Rare brilliance

Ven House, Milborne Port, Somerset The home of Mike Fisher and Charles Allen, the Lord Allen of Kensington There are few more beautiful houses in the South-West than Ven. But its formal gardens are in some ways even more remarkable, representing an extremely rare survival from the English Baroque. Christopher Stocks delves into their long and fascinating history 

- Christopher Stocks

VEN, near Milborne Port, Somerset, has to be one of the most romantic houses in England. Begun in about 1700 and extended in the reign of George I, it remained in the same family until 1957, at which point it seemed to be in terminal decline, before being rescued in the 1980s and magnificently restored. It was built for James Medlycott, an ambitious London lawyer who bought the manor and its existing farmhouse mainly, it would seem, as an easy route into political power: Milborne Port was a classic rotten borough, fielding two MPs despite its diminutive size, and, after showering the local people with cash, Medly-cott was duly returned to Parliament in 1710.

In 1725, presumably to underline his upgraded social status, he commissioned the Wincanton architect Nathaniel Ireson to enlarge the original house. Ireson and Medlycott may have taken their inspiration from the London home of the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, which had been built some 20 years earlier. Designed by William Winde on a prominent site overlooking St James’s Park, Buckingham House is now rather better known as Buckingham Palace, having since been aggrandised beyond all recognition by John Nash and Sir Aston Webb.

The new, improved Ven needed a suitably smart new setting, so Medlycott engaged the services of a landscape architect to remodel its grounds. The design is generally attributed to Richard Grange, whose name appears on a series of plans that have recently returned to Ven, although there are some doubts about the attribution: Grange is otherwise unknown to history and the plans are dated 1739, some eight years after Medlycott’s death.