the case.

Dumfries House was built in 1754 and soon after furnished by the legendary Thomas Chippendale and leading Edinburgh cabinet-makers. It remains intact to this day.

The SAVE Britain's Heritage group has unveiled a proposal to buy it and run it as a major heritage attraction for economically deprived East Ayrshire.

The owner, the Marquess of Bute, announced his intention to sell three years ago.

With the furniture up for auction at Christie's in July, and the house already on the market, a contract must be signed within two weeks to stop a sale, sources said. Already collectors are lining up to bid for the 50 Chippendale pieces, including a bookcase valued at £2-4 million. A Christie's spokesman said heritage bodies had had three years notice and opportunity "to consider and propose an offer".

On the day the Scottish National Party took power at Holyrood, Labour and Tory culture spokesmen said the Executive should back the bid to buy Dumfries House for the nation.

"Because it is such an extraordinary gem, filled with treasures, it certainly would be worth saving for the nation if one was looking at it in economic terms," said the Conservative MSP Jamie McGrigor.

"It would be worth the Executive putting something into the venture."

The former culture minister, Labour MSP Patricia Ferguson, said: "If there is an approach to the Executive, it should certainly be considered. Dumfries House and its contents are very important to Scotland and to Ayrshire, and internationally important, too, because of that collection of furniture and fittings."

But an earlier National Trust of Scotland offer to buy the house, reputedly for more than £20 million, was turned down. The trust said yesterday it was "not in a position to commit the level of expenditure required to purchase Dumfries House without impacting upon the duty of care to the current properties and collections".

The National Museum of Scotland said it supported saving the house if "an appropriate and affordable solution" could be found.

The Art Fund's own £2 million pledge towards purchasing Dumfries House is easily the biggest in its history. The Monument Trust, one of the Sainsbury family charitable trusts, has pledged £4 million and the Garfield Weston Foundation another £1 million.

WHY IT MUST BE SAVED

AT A moment when Scotland is so aware of its achievements as a nation, Dumfries House should be cherished as an outstanding exemplar of Scottish genius, writes James Knox.

And yet, the future of this unique ensemble makes one want to weep. In a few short weeks, the great Chippendale mirrors will be unscrewed from the walls where they have been fixed for almost 250 years to be sold to the highest bidder.

This will be a cultural, social and economic tragedy. Cities worldwide are creating museums and arts centres as engines for social regeneration, while Scotland here has a ready-made cultural asset in an area of high social deprivation.

Designed in 1754, Dumfries House is the finest and most complete example of the early architectural work in Scotland of Robert Adam and his brothers John and James. The Palladian exterior acts as the drop curtain for a series of delightful public rooms, decked out in exuberant rococo style.

As if this were not riches enough, Dumfries House retains all of its original furniture, acquired by the Earl of Dumfries.

Dumfries House stands on the edge of Cumnock, still struggling with the long-term effects of pit closures and the decline of related industries. The saving of Dumfries House in its entirety, as proposed by SAVE Britain's Heritage, would transform local economic and employment prospects.

It has become something of a cliché that art can transform lives. But with Dumfries House, this is most emphatically true. Everything must now be done to save this unique work of art.

• James Knox is managing director of the Art Newspaper.

This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=765432007

Last updated: 17-May-07 01:00 BST

 

[Nemesis]

http://www.artfund.org/news/574

http://www.artfund.org/news/pdf/DumfriesHouseFINALpressreleaselogo16May.pdf

 

[Nemesis]

Sir Simon in today's Guardian:

Celtic nationalists should invest in their heritage instead of flogging it off


A pretence of local pride hides what UK devolutionists are really after - money. And their countryside is suffering
Simon Jenkins
Friday June 1, 2007
The Guardian


Where is the heart of the new "nationalism" sweeping Britain's Celtic fringe? So far it has seemed little more than a bid to spend British subsidies more generously than the English can. The Scots revel in freeing their students and elderly of fees. The Welsh give away prescriptions. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams refuse to speak to each other until their mouths are stuffed with English gold. This is pocketbook devolution. Read the nationalist manifestos and they are little more than shopping lists. Take away the British exchequer and I sense they would collapse like scarecrows without sticks.

