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The attic floor above is where the nursery rooms were located, with a south-facing aspect and a beautiful view over the park.
The official route now takes us down to the Bath House, created by Soane in about 1792. The dressing room is warmed by a fire and the water heated by a boiler—a very luxurious bath indeed! It is an unusual indulgence to find in a house of this period, when bathing houses and plunge pools were very popular but were usually located outside and filled with cold water. Of all the treasures of Wimpole Hall, this is the room I would most like to transfer to my own home!
From the Bath House we descend to the basement, with the Chapel and the remains of the service rooms. The kitchen, laundry, bakehouse, game larder, shoe room, fuel stores and servants’ privies were all in the now demolished Service Wing, with the original Servants’ Hall and the Steward’s Room in this basement area.
When we follow Isobel outside there is no trace of the Castello d’Aqua, where she stumbles over Giles dealing with the plumbing, so I guessed at its location and put it into the shrubbery. The park is full of delightful walks and surprise views—of the lakes where Lizzie almost drowned and of the Folly that Repton wanted to convert into a gardener’s cottage, much to her indignation.
The Hill House, or Prospect House, was demolished at some point in the nineteenth century, after being derelict since the 1780s. I have blamed Giles for its demolition, although that probably took place later. It must have been both charming and elegant, and its image is preserved on a dessert plate in a service in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Other plates surviving from the service, which was made for Catherine the Great by Josiah Wedgwood, show the Folly and the lakes at Wimpole.
The naughty frescoes in the little chamber are from my imagination, but in July 1800 the Reverend James Plumpt
re described the Hill House as ‘…a scene of desolation…The Tea Room was simple and elegant; the little room on the side was a rare specimen of painting, of Etruscan figures in colours…The place [is now] made a shelter of deer and sheep…’.
Now, sadly, all that can be traced is a dip in the ground and a few pieces of stone poking out of the turf, but the view southwards is as delightful as it was when the little house was erected.
The Yorkes
From his portrait, which still hangs in the Hall, Philip Yorke, Third Earl of Hardwicke (1757-1834), seems an intelligent and charming man as he regards the observer with large brown eyes and just a hint of a smile on his lips. From all accounts he was a model landowner, a good landlord and a conscientious first Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—a post he held 1801-6.
He inherited the title from his uncle who, like Philip’s father, was one of the sons of the First Earl of Hardwicke. That earl, as Lord Chancellor, was responsible for Hardwicke’s Marriage Act in 1754, which put an end to irregular ‘Fleet Marriages’. As a result, couples who wanted to avoid a Church of England wedding by banns or licence were driven to elope across the border into Scotland, where the law made marriage far simpler. Unwittingly, the Lord Chancellor provided a rich source of inspiration for future romantic novelists!
Philip’s wife Elizabeth was an intellectual who wrote numerous plays which the family performed in the Long Gallery. The Court of Oberon, or The Three Witches was particularly successful and was reprinted several times. She cared for the tenants, founded a Sunday School and would not allow beer houses on the estate.
Their four daughters—Lady Anne, Lady Catherine, Lady Elizabeth and Lady Caroline—all survived into adulthood but, tragically, young Philip, Viscount Royston, drowned in 1808, returning from the Grand Tour and Charles died of scarlet fever in 1810, leaving the Earl with no son to inherit. The title passed to a nephew, and eventually Wimpole was sold in 1894.
The estate was bought by Captain and Mrs Bambridge. Elsie Bambridge was the only surviving child of Rudyard Kipling (and a very remote cousin of mine, through her American mother and members of my family who emigrated to America in the seventeenth century, I was delighted to discover!). Mrs Bambridge spent many years restoring the house and on her death in 1976 it was bequeathed to the National Trust.
Research and sources
I began with the National Trust guidebook and Wimpole: architectural drawings and topographical views by David Adshead (2007). This gave me numerous plans, drawings and photographs to work from, including pictures of the Hill House and the ‘before and after’ plans Soane drew up for the interior of the Hall.
The guides at Wimpole Hall were extremely helpful and I was fortunate enough to be taken on a roof-to-basement tour, including the attics and the old nurseries, Lady Hardwicke’s sitting room and the basement Servants’ Hall.
Exploring the park is always a joy at Wimpole, but it took me a long time to locate the Hill House. Eventually, with the aid of Google Earth and some rather inaccurate eighteenth-century plans, I managed to find the dip left when the stone was robbed.
The lakes with the dam between them have been dredged and restored, the Folly still draws the eye and scenes simply leapt to life in front of me as I explored—with my husband trying to keep up with my demands for more photographs and making more notes around every corner.
MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK
Inspiration for writing
Regency Rumours
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louise Allen biography
Louise Allen on writing
A writer’s life
ABOUT THE NATIONAL TRUST
About the National Trust
Wimpole Hall history
National Trust membership
