West Banqueting House

Civil War

In 1613 wealthy merchant Sir Baptist Hicks built a new house in Chipping Campden in the very latest style with equally fashionable formal gardens. Just 30 years later retreating Royalist soldiers burnt his mansion to the ground; only a single fragment remains. Other lesser buildings on the site survived. Two pepperpot lodges frame the gateway beside Campden’s wool church, and two exceptional Jacobean banqueting houses with exuberant strapwork parapets and barley sugar twist chimneys face each other across a former terrace. The skeleton of the Jacobean gardens is still visible beneath the Cotswold turf. Today the two banqueting houses provide the main accommodation for two Landmarks, with the Almonry, a fine little building of unknown purpose, acting as an annexe for one.

In the seventeenth century Sir Baptist’s guests would have retired to this building for their ‘banquet’ (or dessert course) at the end of the meal to drink rare wines, eat dried fruit and sweetmeats and admire their host’s domain. Whether today you choose to sip Tokay and nibble on a crystallised petal or tuck into fish and chips with a glass of beer, it cannot fail to be a banquet.

Enjoy a banquet

The banqueting house is also more spacious than it looks, with a large barrel vaulted chamber on the ground floor and a hearth at either end – perhaps once a kitchen, as it now is again. Underfloor heating makes this room particularly comfortable.

The first floor chamber yields the only fragments of Jacobean frieze of the rich and elegant plasterwork and panelling that must once have adorned all the buildings on this site. Yet this banqueting house was converted at an early stage for humbler domestic accommodation and it may well have been the house of William Harrison, steward to Lady Juliana Hicks and a key player in the mystery known as The Campden Wonder.

West Banqueting House is a two-storey building with external doors at both levels. The tiny building known as the Almonry, where two people sleep, is a short walk away.

In contrast to the quiet atmosphere of the site, the town of Chipping Campden, a traditional Cotswold market town, is a justly renowned Cotswold town popular with tourists and filled with interesting shops and good eateries. Nearby is one of the country's greatest gardens at Hidcote Manor, and Capability Brown's brainchild Broadway Tower.

See all our Landmarks at Old Campden House

These minor buildings serve as a reminder of the richness and quality of the ‘great burned house’ itself, and are also a notable collection in their own right. The Hicks family originally came from Gloucestershire, but Baptist's father was a mercer in London and his mother ran a flourishing business as a moneylender. Baptist carried on and excelled in both activities, helped greatly by the position of his elder brother Michael who was Secretary to William Cecil, Elizabeth’s Lord Treasurer, and a close friend of Robert Cecil who inherited his father’s position. When James I came to the throne in 1603 Baptist provided much of the finance for the King's and the Court’s extravagant lifestyle. This canny move made him an immense fortune and led first to his knighthood and later to his being created Viscount Campden. By 1609 Sir Baptist had bought the manor of Chipping Campden. Campden House itself was built from about 1613: until then Sir Baptist was busy building Cam(p)den House in Kensington. Sir Baptist was a self-made man (his motto was 'Non dum metam' – not yet at my goal) and he wanted to indulge in a great show of magnificence, and was lucky to live at a time when the architecture of display was at its most dramatic. We do not know for certain what his house looked like, but an impression can be gained from some 18th-century views which are thought to be based on a single contemporary original. To judge from these, the result was all that Sir Baptist could have hoped. It is still reflected in miniature in the Banqueting Houses, which combine an eye-catching Jacobean roofline with confident if irregular Classical detail to produce an effect that is both stately and delightful. There are grounds for suspecting that the designer may have been John Thorpe, who designed Sir Baptist’s London house when he was still plain ‘Mr. Hix.’ Sir Baptist also provided Chipping Campden with its almshouses, market hall and water brought by conduit from Westington Hill.

The banqueting houses served as places of retreat for the family and their guests, to which they would withdraw at the end of the main afternoon meal, away from the rest of the household. In the fine rooms at terrace level they would drink fine wines and eat what we would now call dessert – dried fruit, small cakes and sweetmeats - while enjoying the outlook over the gardens and the surrounding countryside. Below, hidden by the fall of the ground and entirely separate from these upper rooms, were further rooms which in the case of the East Banqueting House at least, probably served as lodgings for servants.

The light and glitter of a great house, especially when lit up by candles at night, was a favourite Jacobean spectacle and there are stories of how the lantern on the top of Campden House could be seen from far off. Never was this more true than on a night in 1645 when a Royalist garrison, withdrawing from the house which had served as their local headquarters, set light to it. "The howse (which was so faire) burnt" wrote one of them in his diary. By the light of the blaze Prince Rupert's army marched over Broadway Hill to Evesham.

The mansion was never repaired. Gradually over the years its shell was raided for building stone, some reddened by the heat of the flames. Some found its way fairly soon into the banqueting houses whose open loggias were blocked to adapt them for humbler domestic use for the estate stewards and, by the early 18th century, for a fruit farmer who planted orchards in the former gardens. Such gentle adaptation ensured that the site remains largely undisturbed to this day.

