'I have never ceased talking of the beauty of Ampthill': The tale of one of Britain's best-loved country houses

Horace Walpole once wrote: ‘I dote on Ampthill and when I die, I shall haunt it.’ He was certainly a regular visitor in the late 18th century, describing Ampthill Park as ‘a very large handsome house’, and noted in 1769–71 that the 2nd Earl of Upper Ossory and his Countess, Anne, were ‘greatly improving’ it with the help of William Chambers and Capability Brown. It is the Ossorys whose arms appear in the pediment on the north front and the house they knew is recorded in a large oil painting by Benjamin Killingbeck in 1777, which can be seen at Ampthill today (Fig 3).

The main 11-bay central portion, still crisp and elegant, was actually built mostly in the 1680s. It was fitted out in 1704–08, when the wings were added, and Chambers’s work added a stylish later layer. In private occupation until 1941, the house was then turned over to institutional use — as were so many other country seats — until, in 1979–80, it was divided into four residences. This article considers its overall history.

Sir John Cornwall, Lord Fanope, built a castle at Ampthill in the early 15th century. It was described by the antiquarian John Leland in the 1540s as ‘standing stately on a hill, with four or five fair towers of stone in the inner ward, beside the base court, of such spoils as it is said that he won in France’. Henry VIII used it for hunting parties, as in 1528 when he wrote to Wolsey that: ‘I and my people are well ever since we came to Ampthill on Saturday last, in marvellous good health and clearness of air’; Katherine of Aragon lived here between 1531 and 1533 and, in 1773, Walpole advised on a monument known as Katherine’s Cross, suggesting to the Ossorys that it be designed by Gothic expert James Essex. Walpole’s inscription refers to Ampthill’s (former) towers as ‘The mournful refuge of an injured Queen’, approving the country’s break with Rome as a means of spreading ‘Luther’s light from Henry’s lawless bed’.

The Ampthill Park House we see today was built as ‘Great Park House’, mostly in the 1680s, apparently absorbing some parts of the Great Lodge of the castle. Intended then as a dower house for Lady Ailesbury, whose son inherited nearby Houghton House, the building of Ampthill was supervised by Robert Grumbold, a Cambridge master mason who may have been its designer. He had sharpened his skills working for Sir Christopher Wren on the library for Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1676. Whatever the case, another builder called ‘Mr Drinkwater’ is also mentioned as providing drawings. The latter is thought to be the master carpenter Robert Drinkwater, who had been involved in Lord Ailesbury’s London house. Grumbold’s first visit to Ampthill is recorded on March 11, 1687 — ‘Paid Mr Grumball coming from Cambridge’ — and regular visits continued until 1689. The local builder was one Jasper Webb.

This 1680s house was a double pile over two principal floors, attic and cupola; evidence of the base of cupola can still be seen in the roof structure. There is a vaulted basement level on the north side, but not to the south, due to the fall of the ground. In 1687, staircases, steps, doors and doorcases were supplied, by Grumbold’s ‘measure’. The shell was presumably complete by October 1687, when a bill was made out for ‘270 foot of cornish and 421 foot of guttering under the lead’. There are finely carved interior doorcases of this date in rooms in the eastern side of the house.

When Lady Ailesbury died in 1689, her younger son Robert Bruce decided against completing the project, which had been in part intended for him, and, in 1690, the lease was sold back to John Ashburnham (who became the 1st Lord Ashburnham in 1698), to whose family the property had been granted by Charles II at the Restoration. The house was then completed by surveyor and mason John Lumley, the designer of Burley on the Hill, Rutland, who added wings on either side.

Historian Simon Houfe explored the evolution of the house in a series of articles for The Bedfordshire magazine in the 1970s and his research revealed references to the building in Lord Ashburnham’s letter books. On February 28, 1705, Lord Ashburnham urged Lumley to ‘keepe yourself disengaged so farr this summer as that you may be able to goe through all my businesse by your being with me upon the place and as often as possible’. Lumley supplied both marble and stone urns to the site. In 1704, a letter from Lord Ashburnham rejected designs for a new house by Nicholas Hawksmoor, having ‘noe notion of an entire new house & of destroying what is done’.

The fashionable gentleman architect and army captain William Winde — designer of Buckingham House in London — was also consulted, in 1706–07, on the fitting out of the interiors, with advice sought on the employment of ‘Tissue the French ironworker’ — the Huguenot Jean Tijou. Tijou’s widow received the final payment for a staircase balustrade in 1712. In June 1706, Lord Ashburnham also wrote to his agent Fairfax, about Jan van Nost, saying that he wanted sculptures, ‘tenn in number here for the Atticks of the two wings’. Returning to Winde, he wrote that: ‘The next point with the Capt will be to discourse concerning the painting my great hall which I resolve to have done out of hand if we can agree the price with La guerre.’ The works he had in mind included some on canvas and others, for ‘the Piers att each end of the hall’ to be ‘done upon the walls of the house’. A manuscript description of ‘the exact particulars’ of Lord Ashburnham’s house describes a ‘noble handsome well-built brick house well Sash’t quite sound’. Lumley’s graceful 1707 north entrance door surround, with scrolled pediment above engaged Ionic columns, is at the head of a flight of steps (Fig 6).

