As Clandon Park House in Surrey went up in flames so quickly in April 2015, it showed once again how fragile the items of the past could be. To me, working on this site, it drew parallels with the fire at Baginton Hall. That too saw a grand country house raised to the ground, with a furious effort made to save the treasures within.
For houses such as these, there is none of the slow decline that affects places such as Guy’s Cliffe. When bored, I often browse a site of England’s lost country houses, an insight through photography into the past. There are many reasons for the decline of a grand house, it seems.
So, a permanence of place is more fragile than we sometimes think. Time isn’t static, things change, and even to keep things as they are takes work…
Comments
In fact there was a fire at Guy’s Cliffe (though well after neglect, vandalism and decay had set in). In 1992 a television crew was filming a fire in the ruins for a Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Sussex Vampyre’ but the fire got out of control and the house was ruined even further.
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