A most welcome return

An award-winning restoration project has addressed serious structural problems within an important Palladian house and brought it back to life as a modern family home. Oliver Gerrish reports.

- Oliver Gerrish

Radbourne Hall, Derbyshire The home of Sir James and Lady Chichester

THE visitor to Radbourne Hall today must struggle to believe that they are standing barely four miles from the centre of Derby. Set within a landscape park, laid out from 1790 by William Emes, this magnificent 1740s building answers the popular ideal of a Palladian country house. No less unexpected is the fact that this secret and rather a magical place has recently undergone an award-winning restoration. In the process, its important historic interiors have been refreshed and the whole building revived as a 21st-century family home.

The present chatelaine of Radbourne, Lady Chichester, descends from the ChandosPole family, which can trace its connections with the estate back to the Middle Ages. In the mid 14th century, the soldier and founder member of the Order of the Garter, Sir John Chandos, began here—in the words of the antiquarian John Leland writing in the 1540s—‘a mighty large house of stone with a wonderful cost’. Work to it was interrupted by his death, however, leaving the ruins of the building standing ‘to a man’s height’. This house clearly was intended to replace an earlier residence close to the parish church. It was disparagingly judged by Leland to be ‘no great thing’, but, in fact, remained in occupation until the early 18th century.