C O N T E X T 1 4 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 49 Clandon was gutted by fire in April (Photo:Trinity Mirror Publishing) fire within the built heritage.Witley Court inWorcestershire, now owned by English Heritage, suffered a blaze in 1937 as a result of small fire which started in the bakery below-stairs.While only one wing of the vast building was ruined,Witley Court was never repaired by its then owner, Sir Herbert Smith, as the insurance company declined to cover the damage. The house was later sold off in lots before being handed to English Heritage. Lindridge House in Devon also burned down in 1963 and the insurance company similarly did not pay out. This was because it had been stipulated that the estate’s swimming pool should always remain full in case of fire. At the time of the fire the pool had been emptied for cleaning and had not been refilled. The extent of the fire meant that the small amount of water in the pool would have made no difference whatsoever to the blaze, but it provided a convenient loophole for the insurers. Lindridge House was finally demolished in 1990s, never having been repaired. There have also been more sinister reasons for fires. The house of chancellor of the exchequer John Aislabie (1670– 1742) in Red Lion Square, London, was burnt down in 1700, tragically killing his wife and daughter. His son escaped narrowly by climbing out of an attic window. This appears to have been an accident, although Aislabie suffered another terrible fire on Christmas Day of 1716, this time at his home in Studley Royal,Yorkshire. It turned out that this was started on purpose by a malevolent housemaid to hide the theft of a basket of linen. No matter what the cause, fires are and always have been part of the history of buildings. As long as destruction of the heritage by fire is not quite preventable, and it seems that we will never quite eliminate the possibility, it is our response to these fires after the event which is important. There have been clear benefits from fires. For example, the restoration of Windsor Castle benefited hugely from the fire at Uppark a few years before, which had necessarily brought about a massive resurgence in historic crafts and skills. The rapid training of specialist craftsmen and women was essential at Uppark due to the constraints of the insurers, who set strict time limits to the repair of various aspects of the building. These craftsmen and women, and the resurrected crafts and skills they now had, were immediately applied to Windsor Castle. This is not a unique situation. Indeed, just as Windsor benefited from the fire at Uppark, so Uppark benefited from the lessons learned from the fire at Hampton Court of 1989, which was started by a candle left burning by an elderly retainer who sadly perished in the fire. The decision to restore a building is almost always based on financial reasoning rather than, as we might imagine, on a building’s significance. Even the decision to restore a building as important as Uppark was not taken because of its undisputed heritage value. It was simply determined that restoration would be a cheaper settlement for the insurance company than a payout to the National Trust for its total loss. If the insurance company had decided to write it off as a loss, deeming this the less expensive option, Uppark would almost certainly still be a visitor destination for the National Trust, but as a ruin. So we must not assume that restoration after a fire, for Clandon or any other building, will necessarily be forthcoming. It has been stated widely that Clandon should be restored because with all the craft skills we have regained, we can rebuild it. But the fact that we can does not necessarily mean that we will. The restoration or otherwise of Clandon will depend on its unique financial set-up and insurance cover. It will also depend on the financial situations of the private companies which rented the basement of Clandon, as well as on the determined cause of fire, for which, at the time of writing, we still wait. It is irrelevant and unrealistic to state that because we can, we will; and history does not show that because we can, we do. We should certainly encourage and push for full restoration of this unique building: Leoni’s masterpiece and Onslow’s pride. Failing this, of course, we should carry out an extremely thorough recording of the ruin. But, as someone who assisted in cataloguing the record photos after the Uppark fire, it often strikes me that our almost telescopic recording and photographing of the remnants of ruined, burned-out buildings, carried out so painstakingly after a fire, should surely be carried out pre-fire as a precaution, while the structure is whole. It would be so much better were we confident that, if a building were to burn down tomorrow, we were in a position where we have learned and gained everything we possibly could from it. Stable-door recording after the proverbial horse has bolted is just not that useful. The decision about poor Clandon’s burnt-out shell has yet to be taken. No doubt there will be surprise and outcry if the National Trust is forced to consolidate it as a ruin. However, this is as likely, if not more likely than full restoration: Uppark andWindsor were lucky. Given the harsh reality of such fires and the number of demolitions history has seen after fires, our best response to existing country houses is to record first (forensically if a building is significant), and then enjoy it and appreciate it knowing that it may not be with us forever. Carole Fry, a director of AHC Consultants, freelance writer and architectural historian
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