Want to buy Apethorpe?

[skier-hughes]

Depends where you went, but it wouldn't be to this governemnt, so long as you didn't come back for too long every year.

 

[Nemesis]

I think I'll stay put. I doubt I'd agree with many other governments with all they'd spend income on either.

I would prefer it if this one spent more on heritage, but...

 

[DaveBrigg]

Surely Her Maj could put her hand in her back pocket and spare some change to save her ancestor's favourite place for the nation? Prince Charles managed to swing the sale of Dumfries House for £45 million, even if he didn't write the cheque. It's not often that the exact location of an historic event is still preserved, so the fact that visitors can still see the bedroom of Buckingham 'whose chamber connects directly to that of the king' (a euphemism I hadn't heard before) must give it added appeal.

Of greater curiosity is the background information that this building was used as a Catholic reform school until 1982, but '“There's not a socket or a tap,” said Nick Hill, the project director.' Either conditions for the delinquent pupils were especially harsh, or they were not cured of their kleptomania.

 

[Nemesis]

Well, it depends on what you mean by save and for the nation.

The place is empty of its furniture, and requires a vast amount spending on it. Having been CPO'd, it's been made basically sound, ready for a new owner to take on and continue to repair. Unless the cost so far is paid back, it will have to be open to the public for some time each year. but it will still be there as a building.

It's not got a great deal going for it as a visitor attraction. There's not a vast tract of land either. Dumfries House has. The cost of that rescue (the contents and house together are what is important) came from a number of charitable sources and there is enough land to keep it funded for the future, particularly with the new development on adjacent land.

Complex stuff is this saving buildings.

http://www.savebritainsheritage.org

has more about the Dumfries House rescue and funding,

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

and here's an earlier Press Release while the campaign was in full cry:

http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/dumfries.htm

 

[Nemesis]

Apethorpe - the movie:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7436409.stm

 

[Nemesis]

From Salon (Society of Antiquaries):

Apethorpe Hall goes on the market

Jacobean house for sale (51,000 sq ft), with fifty rooms, 45 acres of gardens and grounds, including stable block (13,000 sq ft), dovecot, eighteenth-century walled kitchen garden and greenhouses designed by Reginald Blomfield (who restored the house in the first decade of the twentieth century), located in a pretty Northamptonshire village, 11 miles from Peterborough, with trains to London’s King’s Cross (journey time 50 minutes). Sounds tempting? If so, you will need at least £5 million to buy the house (which has, according to the estate agent’s advert, state rooms that have seen fifteen recorded royal visits). In a market where London penthouses now sell for £50 million, and ordinary houses in the Cotswolds will give you little change from £10 million, this looks like a bargain. On the other hand, you will need untold millions to make the house habitable, and any improvements will have to meet the exacting standards of English Heritage, which has already spent £4 million on a programme of mainly external renovation to make the building weather proof, having compulsorily purchased it in 2004.


The house is unlikely to sell to a Sunday Telegraph reader, judging by the tone of the newspaper’s Blimpish report accusing English Heritage of ‘wasting public money by putting a majestic 15th century [sic] property on the market for £4.5 million after spending more than £7 million to save it for the nation’ (Colonel Blimp, aka Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, was never accurate about historical dates, though he no doubt rails against the decline of history teaching in our schools). In fact, the taxpayer could yet recoup the miniscule amount of money that has been spent on the house, because a buyer who wants to waive the requirement to open the house to the public on 28 days a year can do so by repaying in full the money spent on the compulsory purchase and emergency repairs.


The Times took a much more celebratory line, deploying our Fellow Marcus Binney, the newspaper’s Architecture Correspondent, to write a eulogistic account of a house that has ‘the timeless, ravishing beauty of an ancient Oxbridge College [and whose] long gabled fronts, bristling with urns and chimneys, enclose one of the most graceful country-house courtyards in all England.’


If you would like to see the house, you don’t have to pretend to be a potential buyer: tours take place on Wednesdays and Saturdays in June, July and August. Tickets are £7.50; pre-booking (tel: 0870 3331183) essential. On the other hand, if you are genuinely interested in buying Apethorpe, you need to contact Harry St John, at Smith Gore in Oxfor d (and if you are successful, Salon’s editor would like to apply for a job as your gardener).

 

[Nemesis]

From this week's SALON:

Finally, worth a special mention is George Kelley, created MBE for services to Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire. It is to George that we owe the survival of Apethorpe Hall, featured in the last issue of Salon, because, as the Hall’s caretaker and gardener since 1982 (unpaid for the last ten years), he did his best to patch leaks and chase away would-be vandals and thieves. It was he who warned East Northamptonshire District Council and English Heritage that the building was rapidly decaying, setting in train the events that led to the compulsory purchase of the Hall and the restoration programme recently completed by English Heritage.

http://www.sal.org.uk/salon/