At the Rothschild Estate at Waddesdon, a New House Emerges from the Landscape, Inspired by the Flint Found in the Surrounding Chalk Fields a RAKED PROGRESS
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The Flint House, Buckinghamshire, England, Skene Catling de la Peña At the Rothschild estate at Waddesdon, a new house emerges from the landscape, inspired by the flint found in the surrounding chalk fields A RAKED PROGRESS 76 AR | APRIL 2015 AR | APRIL 2015 77 2 The Flint House, REPORT mansions which, alongside Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, WILL HUNTER included Mentmore Towers, Halton House, Aston Clinton and Tring Park. Hannah England, In 1874, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild Rothschild views this settling as an important Skene Catling commissioned French architect Hippolyte part of her ancestors’ story: ‘The family de la Peña Destailleur to design a country house near wanted to show that they were no longer the village of Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire. stateless … By building those vast houses … The result, Waddesdon Manor, was a gilded they were putting down roots and staking a mixture of tradition and modernity. claim to belong.’ Completed in the early 1880s, guests were And, indeed, the family is rooted at blessed with the luxurious novelties of central Waddesdon to this day. Strikingly, of more heating, running water and electricity – than 40 Rothschild houses built in Europe amenities that remained a rarity in many of during the family’s heyday, only Waddesdon the country’s grand houses until well into the has kept its collections intact. And, though next century. And yet beyond these modern James de Rothschild bequeathed the estate to comforts, the house was primarily concerned the National Trust in 1957, it is still run by with forging connections to the past, Jacob Rothschild, Hannah’s father, through a essentially transposing an 18th-century Loire family trust. Since he took over in 1988, the chateau to 19th-century imperial Britain. fourth Baron has embarked on an extensive Built on a large hilltop, the site was programme of development, closing the main initially so bleak that, as Ferdinand recalled house in 1990 for a four-year restoration, it, ‘there was not a bush to be seen, nor was curating modern sculptures in the landscaped there a bird to be heard’. Filmmaker Hannah park, and completing a handsome archive Rothschild, writing in her recent book The building by Stephen Marshall Architects in Baroness, describes the Sisyphean scene 2011 to house the family’s diverse collections. of construction: ‘Percheron horses were However it is this latest addition to imported from France to help transport a Waddesdon that is perhaps the most mass of building material up the steep incline, extraordinary. Commissioned initially as a which included seven miles of copper piping, dwelling for the curator of the archive (though 1. (Previous page) the quantities of fully grown trees, hundreds now intended for family use), the house is Flint House is designed of tons of brick and lead, and thousands of arrived at by a private lane that leads from to appear as if it has been yards of iron balustrade, all stamped with the Manor, past Marshall’s building, and wrenched from the earth, with darker flint cladding the distinctive five-arrow crest, the family’s onwards into the agricultural reaches of at the base disappearing coat of arms, symbolising the five brothers the estate. Though only several hundred into chalk towards the sky. sent like arrows to the capitals of Europe.’ metres from its neighbour, the house feels The archive building can In the 19th century, the English considerably more remote. While the older be glimpsed in the Rothschilds chose Buckinghamshire as building gazes abstractedly down the hill at background on the left the place for their country residences as it 2. The pair of raked forms the younger one, its affection is unrequited as invite elevated views was only a short train journey from London. the house fixes its attention on the fields that of the surrounding They established themselves in the Vale surround it. The two buildings treat nature agricultural landscape of Aylesbury, in a stable of half-a-dozen very differently: the archive is a more site plan 78 AR | APRIL 2015 AR | APRIL 2015 79 The Flint House, Buckinghamshire, England, Skene Catling de la Peña main house section CC annex section AA annex section BB main house section DD 1 bedroom 2 sitting room 3 kitchen 4 mezzanine 1 5 dining room 6 main entrance 4 7 library 1 1 8 drawing room 1 9 study 10 grotto annex first floor main house first floor C C B B D D 8 9 5 A 2 3 A 6 7 10 0 10m annex ground floor main house ground floor 80 AR | APRIL 2015 AR | APRIL 2015 81 82 AR | APRIL 2015 AR | APRIL 2015 83 3 The Flint House, Modernist conception, formally framing the principal procession outwards