9:37am Wednesday 18th November 2009
OUT of the ashes of Basing House rose the phoenix of Hackwood House.
At restoration, the Paulets decided to build their new home beside the ancient hawthorn wood, but more as a hunting lodge than a palace as they’d not been compensated for Cromwell’s destruction of England’s largest house.
Elevated for supporting the glorious revolution, the Duke of Bolton enlarged and refurnished Hackwood House, establishing Spring Wood – named after the spring that had watered the King’s fallow deer since Norman times – in the latest French style.
The family prospered again but, as they had so many “seats”, Hackwood House was rented out, even housing the refugee Belgian royals in the First World War.
Twenty years later, it was sold to Lord Camrose as a weekend retreat from London, and a sanctuary for people hounded by the press, starting with Chamberlain after Munich.
Brian Spicer, our speaker, had seen them all – Churchill, Profumo,Wilson, even Pavarotti – and the Canadians to whom Camrose had made over Hackwood House for their hospital in the Second World War, and who better to tell the story than a third generation retainer who’d risen to become the family’s right-hand man?
When the last Lord Camrose died, the family had no use for Hackwood House. It failed to sell as a unit because of the M3.
Ironic, as Britain’s first road, the Bronze Age Tinway from Cornwall to Kent, passed through their estate to their benefit and the fury of Cromwell, but its modern replacement brought too much noise for the 80 serious viewers.
Brian was instructed to auction the contents, including furniture on which William and Mary, George I and other visitors had sat, Gainsboroughs and Titians, exquisite china and glassware they’d seen and used. The house has now become the Qataris’ bolthole, but we can still walk the grounds and remember Hackwood House’s story.
The next meeting is on Thursday, at 8pm in North Waltham School Hall, when David Lee proudly presents “North Hants in Film” featuring the North Waltham Mummers, a game shoot in Steventon and more of his historic AV recordings from the HRO collection.
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