Grade I Folly? Worth Spending Money On?

[MdB]

OK, I'm just raising this thread as it's quiet here at the moment and this is something to get a discussion (more probably an argument ) going.

Castle Drogo is a grade I listed building in Devon. Unfortunately, it is leaking like a sieve and needs £10M to fix.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/8418621.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Drogo

On the plus side, it is the last castle to be built in England, probably the last private home to be completely made from granite and it is a popular NT place to visit.

On the minus side, it is only 80 to 100 years old and it needs repairs because it wasn't built properly in the first place.

To me it just looks like a folly, built as a modern copy of older things and there are other buildings more worthy of £10M.

I am sure you disagree :wink:

 

[Penners]

Castle Drogo started leaking only two years after it was completed

So, as we have often observed on this forum, cowboy builders are nothing new.

"Knock you up a quick castle, sir? I've got a load of granite left over from a council job. Cash in hand, of course."

 

[chuckey]

Its a queer place, loads of massive tunnels connecting the rooms, not to my taste. Its got 13,000 window panes in its rusty window frames. What with its hidden steel lintels rusting, one wonders if you can ever engineer a permanent solution, unless you re-build all the steelwork out of stainless steel. I think a graceful retreat, with a few £100ks of spend you could extend its life by 50 years. Or try and flog it to an Arab now.
Frank

 

[essexbearhunter]

"Knock you up a quick castle, sir? I've got a load of granite left over from a council job. Cash in hand, of course."

Not really a case of cowboy builders - Edwin Lutyens tried to get Julius Drewe to let him use cavity walls which would have reduced the damp penetration dramatically but Drewe was adamant that he wanted it single skin and in granite - like a 'real castle'.

The experimental bitumen roof covering was originally covered in slabs. A misunderstanding as to their effect, led to their removal and , without their protection, direct sunlight was able to heat and crack the bitumen. This process is being reversed and the NT seemed satisfied with their progress when we went up on the roof in February 2008.

Only the loss of his eldest son and the realisation that even he could not afford what he wanted (what we have is only the western side of a far larger vision / nightmare) keep the problem vaguely manageable.

Castle Drogo is a monument to the old lie "The customer is always right. " and the unintentional damage caused by inappropriate repair rather than "cowboy builders".

 

[Nigel Watts]

Lutyens was an architectural genius and anything by him needs to be treated with the greatest respect.

I visited castle Drogo nearly 30 years ago and was shown around many parts which were not open to the public (I think my mother knew the administrator), including the roof. They were struggling with damp problems then. They had tried a chemical injection dampcourse on the parapet. Needless to say, being solid granite, it had failed. They were then inserting a physical membrane instead. Much to my disappointment they had already removed the granite slabs from the roof.

As with all his buildings the detailing and planning is of the highest order (the kitchens are especially fine, as I commented recently). He was rarely bullied by his clients; on the contrary he usually preferred to work for the newly rich rather han those with old money precisely so that he could get his way as they would be more in awe of him. In one commission the client said that the only thing he was going to insist on was an oak staircase. He was given one in marble.

Drew was an industrialist but seems to have more assertive than most clients. By the time Drogo was built Lutyens had moved on from his early Arts and Crafts to Queen Anne and Baroque, in a way which had remarkable parallels with the career of Richard Norman Shaw. Drogo nevertheless is a very remarkable piece of architecture.

 

[JoceAndChris]

It sounds glorious and absolutely worth spending money on! Why is it called Castle "Drogo"? Is it the home of the undead?

 

[Nigel Watts]

Drew had a genealogy drawn up which, spuriously or otherwise, linked him to a Norman baron of that name.

 

[essexbearhunter]

Drogo comes from the word Dragon (hence the carving above the entrance).

As was common at the time, once you have money you try to attain greater respectability by adding history (however spuriously). Using his surname as a starting point, he jumped to Drewsteignton in Devon, of which is first cousin was rector. Drogo (or Drew) de Teigne was a sub-tenant who gave his name to the village.

http://www.drewsteigntonparish.co.uk/history.asp

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Lutyens was an architectural genius and anything by him needs to be treated with the greatest respect.

I visited castle Drogo nearly 30 years ago and was shown around many parts which were not open to the public (I think my mother knew the administrator), including the roof. They were struggling with damp problems then. They had tried a chemical injection dampcourse on the parapet. Needless to say, being solid granite, it had failed. They were then inserting a physical membrane instead. Much to my disappointment they had already removed the granite slabs from the roof.

As with all his buildings the detailing and planning is of the highest order (the kitchens are especially fine, as I commented recently). He was rarely bullied by his clients; on the contrary he usually preferred to work for the newly rich rather han those with old money precisely so that he could get his way as they would be more in awe of him. In one commission the client said that the only thing he was going to insist on was an oak staircase. He was given one in marble.

Drew was an industrialist but seems to have more assertive than most clients. By the time Drogo was built Lutyens had moved on from his early Arts and Crafts to Queen Anne and Baroque, in a way which had remarkable parallels with the career of Richard Norman Shaw. Drogo nevertheless is a very remarkable piece of architecture.

Lutyens was also appalling at practical details, especially rainwater disposal. I once interviewed John Brandon-Jones, doyen of conservationists and last tender of the Arts and Crafts flame, who had been Voysey's assistant, and who recalled

People say he spent his youth cycling round studying the construction of Sussex cottages and all that, but he didn't study the construction at all, he looked at the massing and the lovely shapes of the roofs, canted and sloping, great chimneys going up and all the rest of it...He really was a sculptor on a large scale, rather than a building architect. ...When I was on the Historic Buildings Council, giving away grants, we used to shudder when a Lutyens building came up, because we knew we'd have to give it something, but we also knew that it would probably turn out that the reason it was in trouble was because of sheer stupid design. If you go to Hampstead you'll find that those houses round the North Square have beautiful wooden cornices which give endless trouble because they have a totally flat lead lining, and Lutyens didn't like rainwater goods for some reason, so he avoids rainwater pipes as far as possible or hides them inside, and the lead is just welted together end-to-end, which is all fine for the first ten years, and then it begins to split along the seams becasue of hot and cold expansion and the things go wrong. By that time Lutyens is well clear of the site and couldn't care less...There's no doubt that Lutyens' finest works are those war memorials, where there's no function, but that's the way he thought all the time

Thus does one learn the disappointing fact that heroes have feet of clay. I recall reading that the brick facing on the Somme Memorial at Thiepval - Lutyens' greatest work - was completely replaced due to water penetration only thirty years after it was completed.
But to be fair to Lutyens, he did write of Drewe, "I wish he didn't want a castle, but just a delicious loveable house with plenty of good large rooms in it."

 

[Flyfisher]

Surely a few tarpulins would stop all further water damage in its tracks until proper repairs could be implemented?