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Daylesford House stands below the brow of a wooded Cotswold hill and looks over a terrain of rolling fields to its village of Victorian Gothic cottages.  Built between 1788-1798 it has claim to be the first house to display the Picturesque Anglo-Indian style of the late eighteenth century, a style which led ultimately to the Regent's Pavilion at Brighton.

Created by the first Governor General of Bengal, Warren Hastings, Daylesford had a reputation and fascination which preoccupied its own age as it does our own.  This was partly because the creation of the house was the attainment of a lifetime's dream.  Hastings filled the house with rich oriental fabrics and exquisite furniture.  Amid the beautiful collection of pieces supplied by Ince and Mayhew stood chairs and sofas of carved and gilt solid ivory, as well as bejeweled oriental souvenirs and mementoes.  As such the house was an early embodiment of the Regency fascination for picturesque exotica.

The architect was Samuel Pepys Cockerell (1753-1827) who was later to design the greatest Anglo-Indian house, Sezincote, in 1805.  The west front of Daylesford, glimpsed through the trees from the long carriage drive, is the most beautiful.  The golden Cotswold stone produces a glowing effect in even the most minimal sunshine.  In the centre of this facade, long French windows stand between the giant composite columns which support an entablature containing swags draped over bosse.  The bay is capped by a done ornamented with a copper ball and spike.  The composition works with excellent grace, the various French neo-classical motifs mixing unselfconsciously with the exotic dome and spike.

The south front presents a very different prospect.  The proportions of the composition are simple and strictly Palladian.  The facade is framed by a Victorian balustraded terrace garden.  The combination of these two patently different facades is one of Daylesford's most unusual features, and one might almost imagine that they belong to two completely different houses.  Seen from the south-west, the house presents a most perplexing spectacle.

The work that Hastings set in progress in the house was matched with equal industry in the garden.  He was a zealous gardener, interested in anything unusual or exotic.  The gothick Greenhouse or Orangery is a delightful building that stands no more than fifty yards from the house, overlooking steeply sloping lawns to the upper pond.  It is a perfect composition, and this, with its crisp delicate detailing, makes it an outstanding example of the late Georgian Gothic style.

In 1946, the second Viscount Rothermere embarked on a full restoration of the house and he acquired a considerable amount of Hastings' possession, affected as he was by the character of the house and its history.  Between 1978 and 1988 Daylesford was owned by Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, who effected another transformation.

Today, Sir Anthony and Lady Bamford, inspired by the life of the ex-Governor General of Bengal, have instituted extensive works of restoration and research to return Daylesford finally to the splendor and comfort of its prime.

[The projects in hand are large oil painting of the estate, including cartouches of the Kitchen Garden with its Orchid House, the rose-garden, the newly built Lake Temple and the 'Secret Garden' with its octagonal pool (now under construction).  Also Jonathan is producing a large pen and ink map similar to the one he produced at Stowe.]

 

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