48 C O N T E X T 1 4 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 confidence of Leoni’s designs makes it easy to believe. As a Venetian, Leoni would have seen Palladio’s villas first hand. If, as I believe, he did work for the Palatine Elector, he would have been in prime position to see the Palladian style which was emerging from the neighbouring electorate of Hanover. There was very free movement of artists and architects between these two courts at this time. Indeed, Johann Peter Wachter, a proven court architect of the electorate of Palatine, is well known to have worked on Herrenhausen, the Palace in Hanover. In his own unique manner Leoni built Clandon. He tempered its serious, quiet and refined Palladian exterior with an interior of baroque flair which makes the building come alive in a way that pure Palladian buildings often fail to do. Of red brick and with stone dressings for its articulation, the west front of Clandon provides a good example of Leoni’s preference for materials. The warm red brick is decorated with giant, two-storey stone pilasters and stone medallions. Of especial beauty was Clandon’s double-height Marble Hall, executed in muted colours, which better highlighted the flamboyance of the adjoining suite of state rooms. Clandon was altered in the later 18th century by Robert Adam but these changes did not detract from Leoni’s design intentions. Despite his great influence on the dissemination of neo-Palladianism, Leoni himself did not have a vast repertoire of completed buildings. In total he could boast of only nine completed buildings, five of which (including Clandon) have been lost. Clandon, although its shell remains, sadly can not be said to be a good or complete example of Leoni’s work any more. Despite the tragedy of events of 20 April, and now that we are over the initial shock and sadness, there is little point in any continued bewilderment over the fire at Clandon. As long as we have country houses, or indeed buildings of any type, some will inevitably be lost through devastating fires. Beyond the sensible precautions of fire safety reviews, fire management plans and early detection measures, it is impossible that every single cause of fire will ever be eliminated.We can not anticipate and prevent every failure and every fire. This is due, in no small part, to human error and oversight. Even when we detect a fire almost immediately, it is usually impossible to prevent its spread. Recent history is testament to this. Most of us will remember the raging inferno at Uppark in August 1989 and the horrifying pictures shown on live news. The fire there was started in the roof by a blowtorch being left by a workman during repairs to the lead flashings. Ironically the work was all but finished and due to be completed only two days later. The fire broke out during opening hours but had become an inferno before it could be tackled. The garret and upper floor collapsed into the lower floors, their contents being entirely lost, although much of the panelling and decoration survived. Much of the ground floor contents survived but were badly damaged by the weight of the upper floors as they crashed down. Later many of these ground floor contents were reconstructed. Uppark re-opened in 1995 after six long years of restoration. In similarly random fashion the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 was started by a curtain being ignited by a spotlight in the Queen’s private chapel that became too hot. The fire started at 11.33am and was detected by an automatic detection system. The alarm was raised with the castle’s own patrolling firemen. Just four minutes later, at 11.37, a call was made to the control room at Reading. At 12.12pm 20 fire engines were at the scene. By 12.20 this had risen to 35, with 200 firemen. The response could hardly have been faster.Yet at 7pm the roof of St George’s Hall collapsed, and the fire raged until 11pm that night with flames reaching over 50 feet high. Pockets of fire were still being put out 15 hours later. Damage included the floor of the Brunswick Tower, the Green Drawing Room, the Crimson Drawing room, the Queen’s private chapel, the State Dining Room and many other rooms. In total 100 rooms were burned, with colossal damage amounting to £36.5 million of repair. All this damage occurred after an amazingly fast response time of four minutes. In a serendipitous twist of fate the seven most seriously damaged rooms had been emptied the previous day for re-wiring. One does not have to scour history to see the many and varied causes of The south front of Clandon. Now that the building has been ruined, it is being hailed as Giacomo Leoni’s architectural masterpiece.
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