The Ashburnhams were not destined to enjoy their new house for long, as he died of smallpox in 1710. In 1727, the estate was sold to Lord Fitzwilliam and, a decade later, it was acquired by Lady Gowran, a sister-in-law of the Duke of Bedfordshire. A 1737 inventory suggests the richness of furnishings: the ‘Great Hall’ has two Portland stone tables; the ‘Great Parlour’ includes ‘Dutch Caffoy Window Curtains’ and a set of 12 walnut chairs, together with ‘two large Marble cisterns with handles, a Marble fountain and cistern’.

The house and estate passed to Lady Gowran’s son, later the 1st Earl of Upper Ossory of Co Laois, Ireland, and, in 1758, were put in trust for his 13-year-old son, the 2nd Earl of Upper Ossory, under the guardianship of his great-uncle by marriage, the 4th Duke of Bedford. The 2nd Earl travelled to Italy in 1763, where he collected antiquities and paintings for Ampthill Park. He married the Duchess of Grafton after her divorce from former prime minister the 3rd Duke of Grafton, in 1769, and, withdrawing from London society, they spent time at Ampthill entertaining various visitors, who included Dr Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Walpole and Charles James Fox.

Chambers, who had worked for the Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey, was the obvious choice for architectural and decorative improvements. His letter books, which are now preserved in the British Library, give some hint of the process of remodelling, and he wrote to his clerk at Ampthill, on December 5, 1769: ‘Sir as my Lord and Lady Ossory think [the] windows of the house too narrow make them 2 or 3 inches wider but they [should] not be higher than I ordered.’ From the south side, it appears the whole three-bay central section of Ampthill must have been rebuilt during this process, possibly with the previous doorcase re-used (Fig 2), but embellished with an antique carved gryphon: the decoration of the tympanum is clearly of Chambers’s design.

Chambers added: ‘I hoped the drawing room ceiling at Lord Ossory’s had been begun long since but was sorry to find by Mr Rose that it is not yet in hand.’ Later, he wrote crossly about how the vestibule had been executed differently from his design, for ‘it has spoilt the room’, now ‘the chimney is placed in the middle’ and he would have to make a ‘design for it to suit with rest of hall’. On December 26, 1769, he wrote to Lord Ossory: ‘My Lord, I am glad that you agree to finish the vestibule as I first intended because it will be regular. The door towards the stairs may be either false or real as your Lordship pleases.’ Chambers also remodelled the east wing, to create a library and gallery for a significant Grand Tour art collection.

Chambers further provided an exceptionally elegant plasterwork ceiling that survives in the drawing room (Fig 5), of seated sphinxes by Joseph Rose, and a simpler, but still refined oval of trailing leaves for the entrance hall. He likewise introduced fine neo-Classical chimneypieces — two in marble and others in carved wood, which can be linked to designs in the albums now in the V&A Museum. The marble chimneypiece in the drawing room was carved by Joseph Wilton and the wooden chimneypiece in the entrance hall (Fig 1) by Sefferin Alken. The principal top-lit staircase with its dense arrangement of banisters appears to have been altered both by Chambers and then again in about 1820, particularly the upper landing (Fig 4). The Ossorys also undertook an extensive reworking of the garden and landscaping, led by Capability Brown; this took place in two phases, at a cost of nearly £1,600 first in 1770–72; and at least £800 in 1773–75.

In 1818, the estate was inherited by the 3rd Lord Holland, son of Lord Ossory’s sister, and further adapted. In August 1819, Lady Holland wrote: ‘The house begins to shape itself into some sort of comfort. My own room is to be Chinesed all over to a charm and then the window seats are taken out.’ It seems the house was also rendered externally at this time.

The Hollands entertained many writers and politicians, including the poets Thomas Moore and Henry Luttrell, the historian James Mackintosh and the architect Sir Charles Barry. The house, its park and ancient trees remained much admired. Preacher and wit, Sydney Smith wrote to Lady Holland on November 6, 1827: ‘I have never ceased talking of the beauty of Ampthill, and in those unmeasured terms of which Mary accuses me.’ Lord Holland died in 1840, and the estate was soon sold to the 7th Duke of Bedford. It is said he wanted to demolish the house, but agreed to continue the lease granted by the Hollands to lawyer Sir James Parke (later Lord Wensleydale). One of his grandchilden, George Howard, grew up mostly at Ampthill and became an artist linked to the pre-Raphaelites, as well as inheriting the Earldom of Carlisle, the seat of which was Castle Howard in Yorkshire.

In 1868, the house was leased to the 1st Lord Ampthill, an influential diplomat and younger brother of the 9th Duke of Bedford. He died in 1884, but his widow lived there until 1927; his daughters until 1941. It was then requisitioned and sold to Bovril after the Second World War. From 1955, it became a Leonard Cheshire Foundation residential care home. During this conversion, the 19th-century render was removed to reveal mellow red brick. In 1979–80, the house was restored to domestic use and divided into four residences.

This article is the first of two on Ampthill. In the second, to be published on the Country Life website on March 1, we will examine the collections brought together by retired museum director Sir Timothy Clifford, and his wife, Jane, Lady Clifford, interior designer and author, who live in the principal part of the house.

Acknowledgements: Simon Houfe and Pandora Clifford