The manor descended continuously through the Noel family from Sir Baptist's daughter Juliana, who married Edward Noel in a classic alliance of ancient lineage with new money. The Noels had other estates, especially in Rutland, although their link with Chipping Campden persists until the present day: a descendant still lives in the former stable block, long known as the Court House. In 1987 Lady Maureen Fellowes and her husband Peregrine granted a lease of the East Banqueting House and the gate lodges to the Landmark Trust. In 1998 they agreed to transfer care of the West Banqueting House, the Almonry and the rest of the house and garden site to Landmark’s care.

Both Banqueting Houses illustrate the ornamental, even flamboyant, style of architecture favoured by Jacobean architects and patrons for their garden buildings. Both are embellished with strapwork parapets, basket finials and twisted chimneys in a display that recalls the fantastic structures shown in engraved frontispieces to the works of Spenser and Sidney. This high London fashion must have puzzled local masons used to the simpler local architectural tradition. The upper rooms, decorated with plaster friezes and with open arched loggias, made a fitting setting for the fanciful displays of pastries and sweetmeats that made up the ‘banquet’. Apparently symmetrical at terrace level, they are in fact different in form.

Application to the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and various charitable trusts was successfully boosted by Landmark’s own appeal and work started in October 2001. Stephen Oliver and Andy Brookes of Rodney Melville & Partners again were our architects. Phil Semmens was site foreman for the contractors, William Sapcote & Sons of Birmingham.

The building had been altered substantially for residential use at an early date, when the windows and loggia were partly or wholly blocked with ashlar, presumably plundered from the ruins of the main house, and a Jacobean door and one smaller window inserted. The shafts of two of the barley twist chimneys had to be replaced; the fifth chimney seemed to have been plundered from the East Banqueting House some time in the past, to serve the inserted fireplace on the terrace floor. Land drains were again laid along the east wall to help with the dampness that pervades the vaulted ground floor chamber. The use of limewash inside will also help with this, although it will be some time before the building dries out and regular redecoration is needed. The west wall had moved away from rotted rafter feet by some 15cm so new metal ties were put in and a concrete tie beam cast. The lathe and plaster of the barrel ceiling was so decayed it had to be renewed. In the kitchen, the floor was recorded, lifted and as many slabs as possible relaid.

More of its Jacobean interior survived in the West Banqueting House, including sections of the original plaster frieze showing a winged lion with a man’s head. Where possible, these have been carefully conserved and pieced back together. Large sections of Jacobean wainscotting also survive at the head of the stair turret. This tower was added soon after the building’s original construction, at first to hold a garderobe (or lavatory). Soon after, perhaps when the banqueting house was converted to domestic accommodation after the fire in 1645, a staircase was inserted instead. These stairs did not survive although the marks of the treads and risers are clearly visible in the walls. We inserted a carefully designed replacement. The East has three storeys, the lower two suites of rooms; the West just two storeys, and a single large chamber on the ground floor. Both were originally open loggias. The intervening centuries have treated them differently, something reflected in Landmark’s approach to their restoration.

We have kept the rough studwork partition which divides the first floor chamber and, to ensure privacy both for the Court House and for visitors to the East Banqueting House, the loggia and some of the windows remain blocked, although others in the kitchen and north and west walls have been unblocked to provide more light. Both external doors are originals; that leading onto the terrace may have been salvaged from the main house. The West Banqueting House has thus deliberately been left much as it came to us, so that it reveals its later history as a domestic dwelling. William Harrison, a key player in the mysterious events known as The Campden Wonder, may well have lived here in the mid-17th century and been responsible for the adaptation.

The Almonry also dates from the early 17th century and is an altogether simpler building than the banqueting houses, following the more traditional pattern of Cotswold architecture seen also in the former stables (now the Court House) and the contemporary Almshouses across the road. It is small in scale and restrained in detail, three storeys with but a single chamber on each floor linked by a stone spiral staircase. Its original function has been the subject of much debate: it may have been the office of a household official although the carefully framed views from its first floor windows suggest it could have been intended as a garden pavilion. Equally, blocked arches in its basement wall and proximity to the ‘bleaching garden’ in early views have led to speculation that it could even have been a laundry. Later references suggest use as a hen roost or dovecote. The only certainty is that it was not built as an almonry, a whimsical name acquired in the 1930s, no doubt due to its proximity to the almshouses, and which has stuck.

In 1930, the Almonry was repaired by F L Griggs, renowned engraver and campaigner for Chipping Campden. The large fireplace on the ground floor is a later insertion but that on the first floor and the balustrade at the top of the stairs are original. Like the West Banqueting House, it has been re-roofed and the stonework repointed.

Court Barn, the surviving fragment of Campden House and Juliana’s Gateway at the bottom of Sir Baptist’s garden are also in the care of the Landmark Trust. Court Barn is leased to the Guild of Handicraft Trust.