Meanwhile, almost the first decision taken by the new Scottish Nationalist first minister, Alex Salmond, was to refuse a grant of £5m-10m to save for his nation the most spectacular monument at risk in Scotland, Dumfries House. Tuesday's refusal means that offers of matching money (most of it from England) will fall and the finest mid-Georgian house in Scotland, complete with its original contents, will go under the auctioneer's hammer next month.
Why did Salmond refuse? I suspect it is because his nationalism is rooted not in the character, culture and heritage of Scotland but rather in the bid of a factional politician for English money to buy votes and thus win power. The motivation is ambition, not nationalist vision.

Wales's Labour administration under Rhodri Morgan has been much the same. It is proto-nationalist in all but name, denying affinity to its London parent and buying the Plaid Cymru ticket on everything from broadcasting to bloated public payrolls. It has backed Welsh language and culture, but neither Morgan nor his nationalist rivals have shown concern for such emblems of Welsh nationhood as its landscape and coastline or its historic houses towns and villages, or even its chapels. Instead, if the British want to give Wales money to despoil the Cambrian mountains (like the Highlands and islands in Scotland) with wind turbines, then nationalism means grab the money.

I have no doubt that if Birmingham and Liverpool proposed to flood Welsh valleys for cash today, as they did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Welsh assembly would ask simply, how much? Like the Irish when they sighted Brussels gold to subsidise holiday cottages in every bog and headland, the most beautiful parts of the British Isles are being raped by those who should treasure them most: those who live in them. The spectacle offers the English a golden opportunity to jeer that nationalism is not fit even to be custodian of its own heritage.

The Dumfries House decision, unless urgently reversed, is a tragedy for Scotland and indeed for Britain, greater even than the loss of the Rothschild mansions in Piccadilly and Mentmore in the 1960s and 70s. The house, a secondary property of the Marquess of Bute, is an astonishing survival that he understandably no long needs. Dating from 1754, it is the first work of the Adam brothers, Robert and James, after their father's death and is filled with exquisite rococo plasterwork. It also contains, undiminished, the first complete commission by the young Thomas Chippendale, with some 50 pieces to his name. The tapestry room contains Gobelins donated by Louis XIV. The stripping of the house would leave it near valueless and vulnerable to that curse of deserted properties, fire.

The opportunity is undeniably challenging. The house is nowhere near Dumfries but lies close to the former mining town of Cumnock, which gave the world Kier Hardie and Bill Shankly. This part of east Ayrshire is not pretty, but Dumfries and its 2,000-acre estate is its one potential amenity and tourism draw. In terms of today's Olympic billions, the rescue cost is modest: £6.7m for the house and estate and £14m for the contents, of which £4m is the estimate for a single Chippendale rosewood bookcase. Save Britain's Heritage (Save), which has been orchestrating the rescue, puts a total price of £25m on buying the entire estate and preparing it for public access.

An extraordinary outburst of energy has gone into trying to save the house, locally and from English admirers of Scotland's past. The present marquess, Johnny Bute, offered Dumfries to the Scottish National Trust, an organisation of terminal lethargy and lack of enterprise, but negotiations failed. Yet Save has, in just a few weeks, generated offers of £7m from the Art Fund, its biggest ever grant, and the Sainsbury and Garfield Weston foundations: all from south of the border. Further promises, such as from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, are conditional on some show of pride, even of caring, from Scotland. Approached for £5m-10m, Salmond's heritage quango, Historic Scotland, refused to give a penny from its £68m budget on the grounds that the house was "not financially viable". The same might be said for its parliamentary building.

The scheme proposed by Save was commissioned from the developer Kit Martin to convert the less important parts of the house and its outbuildings into flats and devote the 2,000-acre estate as a leisure park for the otherwise deprived population of east Ayrshire. Martin has successfully done four such conversions in Scotland alone, but cannot proceed without start-up funds.

