Tag Archives: Basildon Park

John Carr Architect

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

I’ll bet if I say “Robert Adam” most readers and writers of Regency romance will know that he was a famous architect who greatly influenced architecture, interior design, and furniture design of the times–mostly Georgian times, but I imagine my Regency characters in houses designed by Adam all the time.

On my England trip last year, though, I learned of another architect of the same period, even more prolific than Adam–John Carr.

John Carr designed Basildon Park, one of the houses we visited on the Duke of Wellington Tour and one I blogged about here shortly after. He, too, was a neoclassicist like Adam.

If you saw this, would you guess it was by Robert Adam?

It’s an interior of Basildon Park by John Carr.

Carr was born in Yorkshire and decided to remain there rather than settle in London, thinking there was plenty of wealth in the area to support his business. He lived into his eighties and produced an incredible number of projects.

Tabley House is another house designed by John Carr similar to Basildon Park.

One characteristic of both these houses is that you have to go up stairs to reach the front entrance which is on the first floor, not the ground floor. I thought that was rather grand when we visited Basildon Park.

In my current work in progress, Genna’s story in the Scandalous Summerfields series, I used Basildon Park as my model for Summerfield House. It was especially helpful to find floor plans online.

There was one famous house that both John Carr and Robert Adam designed–Harewood House near Leeds.

Carr designed the building and Robert Adam, the interiors. Adam also slightly altered Carr’s exterior, including internal courtyards.

Who is up for visiting all these houses? Don’t you sometimes wish we really had a Transporter like in Star Trek?

Posted in Diane Gaston, Regency, Research | Tagged Basildon Park, Diane Gaston, Harewood House, John Carr, Robert Adam, Tabley House, Transporter | 3 Replies

Basildon Park

Updated on September 29, 2014 by Diane Gaston

One of the stops on The Duke of Wellington tour was Basildon Park–not because the historic house has any connection with the Iron Duke, but because it was nearby, open, and a treat to see.

Basildon Park also represents the rise and fall of fortunes which so often inhabit our Regency books.

It was built between 1776 and1783 for Sir Frances Sykes, the son of a yeoman farmer who made a huge fortune in the East India Company and was friends with Warren Hastings and Clive of India. It was built in the Palladian style by John Carr and its interiors were in the style of Robert Adams.

Almost as soon as Sykes purchased the house his fortunes began to decline and had diminished by his death in 1804. His grandson, the third baronet, became a part of the Prince Regent’s set, further depleting the Sykes fortune. After a scandal involving his wife, Sykes had the humiliating distinction of being the model for Charles Dickens’ “Bill Sikes,” the villain in Oliver Twist.

Sykes sold the house in 1838 to James Morrison, a self-made Victorian millionaire, who wanted it to display his huge art collection. After his death, his daughter inhabited the house and upon her death in 1910, the house’s fortunes again turned bleak. The nephew who inherited the estate again depleted his funds and had to sell it in 1929 to a man who wanted the land, not the house. This man tried to sell the house, even offering to dismantle it and rebuild it if some wealthy American would pay the price for it.

The house continued to decline, even suffering a fire, until 1953 when it was purchased by the 2nd Baron and Baroness Iliffe, who lovingly restored it to its present glory. Here is some of the beauty they rescued:

Entry Hall

Stairway

Upper rooms

Dining room ceiling

The original dining room had been sold and now exists as the Basildon room of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

Basildon Park has played Netherfield Park in the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice, and, more recently, Grantham House in Downton Abbey. It became a National Trust property in 1978

Posted in History, Research | Tagged Basildon Park | 3 Replies

Living Dangerously with Julie Cohen

Updated on February 21, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Julie Cohen is a multi-pubbed author who writes humorous, emotional, smart contemporaries. I know her because she is the best friend of one of my critique partners here in the US but lives in my home town in England (weird, huh?). She gave me a copy of The Summer of Living Dangerously when I visited England last month and I read and enjoyed it on the flight home. I am proud to be mentioned in the acknowledgments for my expert knicker advice.

Alice Woodstock has been running away.

