North House, in Petworth, West Sussex, is for sale.
I found out about it yesterday, when doing an on line search. It is a special vintage house dating back centuries that looks somewhat like the famous George Wythe House in Williamsburg, Virginia.
All red brick and Sir Christoper Wren Georgian in appearance. It is the kind of historic home that would be of general interest to anyone who enjoys good architecture. But it is more so, to me.
In the spring of 1975, I spent a semester abroad as part of my architecture studies at Penn State. The semester abroad program had been long established by then. There were locations in Florence and in Darmstadt that provided architectural studies for students who were juniors in the architecture department. I had been looking forward to going, and had my heart set on going to Florence to study Renaissance architecture first hand.
The early fall of 1974, there was a special called meeting for everyone who had been considering the semester abroad. I attended, only to learn that there was great doubt as to whether the program in Florence would happen. Changes there with regard to the professors meant that the folks at Penn State might not be able to put a program together in time for anyone to go and study there. What a disappointment, to say the least.
However, the faculty told us, there was an alternative we could consider. For the first time, they would be offering a study option in Britain. Specifically in Petworth, south of London. The program would be overseen by an architect that our PSU professor had met in a restaurant in London. The meeting was by happenstance. The prof had looked over age the adjacent table and seen a man drawing on a napkin, and said to himself, "The only people who draw on napkins are architects!" and went over to introduce himself. He was correct. The napkin artist was a London based architect. They struck up a friendship which led to this proposed new semester abroad.
It was all rather whimsical and poetic.
I decided to try the new location rather than wait to find out whether Florence was a go or a no-go. A good decision all around. From April through June I lived in and studied in North House, the house that is currently for sale. The architect, John Wingate Davidson, and his wife and fellow architect Janet Davidson were our hosts as well as overseeing our course of study.
They lived on the middle (main) floor of North House. For our semester, they opened up the third floor, where each of us had a bedroom to ourselves. They also opened up the ground floor for ongoing use of a bathroom for us, and occasional use of a big drawing room for receptions and for the presentation of our final projects. The room was rather grand, with big floor to ceiling windows that could be opened by sliding the lower portion into the floor and the upper portion into the ceiling, to make the kind of openings one usually associated with French doors.
Seeing that the house is for sale brings back many wonderful memories of that time in England. I suppose the best is that while in England I unexpectedly experienced my call to ministry. Which I may say more about later. It also brought about a life-long transatlantic friendship with the Davidsons which has included a visit from Janet to us when we lived in Pittsburgh the first time, and a last moment tour of Fallingwater for her while she was with us.
The Davidsoins left North House some years ago, and relocated to Byworth, a hamlet just outside Petworth. The current photos of North House show that it has been well cared for all these years. And decorated in a style which is much more grand that I remember. There is also now a swimming pool in the garden; not there in my time there.
The main facade of the house is a challenge to photograph, chiefly since it abuts the North Street and directly across are the high walls of Petworth Park. When I saw this very fine photo of the front of the house, I thought that the photographer must have risked life and limb by perching on top of those 8 foot high stone walls. Well, probably not, on second thought. The photographer probably used a drone.
Something that would have been unheard of in the spring of 1975.
North House's drawing room is where the Davidsons threw a lovely welcoming reception for us in April of that year, which was where we first met Sir Leslie Fry and Lady Penelope Fry (Marian Elizabeth Penelope Bentley), Lord Egremont and Lady Egremont, and Lady Ursula Wyndham (Lord Egremont's aunt), all Petworth notables and most gracious indeed. About which more later.
Wishing whomever purchases North House many years of happiness.
More:
John Wingate Davidson was born on 23 July 1923, the son of Walter Henderson Davidson, school teacher and his wife Isabella Drysdale Wingate who was also a teacher. They had married in Edinburgh in 1912. John Davidson was educated at George Heriots School in Edinburgh and Hawick High School.
He studied for the diploma in architecture at Edinburgh College of Art. He was an RIBA probationer from 1940 and elected ARIBA in 1950. From 1950-1952 he worked in the Architects Department of Somerset County Council where he worked on the design of schools, moving in the latter year to Plymouth City Architects Department. He was the design architect for Plymouth Civic Centre and was awarded the Grand Prix d'Honeur (Paris) in 1956 for this design. In that same year, 1956, he moved to a post with the Schools Division of Coventry City Architects Department. He was job architect on Binley Comprehensive School, Coventry which was designed using the CLASP system.
In 1959 he was appointed Group Archiect in the Housing Division of the LCC ( later GLC) under the Principal Housing Architect, Kenneth J. Campbell. He designed the first multi-storey Housing Block in the world to utilise a steel frame and GRP external panels, the SF1 System. Four tower blocks were erected.This led to extensive lecturing engagements while still working at GLC. In 1965 he left the GLC to open business on his own account in Westminster which continued until he retired in 1992. For some time during this period his firm was associated with Alison Hutchison under the style 'Wingate Davidson, Alison Hutchison Partnership'.
During the 1960s Davidson lectured widely on the use of steel in multi-storey housing and reinforced plastics in building - at MIT Boston, Pratt University NY, and Penn State University in the USA, Edinburgh College of Art and Birmingham School of Architecture. He also lectured for the European Iron & Steel Federation and for the Construction Specifications Istitute in Washington DC in 1969. Between 1975 and 1988 as their Professor of Architecture he devised the Course and supervised groups of students on the Foreign Studies Programme of Penn State University. The students were resident at North House, Petworth, the Davidsons' home.
