Why Boughton House Is The English Versailles | Treasure Houses | Real Royalty

[Music] bowton is the genius of rafe first duke of montague he was determined to create the english equivalent of versailles nestling in the northamptonshire countryside his legacy is one of this country's most beautiful houses it took him twenty years when rafe died his son john carried on his work but when he died in 1749 bowton went to sleep for a hundred and fifty years [Music] [Music] there's something magical about barton it seems timeless not that big pretty much unchanged since it was transformed at the end of the 17th century a jewel box set in the northamptonshire countryside and every compartment of that jewel box is stuffed with treasures it's exactly as rave montague intended england's answer to versailles [Music] the montagues came to england with william the conqueror who gave harold one in the eye at hastings in 1066. but the story of barton starts with sir edward montague who bought this land in 1528. he was chief justice of the king's bench and an executor of henry viii's will [Music] sir edward built a great hall part of which survives under the later alterations but so much was changed by his successors that we don't really know what edward's house looked like the most dramatic changes were the work of sir edward's grandson rafe who was to become the first duke he was ambitious at court and that ambition won him the position of ambassador to france in 1666 he was in awe of the french king louis xiv and astonished by the palace at versailles and he conceived the idea of building a copy at belton [Music] two marriages to wealthy women gave rafe the means to achieve his dream but he brought something other than ideas back from france with him came paintings and furniture artists and craftsmen [Music] [Music] today we would say of rafe that he had an eye for beauty but it may be that in the second half of the 17th century there was an embarrassment of riches from which to choose bouton contains english tapestries from mortlake cabinets by the very best of french craftsmen paintings by the flemish artist sir anthony van dyke and the english court painter thomas gainsborough mirrors by daniel marrow and some of the earliest carpets to have been woven in england it is quite simply stunning today bowton is owned by the duke of the clue not because it has ever been bought or sold but because in one of those complicated stories of english family descent the montagues became linked to the scots of the clue by marriage so two great estates consisting of magnificent houses in scotland and in england came together and have stayed together for 250 years well look at this what does one say about this this is a heraldic device under and a half isn't it it's just it certainly is please don't ask me to try and decipher it why not on have a go completely lost i would get completely lost but what i can tell you is that this is one of really quite a large number of chimney pieces in the house and the montague dukes that's rafe and john were completely obsessed by their heraldry and they were fascinated by their descent and they longed to be able to trace themselves back and i think they did say successfully to ancient and grand people from the past and uh in particular here at bowton uh they traced themselves back uh to queen eleanor the uh wife of edward the first we're talking now about the 1290s she died in and they wanted to do that because one of the memorial crosses which marked the passage of her of her body when she died back to london is nearby um and so in fact you find coats of arms all over the house not only here above the fireplace but if you look down below you see the far back which has got its lozenges and its grippings and if we go next door actually to the great hall uh through here you see some of the most magnificent examples in fact you see if you look back up there you see this huge coat of arms um sitting up on the top you see the red lozenges the diamond shaped things next door to the griffins and this very large pair of griffins gazing down on the diners in the great hall the first and second dukes were fascinated by genealogy they trace their family line back to drago de montacuto one of william the conquerors knights on the one hand and to edward the first on the other both the dukes were determined to celebrate their lineage visitors to the great hall at bowton would be left in no doubt that this was a great family and was destined to be even greater so sir edward montague is here wearing his chain of office as chief justice above the fireplace is james scott the first duke of monmouth and the clue elizabeth the first has a privileged position a portrait shows her in the 37th year of her reign 1595 and alongside her are the earl and countess of southampton she the queen's lady in waiting he the patron of william shakespeare it's the story of the montagues intertwined with the history of england and it's all crowned by a carved coat of arms so big that no one who lingered here could doubt the importance of this family after all sir edward montague served four monarchs which considering the intrigue the plotting and the executions of the 16th century is remarkable this is such a sensational room isn't it it is wonderful and of course it's at the heart of bowton because this really was the original building when edward montague the man behind us bought bikes in 1528 he had a tued a great hall um you might not