Tag Archives: Historic Homes

Architecture, Home Design, Homes, Tours, Videos, Views

Old + New Design: William Tappin House, Melbourne

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The Local Project (August 23, 2023) – The revitalisation of this heritage brick house by Matt Gibson Architecture + Design was grounded on the ethos of changing as much as necessary but as little as possible.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Intro to the Modern Brick House 00:32 – The Location of the Home 00:49 – William Tappin and His Designs 01:05 – Handling the Connection Between Old and New 02:01 – Requirements of the Brief 02:25 – The Interpretation of Arts & Crafts 03:07 – Behind the Kitchen Design 03:30 – A Walkthrough of the Upstairs 04:18 – The Architect’s Proud Moments

Located in the eclectic neighbourhood of South Yarra in Melbourne, William Tappin House depicts the sensitive layering of a historical footprint with contemporary innovation. Originally designed and occupied by its namesake, William Tappin – a renowned Queen Anne-style architect – the connection between old and new was something the architect wanted to handle sensitively, and this influenced the positioning of the building on site.

The existing structure is restored to remain the hero, whilst the new addition is recessive and humble in design. Restorations include revealing the original brickwork and limestone, restoring the existing verandah and carved wooden features. Exposed details, such as the fingerprints of makers on the tiles and original brick, become a symbol of the heritage façade of this home. New additions are highly sensitive to the brick home’s foundation.

The rear addition is constructed from limed timber and off-form concrete that calls back to the tonality of the limestone and basalt detailing of the original structure. Terracotta tiles also wrap the faceted roofscape in an ode to the bespoke red brick. What the house tour shows is a strong connection between inside and out, which prevails throughout the home. The entire ground floor, which contains the kitchen and living areas, opens to the exterior, with views extending all the way out to the garden and beyond – made even more accessible through sliding glazed doors.

Gardens, Historical, Reviews, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Historic Tours: Belton House In Lincolnshire, UK

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National Trust (August 23, 2023) – A behind the scenes at Belton House in Lincolnshire, built between 1685 and 1687 by Sir John Brownlow, which is looked after by the National Trust.

A filming location for Queen Charlotte: a Bridgerton Story, this 17th-century home has been used as a set for many popular TV series and movies. Belton can be seen in the 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and, most recently, has featured as King George III’s palace in the Bridgerton universe.

Along with a tour of some familiar scenes from the silver screen, you’ll take a closer look at a jewel in the furniture collection – a one-of-a-kind lapis lazuli cabinet. A deep blue gemstone, lapis lazuli has been used as decoration for centuries – perhaps most notably in the funerary mask of Tutankhamun. For a cabinet to be almost entirely covered in the material makes it an extremely rare object.

Gardens, Historical, Reviews, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Tours: Historic Gardens Of Wightwick Manor, UK

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National Trust (May 10, 2023) – The gardens surrounding Wightwick Manor, cared for by the National Trust, are influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, which started in Britain during the late 19th century.

This means the garden design extends into the house, where visitors can see flowers such as roses used as motifs for interiors and artworks. Watch this video to discover how politics has also left its mark on the gardens that are still enjoyed by visitors today. You’ll see architectural artefacts from the Houses of Parliament and a tree planted by Clement Richard Attlee, the Labour Prime Minster who served from 1945 to 1951.

You’ll also learn about the history of the estate and its planting schemes and find out more about what the National Trust is doing to make the gardens more accessible for visitors.

Historical, Movies, Reviews, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Historic Tour: Locations In ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry’ Film (2023)

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National Trust (April 27, 2023) – Based on the bestselling novel by Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton is exclusively in cinemas from April 28 2023.

Recently retired, Harold Fry is an unremarkable man who is content to fade quietly into the background of life, until one day he learns that an old friend is dying. He sets off to the post office to send her a letter and decides to keep walking: all the way to her hospice, 450 miles away.

The Bath Skyline in Somerset and Minchinhampton Common in Gloucestershire were both used as locations for the film, which was shot sequentially across the UK over several weeks, mirroring Harold’s own pilgrimage through England’s many varied landscapes – from bustling cities to wild moorland.

Here Jim and Rachel tell us how being on location helped bring to life story’s themes of reconnecting with the land and embracing the unknown. Filming at National Trust places helps provide our charity with income which we use to keep those houses, gardens and landscapes in good condition for everyone to visit and enjoy.

Arts & Literature, Historical, Homes, Tours, Travel, Videos, Views

Views: A Tour Of Monk’s House, Sussex In Virginia Woolf’s Literary Words

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National Trust (April 18, 2023) – To this day, Virginia Woolf is still known for her novel ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and for her early involvement in the Bloomsbury Group, which was established in the early 1900s in London.

Monk’s House in Sussex was once the place she and her husband Leopold called home, and it’s now being cared for by the National Trust. In this video from the National Trust, you can experience what life was like at Monk’s House first hand. For more than 20 years, Virginia Woolf transformed Monk’s House into a place of beauty, art, creativity and contentment.

Virginia Woolf - IMDb
Virginia Woolf

From reciting lines in her bathtub to writing books in the tool shed, let this literary pioneer tell you in her own words how she finally found ‘a room of one’s own’. Throughout much of her life, Virginia Woolf experienced bouts of mental illness, and Monk’s House was used as a writing retreat by Virginia and Leopold.

