Long David. English Country House Eccentrics

The History Press, 2012. — 329 p.Lord Monboddo, a judge, believed men were born with tails but that this was concealed by a conspiracy of midwives who cut them off at birth. Sir Francis Galton, using a system no-one but he could understand, spent years compiling a map of the country showing the distribution of its most beautiful inhabitants and the really ugly ones. And as recently as 1976 a retired schoolmaster called Ernest Digweed left £26,000 for the Second Coming which ‘the Public Trustee … upon obtaining proof which shall satisfy them of His identity, shall pay to Lord Jesus Christ’.
Ostentatious or absurdly secretive, crazily ambitious, insanely inventive, pathologically reclusive or just faintly ridiculous, there is something irresistible about eccentrics and rarely more so than when it comes to the builders and burrowers, the collectors, hoarders, faddists and strange obsessives who have created, occupied and occasionally lost many of the great country houses which form such an important part of Britain’s cultural inheritance.
Eccentricity is by no means a preserve of the rich, aristocratic and landed, but for those determined to turn their backs on the mainstream, a large fortune and an isolated country estate certainly makes it easier. Insulated by walls of stone and the wealth of oligarchs, such men (and occasionally women) preside over personal fiefdoms and are answerable to no-one. It’s an environment which provides ample scope for eccentricities and idiosyncrasies to thrive, and as can be seen in the following pages many grasped the opportunity with both hands as they set off on their own, peculiar personal odysseys
Among their number one finds visionaries and mad men, builders and destroyers, and collectors who ruined themselves in the process. It was a Spaniard, the Romantic painter Francisco Goya, who insisted ‘fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters’ – but more than 400 years of English eccentricity has also thrown up things of wonder, value and beauty which we can still enjoy today.