imagine that when you see the room now with its wonderful painted barrel ceiling but up above that ceiling there's a hammer beam wooden roof concealed by we've actually got photographs of what it looks like that tudor hall was then transformed by rafe the first duke of montague uh in the late 17th century and it was he who uh as well as putting in the ceiling and having it painted he ran the molt lake tapestry factory and a lot of our tapestries date from that area at the end of the 17th century and they were woven for him got his coats of arms and everything else on them and what's happened over the centuries is that you have an accumulation of generations of family portraits unlike so many houses um in in this country uh which had victorian makeovers in the 19th century nobody touched biotin it's really what makes it so precious and so special that you have a sense of having at least 100 200 years perhaps of it lying dormant and then very slowly uh reawakening so the colors of this place have been kept like this because the shutters have been closed against the world absolutely yes yes and you haven't had people drifting through and having bright ideas about doing this that and the next thing with it it's very very continuous century and so if you come into one of these rooms now you're almost stepping in the footsteps of of rafe of all the associates that he had i mean it gives you it's a remarkable feeling isn't it i think it is terribly important to remember that they are individuals human beings who had foibles likes dislikes characteristics some of which were admiral some of which were not so admirable and i think you need to sort of look at portraits like we have on the wall and try and look into the characters of the people who were there and very slowly as we managed to get to grips with the archives i hope we'll be able to find out a bit more about what what made them tick in a way [Music] every nobleman in england wanted a visit by the king in rafe montague's case it was a visit by william iii in this english version of versailles he set about creating a series of state apartments which the king would use while he was here this set of rooms is almost exactly as it was when william arrived on the 23rd of october 1695. the walls are the drab color they were first painted the paintings and tapestries are those which the king would have seen and a hundred years after it was loaned to the victoria and albert museum the state bed is back in its original position although this sumptuous bed was balton's bed it in fact does not now belong to bowdoin does it well that is strictly true yes because um uh back in 1918 um my great grandfather became deeply concerned about the condition of a lot of the furniture here and particularly textiles it was decaying in the old country life photograph saying it decaying so he wrote to the director of the v a touring albert museum saying mighty by any chance have space for a bed and i think almost by return a lorry was dispatched from london to collect the bed and there it stayed throughout the great part of the last century it was wonderfully restored as you can see i can't remember how many thousands and thousands of hours of patient work went into restoring these hangings but they were as keen uh to try and return it to its original home as we obviously were to have it back and very happily only five six years ago we managed to reach an agreement whereby would come back on long-term loan and it's thoroughly right that it should do so because it is sitting exactly where it sat when it was bought by rafe montague at the end of the 17th century surrounded by the same tapestries from the moltle gaps of the apostle series as hung in the room at that time so you have such a sent sense of of the continuity of it being here and what it did for bowton i think is so important is that it reminded us of the vivid uh coloring that people at the 18th end of the 17th century lived with this wonderful crimson and when we talk about the state rooms we're really talking about a series of very formal rooms this would have been the third there would have been a state dining room to begin with then a withdrawing room and then the state bedroom and this was to entertain the grandest of all guests and rafe must have very much hoped that uh king william would come and stay here at bowton as indeed he did in 1694. um the only downside of that was that the rooms probably weren't quite ready by then and we know that rafe had a particular problem with his bed so in fact magnificent though this is it's actually a second-hand french cast off it wasn't the latest fashion in state beds but it obviously did for king william uh or it did at least for the formal part of his stay so he slept in this bed say that he stepped in this bed um the little secret i have to let you in on is that there's actually a fourth from a more private retiring room when he could get rid of his coaches and disappear into and if you go in there you'll find even a little secret doorway that leads through one of these great hanging tapestries into what would have been a very comfy cozy room and one suspects that he retired there but to all intents and purposes and for formal presentational reasons this was his bed rafe montague having been at versailles brought back lots of ideas to inspire his his decorative plans for biotin and ordinary though this might look nowadays it's actually one of the earliest examples of parque de