More Clandon

I have not thought much about Clandon, the stately home near Guildford which burned down some three years ago for a while now, but last week we decided to go and take a look and see how it was getting on.

The view on arrival from the car park. The shell of the building wrapped up in state of the art cladding. For all the world like one of those big buildings you can pay some artist to wrap up. Maybe the con artist featured at reference 8 and presently floating in the Serpentine. A giant bath toy according to today's Guardian.

Maybe a few dozen visitors there, a mixture of pensioners like ourselves, young families out for a picnic and a sprinkling of tourists. Plus maybe a dozen trusties, some young, some old.

Walls stripped back to the brickwork by the fire. Substantial brickwork from the early eighteenth century, largely paid for by Jamaica slaves and sugar, through the medium of a Jamaican heiress, Elizabeth Knight. Neatly made timber structures providing us with safe access.

The genuine marble of the fireplace survived, while the fake marble of the once grand pillars did not. Once the fire got in behind the plaster, the lathe lined interiors of the pillars had no chance, making fine chimneys for the fire.

A detail of the plaster. Note how the iron pegs have been used to support the plaster a couple of inches off the face of the brickwork. Was it to stop the plaster getting damp at a time when damp courses had not been invented or was it to provide a bit of insulation at a time when central heating had not been invented? We associated to the flammable cladding of another building.

Some of the rooms were panelled in wood rather than in plaster.

An old settlement crack between the outside wall right and the cross wall left, with the two not having been bonded together properly, nothing to do with the fire, which simply served to reveal it. Not sure why there would have been any settlement, given that we are up in the chalk downs, which one might have thought would have provided sufficient foundation. This part of the building attended by a young lady trusty who might have been one of the engineers on the project; she certainly sounded quite knowledgeable. She told us that the fire had been caused by a fault in an electrical distribution panel, but we did not think to ask whether that had been a proper witch hunt, with a proper sacrificial goat as at reference 9. More seriously, would it turn out to be the culmination of a long, sorry saga of cutting costs and cutting corners, a systemic failure rather than an individual failure - for which the National Trust would have less excuse than the National Health? Keeping a visitor attraction up and running is not the same imperative as keeping a hospital up and running.

Checking, it turns out that the National Trust has been admirably open about the report into the fire, and a few clicks turns up their pointer (at reference 10) to the report by the Surrey Fire & Rescue Service. Next step is to read thing.

Down in the basement, with support provided by aluminium props from Titan Props, the engineering props people in Germany (reference 4) rather than the theatrical props people in Glasgow. Whatever happened to the steel props from Acrow of my youth? Wikipedia and ebay know all about them, but I have failed to track down the website of a manufacturer.

A view of the wrapped building from the other side. Scaffolding on the same lines as that at Castle Drogo a few years back. That being a leaking roof job rather than a fire. See reference 5. Almost time to take our picnic.

A plaque at the entrance to the sunken garden. We wondered how many more of them might be scattered about the land. Do they mean memorial to colleagues who died in accidents or worse, 'en service commandé', as the police say, in a similar connection, in Simenon?

The sunken garden, seemingly modelled on the green one of the two at Hampton Court Palace. The subject of the jigsaw noticed at reference 6. Very nice it was too, despite the rotating heritage board, centre field.

What, for some reason, I took to be a marsh orchid, despite being in downland grass, with subsequent checking with Wikipedia (reference 7) suggesting that I might have been right. A puzzle.

Having now seen what is left of the place and admired the grounds, complete as they are with lots of handsome trees and shrubs, I have come up with a new wheeze. Take the walls down to near ground level. Restore the basement, more or less intact, and use it for exhibitions, perhaps starting with some of the stuff rescued from the fire. Turn the ground floor into a smart new pavilion, keeping some of the surviving brick work for heritage souvenirs, but otherwise all concrete, steel and glass, complete with an outdoor terrace and a state of the art NT restaurant. Keep the gardens more or less as they are.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-suggestion-for-trustees.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2016/01/clandon-redux.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/05/to-clandon-or-not-to-clandon.html. The first of the three earlier posts on the subject of what to do about Clandon.

Reference 4: http://www.ischebeck-titan.co.uk/.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/04/drogo-3.html.

Reference 6: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=sue+ryder+wells.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactylorhiza_majalis.

Reference 8: http://christojeanneclaude.net/.

Reference 9: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/catastrophes.html.

Reference 10: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/news/clandon-fire-report-published.