{"id":11224,"date":"2022-05-23T11:15:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T09:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homesandantiques.com\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2022-05-23T11:36:10","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T09:36:10","slug":"take-a-tour-of-renishaw-hall-in-derbyshire","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/rss_feed\/take-a-tour-of-renishaw-hall-in-derbyshire\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a tour of Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Janet Gleeson\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 23 May 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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N<\/span>obody forgets their first visit to Renishaw Hall. Where else would you be greeted by two life-sized Italian warriors from the 17th century? The idiosyncratic swaggering pair embody Renishaw\u2019s charm. One smiles, one snarls; one is decked with spectacles left by a forgetful visitor, the other sports a Victorian beaded handbag. Welcome to the world of the Sitwell family, they seem to say, and be prepared for extravagance, wit and surprises.<\/p>\n

The Sitwell\u2019s family home for 400 years, this is a house in which the unconventional and the traditional, opulence and restraint, modern art and Old Masters, blend seamlessly. It also has a comfortable feel. \u2018It is our home,\u2019 says Alexandra Sitwell, the owner. \u2018We live in it and use every room, so it isn\u2019t a museum, although I do love showing it off to people.\u2019<\/p>\n

Renishaw has been her home since she was seven, when her father Sir Reresby Sitwell inherited the house from his uncle. \u2018It was very different in those days,\u2019 she recalls. \u2018It was pretty bleak and uncomfortable. We didn\u2019t have electricity until 1958 and there was no heating until 1969. But I still thought it was heaven.\u2019<\/p>\n

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The discomfort was no hindrance to Renishaw\u2019s metamorphosis into a cultural and social nucleus. In the 1920s and 1930s it played centre stage to the famous Sitwell trio: writer and patron Osbert; his sister Edith, a poet and performance artist with amazing cheek bones and a penchant for silver nail varnish; and the younger brother, the art-loving historian Sacheverell. They stood at the forefront of the Bright Young Things of the interwar period.<\/p>\n

Leading writers and artists such as DH Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, John Piper, Rex Whistler and Cecil Beaton came to visit and often left their mark. In the entrance hall are three huge paintings by Piper: Derbyshire Domains<\/i>; a view across Renishaw\u2019s roof tops; and a Venetian triptych.<\/p>\n

\u2018Piper came to stay to illustrate Osbert\u2019s memoir and fell in love with Renishaw,\u2019 explains archivist Christine Beevers. \u2018The house contains the largest private collection of Pipers in the country.\u2019 The triptych was painted to go over the fireplace<\/a> and had never been moved until this year, when it was taken down for restoration. \u2018We discovered only then how narrowly it had escaped bursting into flames because there was so much tar behind it,\u2019 says Christine.<\/p>\n

Renishaw\u2019s rambling Georgian<\/a> Gothic-style architecture<\/a> encloses a compact 17th-century building. The original manor house, built in 1625, was of fairly modest proportions. Then in the late 18th century Sir Sitwell Sitwell, the 1st Baronet, upgraded it, adding three large rooms of lavish scale: a vast ballroom, a dining room and a 17m-long drawing room.<\/p>\n

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\u2018He was a shrewd buyer of furnishings,\u2019 says Christine. One of his acquisitions, a commode by Thomas Chippendale, takes centre stage in the great drawing room. Made in the 1770s and bought at a sale in 1802, it is one of Renishaw\u2019s greatest treasures.<\/p>\n

\u2018When the artist John Singer Sargent was commissioned to paint the family portrait in 1900, the commode was transported to Sargent\u2019s London studio, with one of the tapestries, to form the background,\u2019 says Christine. Showing the 4th Baronet Sir George Sitwell, with Lady Ida and their children Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, the portrait now hangs, appropriately, over the commode.<\/p>\n

The drawing room was redecorated in the 1960s by Alexandra\u2019s parents. \u2018Until then the room was in a sorry state and the curtains were in shreds. The family fortunes had suffered in the mid 19th century following a succession of misfortunes, and in 1849 the contents were sold and the house closed down,\u2019 Christine explains.<\/p>\n

Only when a new seam of coal was discovered nearby could the family begin to bring Renishaw back to life. But it was a lengthy process. The floor, stencilled in the 1970s to imitate an inlaid wooden floor in the Pavlovsk Palace, in St Petersburg, was a characteristically creative way to avoid buying a new carpet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018To me each room has a special feel and a special message,\u2019 says Alexandra. \u2018The drawing room has the wow factor and I love the formality of the dining room, with the Blue John tables that my mother gilded, but I also love the library because that\u2019s where we relax and sit in the evening with the fire going.\u2019<\/p>\n

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