A monument to enthusiasm

Fawley Hill, Buckinghamshire, part II The home of Lady McAlpine and the late Sir William McAlpine In the second of two articles, Marcus Binney looks at a home filled with remarkable collections and striking interiors that reflect its creator's enthusiasms and interests

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BY the time they have reached the front door of Fawley Hill, first-time visitors have necessarily encountered much that will have amazed them. Readers of last week’s article have already been introduced to the park and its railway network, replete with stations, signal boxes, and architectural salvage, as well as the seven species of deer that roam freely in the surrounding woods and even, in the turning circle at the front of the house, a colony of meerkats.

Central to all these marvels were the personality and enthusiasms of the late Sir William McAlpine. Bill, as he was known, was born in the Dorchester Hotel in 1936 and left Charterhouse school aged 16 to start work in the family construction firm Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. He went first to the company depot in Hayes in Middlesex where engines and rolling stock were kept, work that fired his lifelong interest in railways.

Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd was founded in Scotland in 1868, the first contract being for a humble signal box. The firm was soon building railways such as the Mallaig extension on the West Coast Line, and the now famous Glenfinnan Viaduct, as well as the Singer Factory at Clydebank, a gasworks in Glasgow, an aluminum works and several power stations. At the outbreak of war in 1914, the firm became involved in constructing munitions and aircraft factories, followed by the 1924 Wembley Exhibition Buildings, the Mersey Tunnel and, soon after, the Ebbw Valley Steelworks and Elstree and Pinewood film studios.