Well, not literally. She spends most of her time glued to her desk, writing about grommets and model aeroplanes. No, Alice is avoiding the real world because there’s something—someone—in her past that she’s desperate to forget. So when she’s commissioned to write about life in stately home Eversley Hall, she jumps at the chance to escape into Regency England, even if it does mean swapping her comfy T-shirt for an itchy corset. Perhaps she’ll meet her own Mr Darcy…
But when her past resurfaces in the shape of Leo Allingham, Alice is brought down to earth with a bump. Reckless, unpredictable Leo reminds Alice of the painful price of following her heart. And the new Alice doesn’t live dangerously.

Or does she?

Tell us about the settings you used for the book. My heroine works at Eversley Hall. I based it quite heavily on my local stately home, Basildon Park, a Palladian mansion built in the late 18th century by John Carr for the nabob Sir John Sykes. It was used as Netherfield Hall in the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice, though even without the film it has literary and romantic connections; Disraeli had an affair with Henrietta Sykes, the wife of the grandson of the original owner, and he based his novel Henrietta Temple on his relationship with her.

I blatantly stole the floor plan and the decorating scheme, though I added a fountain and several oil paintings and I made the house even larger and grander than it is in real life. In the book, everything has meticulously been restored to how it was in 1814, including the paint colours and the furniture polish.

The other setting for the story is Brickham, which is a fictional name for Reading, where I live. Thomas Hardy called it ‘Aldbrickham’ in his novels, so I nicked part of the name, but it’s appropriate because Reading is, at its heart, a Victorian town built of bricks that were produced here. My heroine lives in a Victorian neo-gothic house that has been modernised. Brickham is all about commerce and modern values, whereas Eversley Hall represents the romantic past. I really wanted the settings to be a mixture of old and new, history and present.

(I thought so! Reading is where Jane Austen went to jail and Oscar Wilde went to school, or possibly the other way round.) What research did you do? It was interesting doing research. Because my heroine is part of a project re-creating life in 1814, it was less important to know what life was really like in 1814 than to know how a woman in 2012 would react to and learn about life in 1814. Therefore, I spoke to quite a few historical re-enactors. I was interested in why they chose that hobby or profession, and how they acted and were treated differently when they were in costume. I spoke to costume experts, too, although I was as interested in how modern people perceived the costume, as in what the authentic costumes were like.

The whole underwear issue was interesting; we take underpants for granted, and yet there seems to be no surviving evidence that the lower classes wore them in 1814. Of course, why would there be evidence? A housemaid wasn’t going to write a letter about her knickers. So some people think they wore them, and some people don’t, and I was left to make my own mind up for my book. A historical character wouldn’t mention such things, but my modern heroine certainly would. I also learned how to do several Regency dances, and went to a Regency ball. It was huge fun.

What did you find out about the Regency that surprised you? It really is difficult doing the Duke of Kent’s Waltz whilst wearing an ostrich plume in your hair if your partner, however charming, is shorter than five foot eight. I was also quite surprised to learn that an authentic short-sleeved Regency gown, whilst looking quite comfortable, is constructed so that the sleeves are rather tight. You can get bruises from over-vigorous arm movements.

Did you find it difficult switching gears between the contemporary and historical sections of the book? Not really. I soaked myself in Georgette Heyer before I started writing and so whenever I had to write an 1814 section, I relaxed into a fond approximation of her dialogue style. It was a treat to try to impersonate her witty repartee. It’s a first-person novel, so I was always in my heroine’s head, and although she’s a keen reader she really is a modern woman, so I didn’t have to change gear completely. I enjoyed it a lot.

Your books are fairly light in tone but also tackle some serious, painful issues. How do you maintain the balance? For most of my characters, humour is a defense mechanism. My heroine and hero in Summer have gone through a tragedy, and that influences everything they do. The whole Regency re-enactment thing is a charade for Alice, who is trying to escape her own real past. In general everything in the pretend-1814 is light, but a lot of the real-life scenes have a darker undertone. But bits and pieces encroach into Alice’s fantasy Regency life. Her 1814 character is in mourning, for example, whereas the real Alice is trying to ignore her own grief. And there’s a scene where the 1814 characters are celebrating Napoleon’s defeat, until a rude guest reminds them that Napoleon came back from Elba and that the war continued. So every scene has its light and its dark.

What’s your writing process? I’m not naturally a planner. I usually write the first 20,000 words or so and then I delete them. Then I start over and write a first draft straight through from beginning to end, trying to write at least 1000 words a day, discovering the plot as I go. At some point, about 2/3 of the way through, I do stop and plan the ending, but much of it is a discovery draft for me. This draft is largely utter rubbish; I don’t stop to edit and if I don’t know something I just put ‘XXX fill in later’ and carry on.

