Interview with Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth
Image of Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth photographed
by Paul Burrows supplied for
exclusive use by
Paul Burrows Photography Ltd. All rights reserved.
This exclusive interview with Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth was conducted by
Nicola Linza and Cristoffer Neljesjö in Hartforth, UK during April 2012.
It was the 4th baronet Sir Robert who built and owned Lissadell House, County Sligo, Ireland which you inherited and owned until 2003 at which time you then became builder and owner of the new Home Farm, Hartforth. How did you approach the building of a new house? In addition, what did you desire to incorporate into the new property?
More than ten years before the sale of Lissadell in 2003, I had wondered what scope there might be either to extend the Home Farm at Hartforth or to use the listed buildings in the farmyard as the basis for a new house; the distinguished neoclassical architect Francis Johnson and his colleague Malcolm McKie submitted a number of alternative designs which had merits in their detail but which were unsatisfactory taken as a whole. When we returned to England in December 2003, I was bitten by the same bug again, and dug out my old files and their drawings. These included a design by Digby Harris, who had joined Francis Johnson and Partners as a young architect in the early 1990s, although he had not had the opportunity of visiting the site. Thinking that this was as good a place to start as any, I asked him to do so on a cold and windy Ash Wednesday in 2004. I knew that I wanted a neoclassical design, and I had recently read an article about Cronkill, the picturesque Italianate villa designed by John Nash in 1802 at Attingham Park near Shrewsbury, which had taken my fancy. When I showed it to Digby, I did not expect to be told that he had built a house for a client in Cheshire owing much to Cronkill already. But this seemed to suggest that we thought along similar lines, and we agreed that he should consider how he might develop proposals which were in keeping with the wooded valley surrounding the Home Farm. To obtain the necessary consent from the planning authority, I was conscious that we needed an outstanding design, and our requirements were for a house with five bedrooms, closer in size to a dower house or a rectory than to a traditional country house. I was aware of some of the villas built in the mid-18th century by Sir Robert Taylor for clients in the City of London in the surrounding countryside, such as Danson Park and Harleyford Manor. Taylor had developed the ideas of Sir William Chambers, James Paine, John Carr and others, to produce compact and thus relatively cheap villas, which served equally well for family life and for entertaining: the ground floor consisted of hall, drawing room, dining room and library, built around a central staircase with inter-connecting doors, each room a different shape.
Externally, each facade was different and none dominant, reflecting the plan. Conceptually, this seemed the right approach. I had also studied the work of Francis Johnson, Raymond Erith and others who had continued to build in the classical tradition in the dark days after the second world war, when many clients were adapting to life without servants, and houses began to be built that no longer needed to take their comings and goings into account.
I shared these thoughts with Digby, who was keen to use the design of an 'ideal house' which Francis Johnson himself had sketched in 1943; in little time he produced a design based on a tripartite plan, with spans of 18 feet. Having recently visited Rome and Venice, I had been struck by the elegant oval staircases built by Borromini in the Barberini Palace and by Palladio in Santa Maria della Carita, and suggested to him that our house might incorporate such a detail. We settled for a Pythagorean four-centred ellipse because a true ellipse is much harder to draw and set out. Having agreed this, the rest of the plan fell into place and I agreed to his proposal that the fenestration on three elevations should be gothick - in the idiom of Batty Langley or Strawberry Hill - following the precedent of Castle Ward in Ulster. At Hartforth the entrance front is classical. The gothick influence reflects details in several buildings nearby at Aske, in Richmond and on the Hartforth estate itself.
We had stored pictures and furniture from Lissadell which I had felt we could build a house around, having sold the pieces that were too big, too damaged or not to my taste. These - together with items which Jane and I had inherited independently - found a place remarkably readily, like a jigsaw puzzle; since then, we have collected a few pieces and recently commissioned a set of dining room chairs with a Gothick flavour.
It appears these days harder than ever for a gentleman to find honest genuine quality, in most aspects of life. What do you feel is the reasoning for this circumstance?
Few people seem to have much of a visual sense or an interest in design and craftsmanship; modern town-planning and the quality of public buildings and spaces do not set a good example; nowadays clothes and fashions revolve around the premise that consumers would prefer something cheap which they can throw away when they see something new.
There are exceptions: food is the obvious example, as I reflect on what used to be available in the 1950s and how lamentably it was prepared and cooked in most households, schools and even restaurants.
And I was continually struck during our building contract how many excellent firms and individual craftsmen existed 'beneath the parapet’ as it were, often in clusters such as we found near York.
Christie’s Country House Sale in Association with HOK Fine Art on 25 November 2003, held the now famous sale from Lissadell House. Are there any particular items you now would have held back from the sale?
There was a painting of the Death of Lucretia by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini in a splendid 17th century gilded Florentine frame for which we might have struggled to have found space at Hartforth. As I grow older, my fondness for the baroque, which started on my first visit to Italy as a student, has grown and this picture had tremendous vigour: Lucretia, with dagger drawn, having laid bare her breast of the deep red cloak which otherwise enshrouds her, is on the point of stabbing herself and bringing to an end the cruel reign of the Tarquins. The other thing that I regret is a ship's model of the yacht Kara, in which my great grandfather made several voyages in the Arctic circle in the late 19th century.
Do you have a preferred drink, while partaking of alcoholic refreshments? Moreover, how do you prefer it be made?
I do not drink cocktails often now, but a Negroni made with Punt e Mes rather than Italian vermouth is a delight. Years ago, I always enjoyed a carefully mixed Dry Martini or even a White Lady, but these tend to spoil the palate, delicious though they are in isolation.
How would you best describe your personal style?
It has been said that men can be categorised by the order in classical architecture to which each corresponds; I suppose that, in my case, it would be the Ionic order.
We are gathered during an Edwardian-era shooting party weekend filled with self-indulgence, besides shooting pheasant what do you see us doing?
From my modest knowledge of the period, I suppose that one might undertake some discreet adultery. I am not interested in cards and have no skill at billiards.
If you could have your portrait done by any artist, living or deceased, whom would it be? And why?
When I first grew up, a friend asked me to stay at his parents' beautiful but far from grand house near Winchester. I fell in love with the place immediately. In the drawing room, there was exquisite furniture and comfortable chairs in striped velvet. And over a sofa, behind the door, a painting by Sir Anthony van Dyck. It depicts the Balbi Children; it had been part of the collection at Wrest Park and now hangs in the National Gallery in London. Van Dyck took portrait painting to a level that I do not think has been equalled since, although I would have been pleased to have sat for Pompeo Batoni or John Singer Sargent. The 'swagger portrait' may not be to everyone's taste, but it is to mine.
The above interview with Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth 2012 ©
Manner of Man Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction is strictly
prohibited without written permission from the publisher
