C O N T E X T 1 2 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 2 25 motor car from every possible angle, even including a regular series of articles entitled ‘Cars and Country Houses’ which featured a different country house each week, much like Country Life. Others, like Alfred Harmsworth, who would later become Lord Northcliffe, used his newspapers, the Daily Mail andThe Times, to support and encourage the motoring cause. The architectural results of the arrival of the motor car were relatively limited and short lived. The motor car in its infancy required extensive workshop facilities, heating, electricity and storage for spares as part of its garaging. But once a network of local garages and petrol stations was established, the necessity for these facilities at home declined, and the buildings needed for the housing of a motor became less extensive and complex. At existing houses, where coach houses were plentiful, the motor car simply took over these existing buildings, often with only minor alterations. The majority of the largest and most interesting motor houses were built in the years before the first world war. After this, only new houses were designed with elaborate and architecturally impressive motor houses. Among the earliest known motor houses was that built for the Hon Evelyn Ellis at Rosenau House. He had a simple row of five individual garages constructed under a flat roof.The building was recorded in a photograph published in 1902, showing Ellis’s collection of motor vehicles and an unusual external inspection pit, in which we see his mechanic Frederick Simms. Another early example of a motor house can be found at Broomhill in Kent, the seat of Sir David Salomons. Salomons was an enthusiastic early motorist, who organised the first Motor Car Show atTunbridgeWells in 1895. Built before 1900, and enlarged to its present size before 1902, these five garages looked similar to those at Rosenau House above ground. Below they incorporated an extensive basement storey, which allowed direct access to the motor’s engines from underneath.The building, which survives unaltered, is fitted with central heating, electricity, a forge, specialist storerooms, a mechanic’s dressing room and aWC.The building was recommended as a model motor house in an article in The Car Illustrated in 1906, but this is the only known example of a motor house with this type of basement access. The type of motor house, made up of a functional row of garages, was copied at many existing country houses.There were good examples of such simple motor houses at Badminton, built for the Duke of Beaufort, at Rufford Abbey in Nottinghamshire, at Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk and at Thorpe Hall inYorkshire. Few went as far as King Edward VIII, who had a large purpose-built motor house constructed at Sandringham House in Norfolk. Edward, who had been given his first ride in a motor by the Hon Evelyn Ellis at the Imperial Institute in 1896, bought his first Daimler motor in 1900. He was to eventually own a small fleet of Daimlers, which from 1906 onwards were pressed into official royal service. It was his use of the motor car on his now infamous visits to other country houses that probably did most to popularise motor car usage among country house owners. The substantial motor house at Sandringham, which is now displayed as part of the motor museum, was built before 1903. This motor house comprised garaging for a number of cars, a store for spares, extensive inspection pits, a large central space for the washing of the motors and a mess room for the chauffeurs. It was centrally heated, with water and electricity laid. As the number of royal cars increased, a large glazed washing canopy was added to the front of the building. Apart from the king, the second most prominent member of the aristocracy to be associated with the development of the motor car was the Hon Charles Rolls, the younger son of Lord Langattock. Rolls did much to popularise the motor car through his racing successes, but it was his partnership with Henry Royce and the production of the Rolls-Royce motor car that has given him such a prominent place in the history of motoring.These motor cars would eventually become synonymous with the country house, especially in the inter-war period, when the chauffeur-driven The ‘ideal motor house’ built for the Hon Charles Rolls at The Hendre in Monmouthshire (Photo: Pete Smith) The original interior of the motor house at The Hendre in Monmouthshire, photographed in 1905 (Photo:The Car Illustrated,VCCGB) The plan of the motor house at Ewelme Down in Oxfordshire designed byWalter Cave in 1905 (Photo:The Car Illustrated,VCCGB)
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