The Grange, Northington

Abstract

In July 1972 the Hon. John Baring, owner of The Grange, Northington, Hampshire, held an auction to strip the house of all its saleable fittings: the staircase, doors, fireplaces and marble cladding were all removed. He then proposed to demolish the building, one of the earliest Greek Revival country houses in Europe, but the public outcry was so considerable that in 1975 it was taken into guardianship by the Department of the Environment. The house remained roofless and derelict until 1979–80 when the Department commissioned an independent architect, Donald Hankey, to restore the roof and exterior of the main east block and conservatory. The restoration presented a unique opportunity to examine the building in detail, revealing a great deal about the original seventeenth-century mansion, and how it had been converted to a Greek temple. The following account concentrates on the structural changes which took place in the main east block and in the conservatory. Some new information has also come to light about the gardens. The nineteenth-century extensions to the west of the house are omitted because they were demolished between 1972 and 1979, before restoration began.