The most fascinating bathroom in the world is for sale, with Queen Elizabeth II's signature, a lifetime of photographs, and a history of the 20th century on the walls
The Old House in West Sussex, home to Lord Snowdon for half a century, contains an incredible treasure: the bathroom where he collected a lifetime of newspaper clippings, photographs, sketches and other memories.
Just a few days ago Penny Churchill wrote about Old House, the country home of Princess Margaret and her husband, the film-maker Lord Snowdon. Following the couple's divorce, it became solely Snowdon's home, as you'd expect of a dwelling that had been in his family for generations. It was sold a few years ago off market, but is now being sold on the open market for the first time ever. Old House is on the market, with beautiful architecture, wonderful gardens and great stories to tell, it's being sold through the Blue Book agency at £3.95 million.
For all the wonders of this West Sussex house, there's one element of it that we can't help thinking about, even days later: the bathroom, hand-decorated by Snowdon himself with countless documents about his life and times.
To call it 'the bathroom' doesn't really do justice to this particular smallest room. It's a scrapbook, a newspaper clipping collection, a diary, a memoir and a map.
It's also a historical document, a memory wall and — as you'd expect of one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century — a photo gallery.
It's even a visitor's book — one signed by Queen Elizabeth II herself, presumably while on a visit to see her sister Princess Margaret down in Sussex.
Snowdon himself curated all these pictures and clippings — and they are utterly fascinating. There are pictures of him and his family. There are sketches and plans of the improvements he made here — and those are extensive, for when the young Anthony Armstrong-Jones was given the house, by the trailblazing designer Oliver Messel, a couple of years before his wedding in 1960, it was in critical need of remedial work to make it habitable.
There are intimate family portraits, stylish architectural photographs, and fashion-shoot-style images. There's a whole sequence of a happy day out with ageing relatives, captioned 'David's day out 4th March 1973'.
There are newspaper headlines and clippings about war, disaster and epic achievement: the First World War, the Russians successfully sending Yuri Gagarin to space, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the D-Day Landings and the death of Rudolph Valentino, to name but a few.
There's a front page of the New York Times from the first atomic bombs being dropped on Japan; another, from the Daily Mail, proclaiming VE Day; and from eight years later, a front page commemorating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay successfully scaling Mount Everest on the eve of The Queen's coronation.
And finally there are a string of front pages on the run-up to the abdication of Edward VIII, from initial rumours and discussions to the confirmation that 'I have decided to renounce The Throne'.
It's like nothing we've ever seen — quite remarkable, and all the more so considering the people who have stood and admired Snowdon's collection. For by the mid-1960s, the Old House was, as the agents put it, 'one of the most coveted country house invitations in Britain... Guests would travel down from London in Aston Martins and Bentleys for weekends of cocktails, conversation and house parties that have since become part of society folklore.'
The guest list reads like a snapshot of the 1960s A-list in Britain: Peter Sellers, Sir John Mills, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Bianca Jagger, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Kenneth Tynan, Issey Miyake and Edna O'Brien, as well as many of the Royal Family; the late Queen Mother, for example, officially opened the man-made lake that Snowdon himself dug out with a hired JCB.
'There are country houses and then there are houses that become part of the national story,' says the agent, Theo James-Wright.
'The Old House falls firmly into the latter category.
'What Lord Snowdon created here was not simply a private home but an extraordinary creative retreat. This was a place where royalty mixed with artists, actors, writers and designers, where some of the most influential figures of the twentieth century gathered behind closed doors.
'Very few houses can genuinely claim to have witnessed such a remarkable chapter of British cultural history.'
You can read more about the Old House in our original story, or see the listing at Blue Book's website.
