A labour of love

Northwold Manor, Norfolk The home of Prof Warwick Rodwell and Ms Diane Gibbs A heroic restoration project has transformed a house left neglected for more than 50 years. It has also illuminated its remarkable history, as John Goodall explains

- John Goodall

ON May 9, 2013, Warwick Rodwell and his wife, Diane Gibbs, visited Northwold Manor house. It was then a derelict wreck in the process of compulsory purchase by King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council; the building had last been occupied in 1955. 'No sunlight penetrated its interior,' Prof Warwick recalls, 'and we groped our way around the rooms with torches, climbing over stacks of rotting furniture and debris that clogged the interior... some rooms had gaping holes in the floors and ceilings where structural collapses had occurred.' The garden, if anything, was worse, choked with vegetation and rubbish including four abandoned caravans.

That scene is unimaginable today. Not only has Northwold Manor undergone a heroic restoration, but its disparate historic structures have been woven together to create a coherent property with a fresh character of its own (Fig 1). The success of this transformation reflects the unusual combination of expertise that its present owners and renovators have brought to bear. Prof Rodwell has long experience of working with major historic buildings and is now the consultant archaeologist of Westminster Abbey in London, whereas Ms Gibbs is an experienced curator. Added to which, this is the second project of its kind that Prof Rodwell has undertaken, the first being the conversion of Downside Old Church in Somerset, together with the repair of its adjacent vicarage.