from land Buckinghamshire, landscape as something separate from it, to to sea, the Flint House creates a reciprocal be admired yet protected from; whereas the relationship between its two elements. England, house appears to have been wrenched from Progressing to one of the peaked extremities Skene Catling the earth itself and has all the inevitability gives ever-expanding views of the panorama; de la Peña of a geological feature. then turning back, the journey inwards, Lord Rothschild asked practice Skene because of its sibling, is also curiously a Catling de la Peña to make a response to the journey outwards too. That the forms are site and, led by Charlotte Skene Catling, a uneven enhances the sense of disequilibrium, regular contributor to these pages, the Flint as if a body will never find a permanent House is a reaction to the fields as she found resting place there, but will forever seek out them. Churned up into great clods, the ground movement between the pair. (How different was eerily covered in a scattered debris of the effect would be if they were symmetrical.) flint – a hard crystallised form of quartz The unique treatment of the exterior was found in chalk. The site, she discovered, is inspired by cross-sectional drawings of the on a chalk seam that extends from the South geological composition of Aylesbury and Downs in Sussex to Norfolk on the east coast. Buckinghamshire that reveal the sedimentary Furthermore, it is the topographical focal layers of limestone, clay and chalk; and the point to which almost all of the estate’s optical principle that paler objects appear watercourses lead. There had once been a more distant. From the base to the top of the farm house there, seen on the first estate buildings, the layers of flint and chalk fade maps in the 18th century, but since its erasure through six tonal strata from dark to light. the area had remained relatively untouched, The lower pieces of flint are large and rough remote from the will to reorder the bucolic hewn, with big gallets embedded in the black English landscape on French formalist lines. lime mortar. As the flints fade they become ‘The site was a strange, still place, an anomaly more meticulously worked, snapped into of wilderness within its highly cultivated smooth square blocks with razor-fine joints. agricultural context,’ says Skene Catling. Finally, the misty chalk appears on a different ‘It collects water, which supported these atmospheric layer to the earth and bears a very particular mosses, lichen and ferns.’ closer kinship with the sky. Conceived as a When first encountered, the ploughed carved flint landscape, wherever the main fields appeared in the architect’s mind as body has been cut or sculpted, the surface perspective lines that progressed to a becomes terrazzo, which is carefully graded to vanishing point through the middle of the follow the progression of the flint. The poetry long, thin site, and this sense of a route of the exterior is a beguiling foil for a prosaic through is something that Skene Catling was construction of concrete structural frame keen to preserve. Consequently, the house was on a piled foundation with block infill. split into two uneven masses, pulled apart, The internal organisation continues the and raked to follow the existing tree line. The narrative loops found outside. Entering the forms inevitably recall Casa Malaparte on the main building near the centre of the long island of Capri, but instead of being about a north-west elevation, you’re greeted by a large 3. (Previous spread) 5 the pair of forms sit unevenly in the landscape and invite movement between them 4, The large opening on the first floor is the balcony of the master bedroom, which terminates the promenade up the main staircase. The ‘river’ can be glimpsed flowing into the house on the left 5. The view of the grotto between the drawing room and the study, with the ‘river’ flowing through it 84 AR | APRIL 2015 AR | APRIL 2015 85 ‘This latest monolithic addition ever-changing vistas that compellingly The Flint House, 7 synthesise interior with exterior, domestic Buckinghamshire, is determinedly derived from culture with agriculture. the land itself. It is both of The main staircase has the closest affinity England, the earth and down-to-earth, to the central axis, and this communicates Skene Catling its more formal role as a promenade to the de la Peña a contemporary blend of the master bedroom. At the top of the stair formal and informal’ a small landing, winged with two identical bedrooms to the left and right, gives on to wall (containing the staircase), which creates an interstitial space overlooking the drawing an informal vestibule open at either end. room on both sides – not quite a room, not If you turn left, you pass into the drawing quite a corridor – which turns right up a room, a partly double-height space which couple of steps into the main bedroom.