versailles parque flooring as we now know it um in this country and in fact it would have been so special uh that the rugs which nowadays we uh lay out the wonderful rugs we have in these rooms would not have been on it visitors would have been admiring that but what we've tried to do is to bring together the furniture that would have been in these rooms in particular everything uh with a crimson covering the late uh 17th century chairs so you've certainly got probably as good a feeling as you will get anywhere in britain of what these rooms would have been like and you can have a sense of the um of the taste of those days as i say the bright colors but contrasted with this rather curious drab wool painting the color of the walls is exactly as it was in 1700. this is not blenheim or chatsworth with their great halls and huge spaces bowton has something else an intimacy that is thrilling the present duke's father who died in 2007 spoke of the atmosphere in this house he was intoxicated by it and by the blend of fragrances that exude from the paneling the dust in the tapestries the oak logs in the great fireplaces new moon grass on the south lawn ticking clocks wind whistling through the ancient window frames and row after row of family portraits of men who knew what it was to employ those who work their land [Music] originally this room would have been used by members of the family to promenade in wet weather but later it came to be known as the audit room bouton had 17 000 acres of land in the 18th century and tenants would gather here every lady day to pay their rents but the great glory of the room is this gaming table it's nearly 40 feet long and you used to be able to play a form of shuffleboard on it we know from the ledgers that the estate carpenter made it for three pounds seven shillings and fortunes this room tells a story in oil paintings of the history of the montague family there's rafe of course first duke next to his wife the sensuous elizabeth she'd been married twice before but it didn't stop him chasing her around the continent before she agreed to be his wife sadly elizabeth died in childbirth when she was just 40 but he went on to marry again they say he was quite a catch but he doesn't look much of an oil painting to me [Music] one man has been writing about baltan for years and wondering like me why more people don't know about this hidden treasure marcus binney architecture correspondent of the times author and former editor of country life believes that bowton is in a league of its own [Music] the father of the present duke said that he was intoxicated with barton and there's little wonder is there every door you open is into another room full of treasures and when they went shopping they always bought in pairs on either side of this these two lovely white japanese lacquer cabinets well we're in the drawing room and apart from the two lacquer cabinets we've got is it 40 van dycks on the wall 40 vang dykes all matching grizzai they're called painted in monotone and they're all of his contemporaries both in flanders and in england and one of the great things with van dyke was the way he painted his hands often very sort of languid but here you have the complete repertoire of every kind of hand that van dyke ever did the fists the fingers everything [Music] van dyke was the greatest portrait painter of the time rubens was practically the richest painter who ever lived you know who was his master but then along came van dijk who could charge as much as reuben's uh by the end of his life and of course he died terribly young sort of thing so to have 40 band acts is an amazing thing [Music] van dyke has always been fashionable in england because he flattered his aristocratic patrons the ladies were in long dresses the men always looked elegant and to have a van dyke let alone 40 is the grandest thing you can have in any treasure house it is a surprise among all the great houses the others are wonderfully well known but people 50 miles away from here may not have heard about and this is what makes it this wonderful surprise it has more atmosphere than any other great house you will see you feel the generations you feel the centuries and everywhere there are treasures grand and small [Music] when rafe montague died in 1709 bowton was already full of treasures but his son found room for more john the second duke married the daughter of the first duke of marlborough the man who defeated the french at blenheim and set out in 1722 on a campaign to take saint lucia and saint vincent in the west indies he failed but the evidence of his interest in arms and armor was later displayed at bowton and survives intact this is incredible is it not this place it's the finest private armory in the original house of the family and a mixture of montagues and scots warring peoples and this is what they had klansmen highlanders regiments yeah this was both hunting and war so we have swords from the 18th century we have guns from from the same era don't we i mean the remarkable remarkable guns flintlocks pistols every weapon which you could get if you were a very rich nobleman and you could have beautifully engraved shotguns and then fantastic swords of wonderful displays of swords here that they arranged them in fans and in great circles and this was the traditional way in an armory of showing off your immense collection and even this you're going to tell me about this because this is a remarkable machine as well