The Sussex landscape captured her imagination, and this came through in much of her writing. She was also engaged in the conservation of the land – a legacy that lives on through the work that National Trust staff and volunteers do to care for this place of history.

Architecture, Home Design, Homes, Profiles, Tours, Videos

1952 Mid-Century Modern: Tour Of ‘Snyder House’ In Shelter Island, New York

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Sotheby’s International Realty (March 10, 2023) – ‘The Snyder House’ is something of a legend in the long history of Shelter Island. Built in 1952 and designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg for John Snyder, the CEO of the Pressed Steel Car Company, 2 Charlie’s Lane was recognized as a mid-century marvel, both in design and waterfront location, offering magnificent panoramic water views of West Neck Harbor and Long Island Sound (Source: Official Bertrand Goldberg website).

Considered a ‘must see,’ onlookers would come from the Island and beyond, many transported by amphibious airplanes from New York City to experience the so-called ‘demonstration house.’ In 2002, the current owners undertook rebuilding the home on its original sprawling footprint, maintaining the elements of its mid-century modernist design while sparing no expense to bring this 20th-century masterpiece up to 21st-century living standards of ultimate comfort and high-end quality.

Architecture, History, Home Design, Homes, Tours, Travel, Videos

English Country Houses: A Tour Of Wolterton Hall

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House & Garden (February 3, 2023) – Peter Sheppard and Keith Day welcome us into Wolterton Hall, an 18th-century English country house in Norfolk, England. Both Peter & Keith have been steadily restoring and redecorating Wolterton Park since they bought the estate in 2016 — bringing the state rooms back to their original glory and creating beautiful, practical living spaces.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Boudoir: “The walls were covered with a green hessian” 02:30 – Saloon: “This is where we have our best parties” 05:29 – State Bedroom: “It’s really funny to have a state bedroom when your friends come and stay…” 06:17 – State Bathroom: “It’s not conventional to have a bath of this size” 07:30 – Kitchen: “You shouldn’t hide away beautiful things” 08:49 – Living Room: “This was the Walpole’s library” 09:57 – Picture Room: “A 20th-century collection of paintings”

Watch the full episode of Design Notes as we tour Wolterton Hall and Peter & Keith explain how they live in the Palladian rooms of the piano nobile, from the State Bathroom with its alabaster-panelled bath to the Saloon that looks out on 500 acres of parkland. #HouseTour #ManorHouse #CountryHouse #England #HomeDesign

Historical, Home Design, Homes, Magazines, Profiles

Historic English Homes: Writer Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Piers Court’, Gloucester

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Piers Court, the house where Evelyn Waugh wrote his nostalgic masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, was used as a safe house for Royalists during the Civil War. He lived there from 1937 to 1956 – apart from during the war years when it was taken over by nuns.

December 16, 2022

It seems a sad state of affairs for a famed house whose previous owners — who bought Piers Court in 2010 — had done much to enhance a place described by Pevsner as ‘dignified and elegant’, which, behind its classical 18th-century façade, caters for both formal entertaining and informal family living. The standard of fixtures and fittings is really something – as this picture of one of the bathrooms demonstrates.

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Architecture, Historical, Homes, Stories, Tours, Views

Home Tours: Kelmscott Manor In The Cotswolds

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The architecture of Kelmscott Manor is woven into William Morris’s 1890 novel, News from Nowhere, in which a journey exploring utopian ideals in a post-industrial world leads, after much wandering, to a ‘many-gabled old house built by the simple country-folk of the long-past times’. There is no ‘extravagant love of ornament’ here, only a feeling that ‘the house itself and its associations was the ornament of the country life amidst which it had been left stranded from old times’. It is a poignant vision that underlines both a respect for the past and an ideal of a new society based on mutual interest and support.

Jeremy Musson, May 15, 2022

Today, this old stone-built farm house is best known as the Morrises’ country home, from 1871. First leased as a retreat from busy London life, it became a vital point of reference for Morris, as artist, designer and poet; it was his ‘Heaven on Earth’, and a source of profound emotional and artistic inspiration.

Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire

Fig 2: The first-floor Tapestry Room, with a carved 1660s chimneypiece, is hung with a late-17th-century Oudenarde tapestry. Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire. ©Paul Highnam for Country Life

Historical, Homes, Views

Historic English Manors: ‘Chanters House’ In Devon, “Cromwell & Coleridge”

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The grandiose Chanters House, in Ottery St Mary, Devon, has astonishing links to history and literature: it was the place where Oliver Cromwell declared the Civil War, and where the Coleridge family created one of the West Country’s most impressive libraries.

It originally dates from the 14th century but first rose to national fame in the 17th century, when Oliver Cromwell hosted a meeting of local people in the dining room — and apparently declared the start of the Civil War from there.

A little more than a century later, the property became home to another illustrious family, the Coleridges, in whose hands it would remain for about two centuries. The Reverend John Coleridge was made headmaster of the Kings’ School in 1760 and brought his huge family to live in Ottery St Mary.

It was in the town that his youngest son, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born in 1772. But it was his eldest son, James, a distinguished soldier married to local heiress Frances Taylor, who bought Chanters House in 1796 and turned it into the family’s home.

Still in use today, the 70-ft-long room houses the 22,000 books of the Coleridge collection in oak carved bookcases that occupy the entire ground floor of the house’s west wing.

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