Papplewick Hall

Image: © Trevor Rickard Taken: 21 Apr 2010

This superb Grade I Listed house was built (or rather re-built) in 1787 for the Hon. Frederick Montagu, who was Lord of the Treasury. Apparently the Montagus were out for a drive one day and Mrs Montagu told the carriage to stop here and said that it would be a nice place to build a house. So Montagu did just that. The main road used to run right outside the front door, but he had it diverted up the hill - hence the kink at Papplewick village. Montagu is buried at Image in a tomb which is an exact replica of his dining room table. It was said that he drank so much that he was often found under it, so the tomb is rather fitting! The front door leads to a fabulous cantilevered staircase and oval ceiling. The rooms are light and airy, with fine plasterwork and roundels by John Flaxman, and several paintings by local artist Henry Dawson. My fellow visitor, who was an expert on the architect Lindley, considered the house to be too ornate to be his work. Thus the architect remains a mystery, but as Pevsner observed, it is very much in the style of Robert Adam. The house was restored and is now owned by the Godwin-Austin family, descendants of Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen, the great Victorian explorer and cartographer, who discovered the world's second highest mountain K2 while surveying the Karakoram Range in 1867. The house is regularly open to the public. Photographs by kind permission of the owner. Image Hall: http://www.papplewickhall.co.uk/ Flaxman: http://www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/learning/discovery_packs/2179/pack/2436/chapter/2782 Dawson: http://www.artnet.com/artist/699227/henry-dawson.html Godwin-Austin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Haversham_Godwin-Austen

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