Monday, April 17, 2023

The Victorian Society will battle to save Overstone Hall

The Victorian Society says it will fight plans to demolish a large derelict house on the outskirts of Northampton.

Overstone Hall has been in this state since a blaze in 2001 and suffered another fire last month.

The owners, Barry Howard Homes, have applied for planning permission to demolish it, but Guy Newton from the Victorian Society told BBC News:

"England's landscape is littered with ruins. Overstone Hall is now part of that conversation. Overstone Hall could be the next big visitor attraction."

He suggested Overstone could be similar to the National Trust's Clandon Park in Surrey, which was hit by a huge fire in 2015 but is now being restored in part for visitors.

Overstone was commissioned by Lady Overstone in 1860, but she died before it was completed. Lord Overstone was not enthused by the hall.

According to Northants Live:

The hall was designed by the London architect William Milford Teulon. It was highly advanced when new, built with double walls, giving it the earliest known cavity wall insulation. It also had a central heating system, gas lighting and a butler's lift. ...

It had 119 rooms and is surrounded by 35 acres of parkland and grounds. However, Lord Overstone expressed his “unmitigated disappointment” over the building.

In a scathing letter, he wrote: "It is an utter failure - we have fallen into the hands of an architect in whom incapacity is his smallest fault.

"The house tho’ very large and full of pretension - has neither taste, comfort, nor convenience. I am utterly ashamed of it… the principal rooms are literally uninhabitable - I shall never fit them up… I grieve to think that I shall hand such an abortion to my successors."

It sounds as though Overstone Hall, which later become a school and then the headquarters of a Pentecostal church, would do best as a picturesque ruin.

You can see the hall in the video above, which was shot by someone flying a piano over the site.

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