Silverton Park Stables

A surprise inheritance leading to grand ambitions

In 1837 Captain George Francis Wyndham unexpectedly found himself 4th Earl of Egremont. His uncle, the 3rd Earl, didn't marry his son's mother and so failed to legitimise his natural heir, making George the 4th Earl. Wyndham also inherited an estate at Silverton and set out to create a vast classical mansion on a scale to rival his cousin’s pile at Petworth House in Sussex. He planned an imposing stable block to match in order to display his carriages and provide stabling for his teams of horses and their grooms. The 4th Earl’s architect was J.T. Knowles (senior), a self-taught Reigate man and a believer in a patented metallic cement render.

Saved from the threat of being turned into flats

In 1845 Wyndham died and the estate never regained its momentum. The contents of the mansion were auctioned off in 1892 and a few years later the house was demolished. The unfinished stable block was left as an imposing and romantic monument to the 4th Earl’s grandiose ambitions. For many years, Silverton Park Stables were turned over to agricultural purposes. In 1987 it came onto the market and was acquired by the Landmark Trust’s founder, Sir John Smith, to prevent it being turned into flats. It turned out to be one of our most intractable projects, finally unlocked by the enthusiasm of one particularly loyal supporter. You will stay mainly in the south range, with views of the rolling Devon countryside from a common room behind the giant portico. Bedrooms opening off staircases around the courtyard give a sense of collegiate life, yet we hope too that you still catch a sense of the equestrian as you enter through monumental gates.

Being illegitimate, their children were unable to inherit the title. Nephew George Wyndham, meanwhile, had been following a naval career. In 1799, at 13, he enlisted as midshipman in Nelson’s navy, serving under Jane Austen’s brother Captain Francis Austen, aboard HMS Canopus in the Battle of Santa Domingo in 1805. Wyndham retired from the navy in 1825, by then a captain, to live in Reigate in Surrey.

Here he met a young builder and aspiring architect, J.T. Knowles. Knowles was a great advocate for patented metallic cement, for its durability, economy and versatility. Such metallic cements were popular at the time, the ‘metallic’ constituent being ground-up copper slag, which contained various trace metals. Used as aggregate and mixed with lime, this provided a hard hydraulic mix.

In 1836, the old Earl died and Captain Wyndham, as heir-in-law, became 4th Earl of Egremont, although Petworth House and the vast wealth of this ancient family went to the 3rd Earl’s eldest natural son. Nevertheless, the 4th Earl embarked at once on a string of ambitious building projects, for which J. T. Knowles was architect. By far the biggest of the Earl’s projects was an ambitious pile at Silverton, built around an earlier house called Combesatchfield. He also diverted the road for greater privacy.

From 1838, Silverton Park mansion began to spring up, an extravagant prodigy of endless classical columns and rooms. It was built of brick, but rendered with the patented metallic cement and a frieze of the Exodus of the Israelites into Egypt ran round its cornice. Its many rooms were crammed with paintings and antique statues. Meanwhile, the Earl was borrowing madly from his richer relatives and squeezing his tenants hard for higher rents to fund his grandiose ambitions. He began the quadrangular stable block and coach house to match the grandeur of the house. But neither mansion nor stable would ever be finished, for the Earl died suddenly and heavily in debt in 1845. His widow died in 1876 but no purchasers were found. In 1892 the contents were sold and in 1902 the house was demolished, the unfinished stable block passing into agricultural use.

In 1987 it came onto the market again and was acquired by the Landmark Trust’s founder, Sir John Smith, to prevent it being turned into flats. For many years Landmark pondered how to restore the stable block. Its sheer scale made both its conversion and funding a challenge. Finally, in 2004, a private donor gave a sizeable donation to enable work to begin. Other donations followed and the project was finally completed in June 2008.

The main carriage entrance to the quadrangle is through the west elevation, through massive new wooden doors painted to match the original estate green. On the left as you enter is the south range, the Earl’s carriage house. The carriages would have been cleaned and maintained in the workrooms on the courtyard side, before being wheeled through sliding doors to the outer side for storage and display. To create today’s sitting room, we took down a central wall and blocked up the large doorways to the workrooms. This also allowed us to open up the previously blind central window in the south wall. The flue for the woodstove is also new, as is the opening into the kitchen. Set above this opening are two large fragments of the original frieze to the mansion. The original wooden floor for the Earl’s carriage house had rotted badly and was replaced using pitch pine baulk timbers salvaged from the London docks.

In the rest of the building the original floor plan is unchanged. A former tack room has become a triple bedroom, with replacement matchboarded panelling and reproductions of original cast iron tack pegs. Other ironwork has also been carefully reproduced – the recessed ring-and-pushbutton door latches designed to prevent horses snagging themselves as they passed, and other door furniture. The building always held a surprising amount of domestic and sleeping accommodation as well as stabling, with two ‘houses’ in the southeast and northwest corners. Most of the stabling was in the north range, though relatively few horses seem to have been stabled here. Later agricultural changes notwithstanding, it seems a team of four horses was kept in the stable to the right of the main entrance, with three triple stalls in the north range itself, an unusual arrangement unless the Earl favoured a troika, which harnessed three horses abreast. The marks of hayracks and stall partitions, and also of niches for lamps beside the doors, remain in these areas. The lower portions of the windows were always bricked up on the courtyard side to avoid horses kicking out the glass. Where necessary the cobbled surface of the yard has been carefully lifted, levelled and re-laid. The original purpose of the central pit is uncertain: it may have been part of the drainage system (the well for the stables was in the northwest corner of the yard). Considerable landscaping has been done to correct the external ground levels around the stable block.

Today, the stable block is all that is left to remind us of the ambitious plans of the 4th Earl of Egremont and his architect, J. T Knowles. It now has a new purpose, one that will ensure its future survival, as parties of up to fourteen people stay here, imagining the sound of hooves on the cobbled courtyard and the Earl strolling through with his friends to admire the carriages and their teams.

Silverton Park Stables

We are hugely grateful to those who supported the restoration of Silverton Park Stables, including:

Patrons and other generous supporters:

Mr N Allan, Mr R Broyd, Mr R Eaton, Mrs A Gloag OBE, Mr M Heathcoat Amory, Mr P Parker, Mr M Seale, Mr and Mrs A Wilson

Legacies:

Mrs D Wray Bliss

Charitable Trusts and Foundations:

Viscount Amory's Charitable Trust, Dr A & Mrs G Darlington Trust, A J H du Boulay Trust, The Alan Evans Memorial Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, Mrs F B Laurence Charitable Trust, LPH Charitable Trust, The Norman Family Charitable Trust, The Trusthouse Charitable Trust, The Jonathan Vickers Charitable Settlement

We are also grateful to the numerous other donors who supported the appeal.