A building back from the brink

A major restoration project promises to restore and reunite not only a magnificent house, but its landscape as well. Marcus Binney reports on the remarkable work undertaken so far

- Marcus Binney

IN December 2013, Halswell House was placed in a bankruptcy sale. The house and its many handsome outbuildings were offered in some six lots, comprising 12 separate freeholds, reflecting some of the flats and tenancies created after the estate’s break-up in 1950. By good fortune, at that very moment, the entrepreneur and gallery owner Edward Strachan had grown weary of his valiant attempt to acquire another desperately endangered country house, Piercefield, Monmouthshire, from the Reuben Brothers. He arrived at Halswell House as the auctioneer began the sale in the traditional manner, first offering to sell the property as a single lot. Happily, there was only one other bid and he bought it in minutes.

Within six months, Mr Strachan had substantially secured the landscape as well, including Mill Wood with its follies and, subsequently, the Old Farmhouse, the Georgian ferme ornée and Rook’s Castle fields, 85 acres that give access to the eye-catching Robin Hood Hut (owned by the Landmark Trust) and provide glorious views to the Bristol Channel and Wales.

This was followed by purchase of the Almonry, the beautiful 1780 red-sandstone almshouses in the nearby village of Goathurst. He also made friends with the Somerset Building Preservation Trust, which had enterprisingly restored the Temple of Harmony (a West Country version of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis—now correctly identified as Portunus—as drawn by Palladio).