Iam sure that nationalism's attitude to these houses is similar to that of the Irish after independence when they smashed the streets and monuments of Georgian Dublin. One of the loveliest cities in Europe was defaced on the grounds that it was built by the English (even if the craftsmen were Irish). Dumfries, though built by Scottish architects for a Scottish aristocrat, somehow represents English values. The English love history, architecture, mountains and views. A real Scotsman likes money. If he can sell 50 Chippendales and get the idiot English to give him millions for wind farms on Skye, so much the better. His Robbie Burns is not the poetry of the Highlands but of a heavy night in Sauchiehall Street.

Dumfries thus tests the spiritual depth of modern nationalism. It is rivalled by Wales's neglect of its two most outrageously derelict masterpieces: Gwrych Castle near Llandudno, and the gothic mansion of Hafodunos in Clwyd. Both are classic works of Wales's 19th-century heritage that have literally burned while Cardiff fiddled. The loss of Welsh historic houses great and small, both during English rule from London and now under the Welsh executive, has been horrendous.

Ancient buildings should be the emblems of nationalism. The English have been comparatively good about preserving theirs, and I have no doubt that Dumfries, like Gwrych and Hafodunos, would be safe were they across the English border. What now should shame the Scots is that it is the English that are fighting to save what the Scots might one day enjoy.

The past is not a foreign country of which we know little. The essence of Scots, Welsh and Irish nationalism has been precisely the distinctiveness of its separate histories. In an age of increasing leisure but more costly international travel, reminders of those histories are their "family silver", the investment stock of national identity and of future tourist wealth. Those who cannot realise this are not nationalists but money grubbers.

 

[worms]

Nemesis,

While I wholeheartedly support the campaign to keep the Dumfries House collection together, in the house and available to the public, I think the Simon Jenkins article is counterproductive. His rant is simply his political point of view and diverts attention from the real issues of this case.

In practice, Scotland is a very small country with an awful lot of heritage to try and preserve and support. Government funding to Historic Scotland is a good deal higher in per capita terms than that of EH - as is its trading income (thanks largely to the benefits of non-Scottish tourists). So I don't think he is correct to assert that devolution per se is causing any greater degree of neglect to our heritage.

 

[Nemesis]

I think he's written in a rush - to try to draw attention to what's happening.

It's a complex political and funding business and a disaster in the making as far as heritage is concerned and actually I suspect he knew what he was doing when writing it. He's not paid by the Guardain to write 'save Dumfries House' articles, he's paid to commentate on situations.

The political will of Salmond isn't there - it's not 'Scottish' enough for him, and it might be seen to be lining the pockets of the Marquis of Bute if a few mill is given to the cause.

Obviously there's a great deal happening behind the scenes and this is only one arrow in the battle before it is all too late and there is hand wringing when it is finally realised what is being lost here.

There are pots of funds already promised and an action plan which would make the place self-supporting - a few million pledged from official Scottish sources is now required to complete the jigsaw.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Tragic

http://www.christies.com/special_sites/dumfries/index.asp

 

[Tom]

Indeed it is. What an absolute shame on those responsible!

Jaqy

 

[Nemesis]

And not over yet.

 

[Nemesis]

You have to chuckle... but SAVED...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464808&in_page_id=1770

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2113242,00.html


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1993673.ece

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article1996637.ece?Submitted=true

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/news/property/article/126354/Dumfries_House_saved_for_nation.html

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1006252007

http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/mediacentre/pressreleases/dumfries_house_saved_for_the_nation_656279566.html




Let's remember who did the campaigning and all the work behind the scenes -

http://www.savebritainsheritage.org

http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/sbh_pressrelease_dumfrieshouse_saved_270607.pdf



http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART48453.html

 

[Nemesis]

Torygraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/28/ndumfries128.xml


Quite astonsihing news coverage really!

 

[Nemesis]

This week's 'Country Life' has a major feature (first of two) and stunning pics by Marcus B on Dumfries House.

Wish I'd bought a catalogue - was too mean when they were sixty quid. Two have been sold on eBay - £127 and £147.