A lot of my novel gets put together in the revisions, which I do quite carefully and analytically and in several stages. That’s usually when I slot in the details from my research, too.

I love that characters from earlier books made cameo appearances here. Are we likely to meet the h/h of this book anywhere else? I don’t tend to repeat main characters; it’s the secondaries who keep on cropping up—I suppose because I haven’t resolved their stories yet, whereas the main characters have found their ending. There’s one character in Summer who was in two of my earlier novels, and I love how he’s evolving, albeit very very slowly in bit parts.

Has the book inspired you to become a docent at a historical house yourself? I would love that! But with a small child and a full-time writing career, I don’t have the time. I spoke with many National Trust volunteers when I did my research at Basildon Park, and they were so enthusiastic and knowledgeable that I could picture myself having a go sometime in the future.

What’s up next for you? I’m working on my next novel, a contemporary women’s fiction that will be out in 2013. And on a completely different tack, I’m putting the final touches on an erotic science fiction romantic comedy novella which will be out this spring under my pen name, Electra Shepherd.

Thanks for having me, Riskies!

Enter a comment to win a signed copy of The Summer of Living Dangerously. We’ll pick and announce a winner on Monday evening. Julie’s question of the day is:
What modern man would you most like to see in tight Regency breeches?

Posted in Giveaways, Interviews | Tagged Basildon Park, Electra Shepherd, Julie Cohen, The Summer of Living Dangerously | 31 Replies

Excellent adventures at Basildon Park

Updated on May 15, 2008 by Janet Mullany

On my trip back to England last week to visit the old man who is not a tree (renamed the Retired Admiral because of his luxuriant white beard) I also visited Basildon Park near Reading. It’s the house that was used as Netherfield in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice.

The house was designed by architect John Carr for a rich nabob, Francis Sykes–apparently Berkshire, close to London, was a favorite retirement spot for those who had made their fortunes in India. It changed hands several times for the next century and a half, narrowly escaping demolition and development in the early twentieth century. At one point it was offered to the American market, as a house to be dismantled and erected across the Atlantic, but 1929 probably wasn’t the best year for such an offer. The house was taken over by the military during World War II. Consequently it was fairly messed up when Lord and Lady Iliffe acquired it in 1951 and set to restoring it. You can see what a beautiful house it now is by checking out the photo gallery (copyrighted material so I’m leaving it alone).

Here’s the outside of the house. I’m lurking in the shade under the tree (and my brother forgot to set the butt filter, as you can see).

There’s a whole exhibit dedicated to what they had to do to prepare the house for filming P&P–fragile carpets were rolled and removed from the first (that’s second to you Americans) floor by forklift and great pains were taken to protect the house’s delicate features. The furniture was made specially for the movie.

So how authentic is the house inside? I was a bit disappointed, to be honest. Lady Iliffe, who we heard a lot about–she died only a year or so ago, and lived on the premises while the National Trust maintained the house–decorated the house to her taste. Altogether it’s a bit of a mish-mash of style. The Oxagon Drawing Room, for instance, has a Victorian ceiling, and Lady Iliffe, with the help of her cook, lined the walls with red felt to show off her paintings better–and of course colors like Pompeian red would have been very fashionable. But underneath the red felt is the blue green color that Georgians also loved. To give her credit, Lady Iliffe plundered other houses designed by Carr, going on expeditions to Yorkshire, where most of his work is, and loading a truck with doors and fireplaces.

Here are some more views of the exterior. As you can see it was a gorgeous sunny day.

The statues are of Alcibiades’s dog, and, according to my brother, the goddess of leprosy.

Naturally after a stroll through the house and garden we had to have afternoon tea. I had Victoria sponge and my brother had chocolate cake. That’s my arm in the pic. My brother was also very anxious that his shot of the toilets be included (in the stable block) so here they are.

And what else did I do over there? I’m happy to announce that I did get to Sir John Soane’s Museum–cleaning that place must be a nightmare–met with my editor, took a tour of Shakespeare’s Globe and saw part of a rehearsal of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and visited St. Paul’s where Wellington is buried, and heard the choir at Evensong. We also had a trip to Bristol, one of my favorite places.