Renishaw Hall
and Radburne Hall
Derbyshire

with
The Young Georgians

Renishaw Hall is one of the great treasure houses of England. It is grand, huge and certainly stately, but what marks it out as exceptional is its literary associations in the early Twentieth Century. This rambling embattled pile was home to the famous trio of Sacheverell, Edith and Osbert Sitwell. We visited very soon after the death of our friend Sir Reresby Sitwell, son of Sacheverell. Reresby was a wonderful man with a marvellous sense of fun and a deep sense of responsibility for Renishaw. With true Sitwellian style, despite the recent sad event, The Young Georgians were still welcomed to Renishaw.

We started in the Hall, where John Piper's wacky and wonderful wall paintings stop you in your tracks the moment you are through the door. Piper has taken the magnificently varied roofscape of Renishaw and thrown over it all the colours of a huge fireworks display.

The Sitwells were a minor gentry family and their original, relatively modest, 1625 house is still at the chore of the present albatross. The fortune of the family was made from coal.

The lower rooms at the centre of the house give on to Sir Sitwell Sitwell's (!) grand suite of Georgian rooms by Joseph Badger of Sheffield. The first is the Dining Room, with its marvellous apse. It is like a more homely version of Adam's State Dining Room at nearby Kedleston Hall as its decoration and proportions are not perfect and even slightly gawky, but all the more lovable for it. The Drawing Room has a marvellously realistic looking inlaid wooden floor, which is in fact painted. This was Penelope, Lady Sitwell's idea. She also gilded various ornaments in and around Renishaw. The Drawing Room also contains Sir John Singer Sargent's famous portrait of the young Sitwells with their parents. The legend goes that Sir George Sitwell wanted Edith's large Plantagenet bumpy nose painted as perfect. He was proud of his own straight patrician nose. Sargent instead gave Edith the perfect nose and Sir George quite a honker!

From the Drawing Room the visitor suddenly finds himself in the most up to date style of the early Twentieth Century...      Edwin Lutyens' Billiard Room. As the Sitwells at that time knew anyone who was anyone, this cosmopolitan room should come as no shock. The final room on in this parade is the Ball Room, tall and vast with a sumptuous array of Italian furniture and works of art, some of which came from the Sitwell's legendary Tuscan palace, Montegufoni.

The Young Georgians and the stable block at Renishaw

The house is a veritable treasure trove and the gardens are equally splendid. Even in the very varied weather of Derbyshire the Italianate air of the place is hard to miss.

Young Georgians at lunch

Radburne Hall has been home to the Chandos-Pole family and their ancestors since the early Middle Ages and is one of the finest mid Eighteenth Century houses in England. It was built by Warwick architect William Smith the Younger and contains the highest possible craftsmanship from that period. The Hall with its screen of Ionic columns is bold and stately and the saloon, with its unrivalled collection of Joseph Wright of Derby paintings, is a box of delights.

Mrs Jill Chandos-Pole helped to save the house in the 1950's when she arranged a deal with Nestle for some outlying land on the estate near to Derby. This deal lead to the restoration of Radburne by John Fowler, whose work still survives splendidly today under red and white gingham throws and the careful and loving eye of Jill.

Radburne is one of my favourite houses in England and long may it keep Derby at bay!

Radburne

Self and Jill

For more information about the Young Georgians and the Georgian Group please go to:

www.georgiangroup.org.uk

All images in this blog are under the copyright ownership of Oliver Gerrish