Immortalised in 'Poldark' and ravaged by fire: Cornwall's first modern manor house
Parts of Tehidy House, a historic Grade II-listed mansion, still stand near Camborne in Cornwall, but it's just not quite the same, says Melanie Bryan.
When Walter Basset married Cecilia de Dunstanville in 1150, he not only gained a wife, but one of the most important (and profitable) estates in England. And, over time, the Basset family would go on to become one of the most powerful Cornish mining dynasties. In fact, the family, their home and ancestral lands were so well known that Winston Graham wove them all into his epic 'Poldark' series.
When Country Life decided to photograph the gardens in the late 19th century, the Basset estate encompassed land from Redruth to St Ives, and 12 miles of Atlantic coastline.
It's safe to assume that the Editor was not very happy with the resulting images. Fourteen survive in our Archive, but none of them were ever published. Until now.
Country Life's photographer was sent to capture the garden, but managed to get the vastly extended Tehidy Manor in frame, in multiple shots.
We own plenty of unpublished photographs of Britain's great country estates and gardens, but what makes this situation unusual is the fact that the photographer would have suffered through an arduous and expensive steam train journey — on what would go on to become the Riviera Express.
On the odyssey — which culminated in a bumpy carriage ride from the station to the house — the photographer would've been encumbered by a heavy camera, lenses and tripod. Plus a number of fragile, large-format glass plates.
This bed of sweet peas growing in the walled garden suggests that the photographs were taken in June or July.
In the background of these photographs, there are tantalising slivers and wholes of the now-lost Tehidy House. A myriad houses took it in turns to stand on the Basset's land during their tenure of it, and this one was relatively new.
Tehidy was commissioned by John Francis Basset in 1861 and was a vast expansion of an existing Palladian house by Thomas Edwards of Greenwich.
Edwards’s elegant, symmetrical mansion was built with large quantities of imported Portland and Bath stone, supplemented with granite from the family’s quarry at Carn Brea. His grand design consisted of a central pedimented main block connected via curved, sweeping quadrant wings to four detached corner pavilions.
One of Tehidy’s four pavilions. They all survived the devastating fire of 1919.
Inside, the property was decorated with sumptuous Adam style ceilings and fireplaces, and paintings by Peter Lely, Sir Anthony Van Dyck and Thomas Gainsborough.
John Francis's enhancements were overseen by William Burn of Piccadilly — and the result was what is now considered to be Cornwall's first modern manor house.
In just two years, the property doubled in size, eventually comprising a grand entrance hall, seven reception rooms, 21 principal bedrooms, 14 servant's bedrooms and a very generous, for the time, six bathrooms. Plus, electric lights, a hot-water heating system and fire hydrants.
This modernisation, however, came at a cost: £150,000 to be exact, or more than £16 million in today's money.
Unfortunately, the family fortune — built on the tin and copper mining industries, both of which were now in decline — was dwindling. John Francis, however, didn't have too long to worry about things. Six years after the build was finished, he died, aged 39.
His two brothers inherited the estate and its mounting debts, but they too died, in 1888, and so it passed to a son called Arthur.
Grand ashlar and granite gate and gate posts featuring the Basset family crest.
Arthur’s main passion in life was racing — a disastrous hobby for anyone in financial difficulty, but he clung on to Tehidy until 1915. Remarkably, it did sell — to Cornwall County Council. Their plan to convert it into a much-needed tuberculosis isolation hospital succeeded and by late 1917 the first patients were in place.
On February 26, 1919, Sister Everett — who was comforting someone about to succumb to the disease — noticed an unusual smell and raised the alarm. The building was on fire.
The local fire brigade battled valiantly to extinguish the flames but, by the next day, all that remained of Tehidy were the exterior walls and the quadrant pavilions.
The hospital was quickly rebuilt, but without, of course, the wonderful original interiors. In 1986, it was transformed once again and divided into luxury apartments.
The grounds, and parts of the Basset estate now form Tehidy Country Park.
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