The lure of history
On July 31, 1891, The British Architect recorded the sale of the Athelhampton estate, near Dorchester, which it claimed as a ‘chief seat of the Saxon kings, especially King Athelstan’. It reported that there had been ‘prolonged negotiations’ over the purchase, but that the property and the manor house upon it had at last ‘found an appreciative buyer in Mr de Lafontaine… Antiquarians will be glad to learn that this rich example of pure Tudor work will be preserved as one of England’s ancient homes’.
As this published note implies, this ‘ancient home’ already enjoyed unusual celebrity. It had been depicted in two plates of Joseph Nash’s popular The Mansions of England in the Olden Time (1839–42), pictured in J. Pouncy’s Dorsetshire Photographically Illustrated (1857) and even engraved for The Illustrated London News (1884). It had also been repeatedly visited by national and local antiquarian societies including the Royal Archaeological Institute, whose unfortunate members in 1868 ‘inspected numerous objects of interest in the house… but being pressed for time [were] unable to partake of luncheon’.
Time has done nothing to diminish the appeal of Athelhampton. Nevertheless, the building that confronts the modern visitor was profoundly shaped by this 1891 sale was not alone in declaring the gardens in particular as ‘curious but very charming’ and ‘one of the most conspicuous and novel features of this year’s show’.
