Philipps House

Philipps House
Philipps House

Philipps House (until 1916 Dinton House[1]) is an early nineteenth-century Neo-Grecian country house at Dinton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. The house was designed by Jeffry Wyatt, later Sir Jeffry Wyatville for William Wyndham (1769-1841), a descendant of Sir Wadham Wyndam,[2] and was built between 1814 and 1817 on the site of an earlier, demolished seventeenth-century house, Dinton House, which had been the Wyndham family home since 1689. It was sold in 1916 by William Wyndham (1868-1951) of Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, whose father William VI Wyndham (1834-1914), of Dinton House had inherited Orchard Wyndham as heir male to his grandfather William IV Wyndham (1769-1841), of Dinton, under the will of his distant cousin (who shared common descent from Sir John Wyndham (1558-1645) of Orchard Wyndham) George Francis Wyndham, 4th Earl of Egremont (1786-1845).[3]

In 1917 foreclosure proceedings were brought against Dinton House and its estate.

The house is built of Chilmark stone, a local building stone also used for Salisbury Cathedral, and Wyatt is believed to have based his design on Pythouse, some seven miles (11 km) away at Newtown, near Tisbury. The house is two-storied with symmetrically set chimney stacks and a central lantern. The main (south) front has nine bays with an Ionic portico. The rooms are planned around a spacious square hall with an imperial staircase to the first floor. The house is one of the first in England to have a central heating system installed, which was achieved by pumping hot air from a boiler in the basement into the stairwell.[4] The house contains an impressive collection of Regency furniture and furnishings and is Grade II* listed. [5]

History

The estate was bought by Bertram Erasmus Philipps (1870-1947), a descendant of the Philipps baronets of Picton Castle (1621 creation),[6] who renamed the house after himself. He was High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1923.[7][8] Philipps and his wife, who had no children, annually hosted the pupils from the village school for a tea party at Philipps House with sports and fireworks.[9]

In 1936, Philipps leased the house to the YWCA entrusting them with the responsibility of putting the house to good use.

Philipps moved to nearby Hyde's House, a former rectory which he had bought in 1924 and where he lived until his death.[10][11][12] During World War II, the park in front of Philipps house was requisitioned for use by the United States Army Air Force, who erected a number of Nissen huts there. In 1943 Philipps gave the house and 250 acres (1.0 km2) of parkland to the National Trust, along with Hyde's House as well as a number of paintings owned by the Wyndham and Philipps families.[13][14]

Although the house and estate became the property of the National Trust, the property was handed over on the condition that it would continue to be leased to the YWCA, on a peppercorn rental, for as long as they had purposeful use for it. This remained very much the case during their occupation; the house was predominantly used as an artist retreat, providing residential art courses for keen amateur and semi-professional painters.

Philipps House was much loved by many creative people during this era. The interior spaces were ideal for conversion into artist studios, and with approximately twenty-two bedrooms available for paying guests, a lot of whom willingly shared a room with strangers in order to ensure a place on the courses, the house was a vibrant and convivial haven. The grounds and outlying area also provided ideal locations for landscape painting.

Some of Britain's best contemporary artists such as Tom Coates, Edward Wesson, Ken Paine, Deborah Manifold, John Yardley provided tuition, amongst many others, allowing aspiring artists the opportunity to often make incredible progress.

A combination of intensive tuition and the freedom from the mundanities and other demands of everyday life meant that students could exclusively focus on their art. Sessions began immediately after breakfast and went on into the evening with most students displaying a particular resistance to reluctantly putting down their brushes for lunch and dinner. But, it was much about the atmosphere in the house and the inspiration that it inspired as it was the dedication of the artists that led to such phenomenal results.

The YWCA remained at Philipps House until 1995. Despite the art courses being as heavily subscribed to as ever, the withdrawal of the YWCA was inevitable after the terms of the lease were changed when it was presented to the YWCA for renewal, a process that occurred every ten years. The National Trust did not alert the YWCA to the changes they had made, and the lease was re-signed in good faith without the YWCA appreciating the full implications of the alterations.

Although the art courses were a good source of revenue for the YWCA, permitting them to fund many much needed charitable activities, the terms of the new lease made staying at Philipps House unfeasible. The lease transferred the cost of maintaining the structure of the house and other amenities from the National Trust to the YWCA at a time when a lot of major works were due, such as laying new pipes from the neighbouring village of Dinton all the way through the estate to the house, an approximate distance of over half a mile. The cost was prohibitive for a charity that runs on a shoestring and concentrates on providing support to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, their assistance often meaning the difference between life and death for considerable numbers of people. To invest large sums of money in a property would have meant reallocating funds from these other initiatives., something for which the YWCA could not do in good conscience.

Relatively speaking, the amount of money needed was not significant. For a heavily funded organisation like the National Trust, that receives vast sums from the British public to invest in some of the nations most splendid properties and estates, it was a reasonably paltry amount, but for a charity like the YWCA it was crippling.

After the YWCA left in 1995, the National Trust did a thorough refurbishing of the house, which is leased to a tenant family. The house is, at present, closed to the public. The parkland that surrounds the house is still known as Dinton Park, and it also has been restored.

References

  1. ↑ Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, p.2512, Dinton House sold by Wyndham family in 1916
  2. ↑ 'Dinton', A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 8: Warminster, Westbury and Whorwellsdown Hundreds (1965), pp. 25-34, accessed 28 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Burke's Landed Gentry, 1937, p.2511, pedigree of Wyndham
  4. ↑ 'Dinton', A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 8: Warminster, Westbury and Whorwellsdown Hundreds (1965), pp. 25-34, accessed 28 September 2013.
  5. ↑ "Name: PHILLIPS HOUSE List entry Number: 1318756". Historic England. Retrieved 7 July 2015. line feed character in |title= at position 22 (help)
  6. ↑ Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles. Armorial Families, p. 787. Edinburgh: Grange Publishing Works, 1895. Bertram was the 5th son of the Reverend Sir James Erasmus Philipps, 12th baronet, of Picton Castle, Vicar of Warminster, Wilshire. His brothers were John Philipps, 1st Viscount St Davids; Owen Philipps, 1st Baron Kylsant; Major-General Sir Ivor Philipps; and Laurence Philipps, 1st Baron Milford; several of them were Members of Parliament and directors or stockholders in the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and other shipping companies.
  7. ↑ "Philipps House," BBC - Your Paintings, accessed 22 June 2013.
  8. ↑ "Philipps House (Dinton House)," The DiCamillo Companion, accessed 22 June 2013.
  9. ↑ "Church School, Dinton". Wiltshire Community History. Wiltshire Council. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
  10. ↑ "Dinton - Andrews Newspaper Index Cards, 1790-1976," Wiltshire OPC, 2011, accessed 22 June 2013
  11. ↑ "Dinton Recreation Ground," South Wilshire Strategic Alliance, accessed 22 June 2013
  12. ↑ Philipps died intestate on 10 February 1947 at Menton, France, where he was staying with his wife, Florence, who died a week earlier on February 4. Philipps's brother Laurence, Baron Milford, was subsequently appointed his personal representative for the probate of his estate.
  13. ↑ Historic England. "Details from image database (320735)". Images of England. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
  14. ↑ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-philippshouse_dintonpark

External links

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Bibliography

Coordinates: 51°05′06″N 1°59′02″W / 51.085°N 1.984°W / 51.085; -1.984

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