Folly Farm, Sulhamstead
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Folly Farm, Sulhamstead
OR:
Folly Farm, Sulhamstead on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

Folly Farm is an
Arts and Crafts style The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...
country house in
Sulhamstead Sulhamstead is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England. It occupies an approximate rectangle of land south of the (Old) Bath Road ( A4) between Reading, its nearest town and Thatcham. It has several small clusters of homes and woo ...
, West Berkshire, England. Built around a small farmhouse dating to , the house was substantially extended in
William and Mary style What later came to be known as the William and Mary style is a furniture design common from 1700 to 1725 in the Netherlands, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland and Kingdom of Ireland, and later in England's American colonies. It was a transi ...
by architect
Edwin Lutyens Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials ...
, and further extended by him in
vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...
style . It is a Grade I
listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
. The gardens, designed by Lutyens and
Gertrude Jekyll Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British Horticulture, horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United Sta ...
, are Grade II* listed in the
National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens #REDIRECT Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England #REDIRECT Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England {{R from move ...
{{R from move ...
. They are among the best-known gardens of the Lutyens/Jekyll partnership.Brown (1982), pp. 93–5.


House

Around 1906, Lutyens extended the 17th-century, timbered cottage for H. H. Cochrane, using grey brick dressed with red brick and
ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...
, in William and Mary style. The addition is H-shaped. The interior of the H's centre, which aligns east–west, is occupied by a two-storey, neoclassical style hall, which Lutyens painted black. The original cottage, which Lutyens connected to the northwest corner of the new house, became a
service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...
wing.Gradidge (1981), pp. 60–2. Around 1912, Lutyens created the vernacular addition for new owners of the house, Zachary Merton and his wife Antonie,Brown (1996), pp. 180–3. who had both divorced from their former spouses to marry each other. Zachary Merton (born Zachary Moses) was a businessman and
philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...
. His family had founded
Metallgesellschaft Metallgesellschaft AG was formerly one of Germany's largest industrial conglomerates based in Frankfurt. It had over 20,000 employees and revenues in excess of 10 billion US dollars. It had over 250 subsidiaries specializing in mining, specialty c ...
in Germany and Henry R. Merton and Co. in Britain, which were among the leading metal trading companies of their respective countries. Merton was a director and one of the largest shareholders of the British company. Antonie had come to England from Germany with her previous husband, Hermann Schmiechen, a portrait painter. She was a follower of
theosophy Theosophy is a religious movement established in the United States in the late 19th century. Founded primarily by the Russian Helena Blavatsky and based largely on her writings, it draws heavily from both older European philosophies such as Neop ...
, like Lutyens's wife Emily.Ridley (2002), pp. 266–7. Lutyens built the vernacular addition in red brick, with tile-hanging and
weatherboarding Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'', in modern Am ...
. He extended the line of the centre of the existing H with a two-storey connecting wing, containing on each floor a corridor long and wide, leading to a much larger, new west wing, aligned north–south. The west wing's south end features a large
bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. A bow window is a form of bay with a curve rather than angular facets; an oriel window is a bay window that does not touch the g ...
on each floor.Gradidge (1981), pp. 142–3. At ground level, the south end contains a neoclassical dining room with a huge fireplace, as high as the room. Above the dining room, the main bedroom has a sleeping balcony (for outside sleeping), built over arches, on its west side. On the east side, there is an L-shaped
cloister A cloister (from Latin , "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open Arcade (architecture), arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle (architecture), quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cat ...
with
buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient (typically Gothic) buildings, as a means of providing support to act ...
ed arches running alongside the dining room and along the south side of the connecting corridor, bordering two sides of the Tank Court and its rectangular pool. The service quarters moved to the new wing, with a circular
dairy A dairy is a place where milk is stored and where butter, cheese, and other dairy products are made, or a place where those products are sold. It may be a room, a building, or a larger establishment. In the United States, the word may also des ...
attached to its northern end. The original cottage became a
billiard room A billiard room (also billiards room, or more specifically pool room, snooker room) is a recreation room, such as in a house or recreation center, with a billiards, pool or snooker table (The term "billiard room" or "pool room" may also be use ...
. Zachary Merton died in 1915. Antonie Merton allowed Lutyens and his family to spend the summer of 1916 at Folly Farm, where they entertained Jekyll, the playwright
Edward Knoblock Edward Knoblock (born Edward Gustavus Knoblauch; 7 April 1874 – 19 July 1945) was a playwright and novelist, originally American and later a naturalised British citizen. He wrote numerous plays, often at the rate of two or three a year, of whic ...
and the painters William Nicholson and his wife Mabel Pryde. Nicholson painted a
mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...
in the dining room during his stay. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the house served as a
maternity hospital A maternity hospital specializes in caring for women during pregnancy and childbirth. It also provides care for newborn infants, and may act as a centre for clinical training in midwifery and obstetrics. Formerly known as lying-in hospitals, most ...
, then reverted to private ownership. The British celebrity cook Keith Floyd (1943 - 2009) was born at Folly Farm on 28 December 1943
Keith Floyd Keith Floyd (28 December 1943 – 14 September 2009) was a British celebrity cook, restaurateur, television personality and "gastronaut" who hosted cooking shows for the BBC and published many books combining cookery and travel. On television, ...
.


Gardens

The formal gardens extend to the south and west of the house, with lawns beyond. In 1906, Lutyens and Jekyll turned the area around the original cottage and its barn into a series of walled courts. To the south of the house, they created a walled
kitchen garden The traditional kitchen garden, vegetable garden, also known as a potager (from the French ) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas. It is used for grow ...
and a
rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; : ''rhododendra'') is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the Ericaceae, heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are native to eastern Asia and the Himalayan ...
walk. The latter, running south along the eastern side of the gardens, has subsequently been replaced by a
lime Lime most commonly refers to: * Lime (fruit), a green citrus fruit * Lime (material), inorganic materials containing calcium, usually calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide * Lime (color), a color between yellow and green Lime may also refer to: Bo ...
walk leading to a White Garden. In 1912 they placed a canal garden, with a long rectangular pool, to the south of the earlier William and Mary addition. Between the new west wing and the kitchen garden, they positioned a
parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, plats, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the ...
garden, and to the west of that, a sunken rose garden. Tank Court, with its cloister and pool, has been called "probably Lutyens's ' in garden architecture". The 18th-century thatched barn, the kitchen garden and some Lutyen-designed cottages of are all Grade II listed.


Notes


References

* * * * *


External links


Folly Farm visit by The Lutyens Trust
{{coord, 51, 24, 57, N, 1, 05, 39, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Arts and Crafts architecture in England Grade I listed buildings in Berkshire Grade I listed houses Country houses in Berkshire Houses completed in 1912 Works of Edwin Lutyens in England Grade II* listed parks and gardens in Berkshire Arts and Crafts gardens Gardens by Gertrude Jekyll