Luton
Hoo is a mansion in Bedfordshire, England,
on the edge of the large town of Luton. The unusual
name "Hoo" is a saxon word meaning the
spur of a hill, and is more commonly found in East
Anglia. Luton Hoo is not mentioned in the Domesday
book, but a family called de Hoo occupied a manor
house on the site in the 13th century. Successive
houses on the site seem to have changed hands several
times until in 1762 the then owner, Francis Hearne
(MP for Bedford), sold the estate for £94,700
to John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. Following an unhappy
period as Prime Minister from 1762 to 1763, Bute
decided to concentrate his energies on his Bedfordshire
estate at Luton Hoo.
The
present house was built for the 3rd Earl of Bute
by the neoclassical architect Robert Adam. Work
commenced in 1767. The original plan had been for
a grand and magnificent new house. However, this
plan was never fully executed and much of the work
was a remodelling of
the older house. Building work was interrupted by
a fire in 1771, but by 1774 the house, though incomplete,
was inhabited. Dr. Samuel Johnson visiting the house
in 1781 is quoted as saying, "This is one of
the places I do not regret coming to see....in the
house magnificence is not sacrificed to convenience,
nor convenience to magnificence".
Luton Hoo was
one of the largest houses for which Adam was wholly
responsible. While Adam was working on the mansion
the landscape gardener Capability Brown was enlarging
and redesigning the park; formerly approximately 300
acres (1.2 km²) it was now enlarged to 1,200
acres (4.9 km²). Brown dammed the River Lea to
form two lakes, one of which is 60 acres (240,000
m²) in size. In the early 20th century, part
of the park overlooked by the south-west facade mansion
was transformed into formal gardens.
Robert
Adam's completed mansion was transformed by the
architect Sir Robert Smirke (1781–1867) circa
1830, following the occupation of the 3rd Earl's
grandson, the 2nd Marquess of Bute. Smirke redesigned
the house (with the exception of the south front)
to resemble its present form today, complete with
a massive portico, similar to that designed by Adam
but never built. Robert Smirke was a leading architect
of the era. His early work and domestic designs,
such as that at Eastnor Castle, were often in a
medieval style; he seems to have reserved his Greek
revival style for public buildings such as the British
Museum. Hence Luton Hoo, neither gothic nor strictly
Greek revival, is an unusual example of him using
a classical style for domestic use, which perhaps
he felt would be sympathetic to Adam's original
conception.
In 1843 a devastating
fire occurred and much of the house and its contents
were destroyed. Following the fire the house remained
a burnt shell until the estate was sold in 1848 to
John Leigh, a Liverpool solicitor and property speculator.
He rebuilt the derelict shell in the style and manner
of Smirke, rather than to Adam's earlier plan. The
Leigh family continued to own Luton Hoo until 1903,
when on the death of John Leigh's daughter-in-law,
who had late in life married Christian de Falbe, the
Danish ambassador to England, the estate was sold
to the diamond magnate, Sir Julius Wernher.
Wernher
had the interior remodelled in the early 20th century
by the architects of the Ritz Hotel, Charles Mewes
and Arthur Davis. It was at this time that the mansard
roof
was added, in order to increase the amount of staff
accommodation. This alteration, coupled with the
newly installed casement windows,
gives the house something of a European appearance.
The
lavish redesigning of the interior in the belle
epoque style resulted in a magnificent backdrop
for Wernher' acclaimed art collection. The marble-walled
dining room was designed to display Beauvais tapestries,
while the newly installed curved, marble staircase
surrounded Bergonzoli's statue "The Love of
Angels". At the centre of the house the massive
Blue hall displayed further tapestries, Louis XV
furniture, and Sevres
porcelain. Sir Julius Wernher's widow, later Lady
Ludlow, added her collection of English porcelain
to the treasures of the house.
The Wernhers'
great art collection, equal to that of their neighbours
in nearby Buckinghamshire, the Rothschilds', was later
further enhanced by the marriage of Julius Wernher's
son Harold to Anastasia Romanova, a member of the
former Russian Imperial family, generally known as
"Lady Zia". She brought to the collection
an incomparable assembly of renaissance enamels and
Russian artefacts, including works by the Russian
Imperial court jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé.
For many years the collection and house were open
to the public. Many of the Fabergé items were,
however, stolen in the 1980s.
Following Lady Zia's death, the estate passed to her
grandson Nicholas Phillips, whose untimely death in
the late 20th century caused the sale of the estate.
The priceless collection is now on permanent display
at Ranger's House in London.
Luton Hoo is
now in the process of conversion to a luxury hotel.