Davidson married twice, first to Marian, by whom he had one son and then to Janet who was an architectural technician with the LCC/GLC and a lecturer in art and architecture. They have one daughter Katrin who is an artist and teacher and a son Maxwell who is an architect.
Outwith his professional life Davidson maintained an interest in the RAF Bomber Command having served as a Pilot from 1942-46, attaining the rank of Flt/Lt. He was also interested in Scottish Rugby Football stemming from his schooldays in Hawick where he was at school with Bill McLaren.
About Sir Leslie Fry:
Sir Leslie Fry was Her Majesty's ambassador to a number of nations, chief among them, Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution. Those who wish to know more about that time, or about the inner workings of international statecraft in the mid 1900s, would do well to consult his autobiography, "As Luck Would Have It".
Sir Leslie was a gentleman in every way, and in the time that I knew him in Petworth, a delightful raconteur and host. His wife, Lady Penelope, was likewise charming and kindly, with a serenity and beauty that was a wonder to behold.
The Frys at that time lived in a masterful house by the great British architect Norman Shaw, (designed by Norman Shaw in 1871 for Henry Upton, Solicitor and Agent to Lord Leconfield of Petworth House). Gorehill House was surrounded by century old rhododendrons, with an unparalleled view of the South Downs. Luncheon conversations with them ranged from diplomacy to fine art.
Indeed, they had a wonderful collection of paintings and Sir Leslie was wont to ask visitors to spot the "fake" amid the bona fide Old Masters in their dining room. Guests were usually stumped, as we Penn State students were. Among Canalettos and Impressionist works, one was, to our eyes, undoubtedly by Rembrandt. And we said so.
Nope. Not by Rembrandt!
His story of the pseudo Rembrandt (painted in the manner thereof but signed by the actual artist, and so, not a forgery), by a grateful Hungarian whom the Frys had spirited out of the Hungary at the very last moment, is not in his autobiography, but many other equally fascinating tales are.
About Lady Ursula Wyndham:
As someone who got to know Lady Ursula Wyndham before she wrote her two books of memoirs (Astride the Wall, and Laughter and the Love of Friends), I highly recommend them both.
In the 1970s when I knew her, she was a keeper of goats who went round Petworth on her bicycle selling her homemade yogurt. Thin and wind-blown looking, she was perhaps foremost among the many fascinating residents of that charming village, and of undoubted interest since her nephew was and is Lord Egremont. Some of the locals called her "Crazy Auntie" for that reason, and while it was an affectionate nickname; her life story makes it perfectly clear that - eccentric as she undoubtedly was - Lady Ursula was sharp as a tack and bright as a penny.
There are many places in the books where I laughed aloud at her frank and pithy observations about herself and her family. She later admitted that these books helped serve as a way to avenge herself upon her parents' treatment of her, as may be clear in some of these excerpts...
"I do not think that my mother ever fell in love. Any situation involving vulnerability was not for her. Twin brothers, called Bonsor, are reputed to have proposed to her at the same ball. My mother said "No" to the first proposal and "Is this supposed to be funny?" to the second. Throughout her life she made that response to most jokes. There is no reason to suppose that young Bonsor was not serious, but my mother would never have married anybody who made a social gaffe. She was also wooed by an Irish earl, but who wants to fritter their life away on a bog?"
* * *
"My mother had been encouraged to breast feed her first child, but was intensely adverse to the ritual and did not attempt it with any of her other children. To my intense surprise and delight I discovered that, when goaded, I could momentarily even the score by saying, "What do you expect from a child that has never known its mother's milk?"
* * *
About her father: "There is only one thing worse than having no sense of humor," he was wont to proclaim, "and that is thinking things funny that aren't." The latter comprised all witticisms not uttered by himself."
* * *
(And this gem) "I rifled through the pages of the Peerage to find myself a husband and settled on Sir Aymer Maxwell of Monreith; he was a suitable age and of the same family as the notorious Jane, Duchess of Gordon, who raised a regiment. A grander title would have involved one in a tedious lifetime of opening bazaars. My mother, while agreeing with my father that nobody would look twice at their daughter, was on tenterhooks as to what sort of women might snare her sons."
* * *
(And, speaking of her Wyndham grandparents) "The couple's three beautiful daughters (therefore, Lady Ursula's aunts) were painted by Sargent, draped with elegant languor all over a sofa. The picture, known as The Three Graces, now hangs in the largest picture gallery in New York." (The Wyndham Sisters by J S Sargent, 1900, is in the Metropolitan Museum).
A keeper of goats and purveyor of homemade yogurt, she never married but this did not prevent Lady Ursula from romantic entanglements that were, although complicated, deeply satisfying to her.
One has a sense that had she been born fifty or seventy-five years later, she would have had fewer of the limitations that were inevitable for one who was expected to conform to a particular model (find a husband and marry well).
It is good to know that as a result of these two books, she also had a broadcasting career late in life that was a popular success. Oh and in case you are wondering about her unsuspecting prospective bridegroom: Aymer (Maxwell) Maxwell of Monreith 8th Bt (1911 - 1987). He was the son of Lt. -Col. Aymer Edward Maxwell and Lady Mary Percy. He died in 1987, unmarried.