isn't it it's called a puckle gun this is right it's an early sort of gatling machine gun but you know years decades ahead of its time and it fired round bullets for christians and square ones for turks he had six of them made for a disastrous expedition to invade the caribbean island of celusia and take it from the french well in a way neither of the bullets worked the round once or the square ones so anyway you brought the guns back and so it took another 100 years to get to lucia but here's the gun and it's surprising is it not that he's kept everything all the family have kept everything right down to the very last tiny little pistol for foot pads i noticed you know you have a pistol to shoot someone who attacks you in the street but they kept them well of course in the great treasure house you don't have to throw things away there are cellars there are attics there are storms and strong rooms so these are just put into boxes and but of course they always were proud of the armory so it's been in different parts of the house in different centuries [Music] at bowton duke john extended the landscape and in london he built montague house overlooking the thames in whitehall [Music] it was one of the many houses the family owned yet for some curious reason he never completed bowsen which is lucky for us because the unfinished wing gives us an opportunity to see how bowton was built 300 years ago it is an amazing opportunity isn't it to see behind the scenes of the house this this miniature versailles here we are and it's cold and i think the duchess must have come here decided to move to a smaller cozier house but the fun for us today is to see you know how they built these houses because it's stone on the inside as well as stone on the outside straddled by enormous oak beams but why are they diagonal it's to avoid fireplaces and windows so it's all very cleverly thought out very careful ah so it wasn't just cobbled together it was not i mean do you think that these beams have been reclaimed from an older building now you always hear that story they came from a ship or they had great oaks on this estate they would have got the best beams right from the park out there so what impresses you apart from the beams what else impresses you about this unfinished wing the windows they began with french style versailles casement windows opening in and out and then the sash windows more english rising up when you've got the sash windows down below renewed but with the glass you can't see through because they didn't want people to see inside the unfinished wing what's this this chinese pavilion and what was this used for well this is a a wonderful little folly the 18th century loved garden pavilions and follies and temples in the grounds but this one was one which you could take up and put down and it was bought by the duke in 1745 and uh it seems it would he actually just bought it he didn't commission it but it shows what you could do when you went shopping in the 18th century he must have had a thing about china they did then didn't they well they did and this was actually uh but this is one of the earliest little chinese pavilions in england before the chinese pagoda accused so he was very much a setter of taste where's it been hiding all these years here at barton well where's it black apparently it was painted black as a camouflage against zeppelins in the first world war really but inside it's as cozy as can be it's got dragons on the ceiling and and and comfy sofas all around it's perfect isn't it for a little bit of tete yeah well they would have had ladies would have had tea yes i mean it was always party time in the 18th century it's just hard to imagine how often and how long they were partying every day late in the evening and the night and this would have been the scene of it how did the tent end up here well montague house was demolished so they brought it here and then they put it up on the lawn every summer for 60 years so they continued to enjoy it and now it's here in the unfinished wing now you're standing in front of something else that's quite remarkable it's a chinese screen obviously tell me about this because it has a an interesting history doesn't it well it was only discovered a year ago in the stewards room and this shows you know these treasure houses always have more treasures to find and this is a a real chinese screen not a piece of shinrazary made in england but actually came from china this beautiful lack of screen and the fun about it is it looks like the imperial palace in in beijing but in fact it's just i think a grand nobleman's house but you look at the lines of people bringing him gifts you know queuing up and then the musicians entertaining them bands and then not any wives but concubines children all these different wives playing you go today to beijing and see it full of tourists but here you see who was living here originally and here is this the procession you know two by two they're coming and how he is sitting in granger in this under this canopy they're all bowing before him and wonderful dancers just in front entertaining people peacocks yes can you imagine how much this must be worth today when you think of the chinese and how much they want their art back can you imagine yes also can you imagine how much time it's going to take to carefully repair it to the pristine state in london montague house where the chinese pavilion could be seen on the lawn every summer has long since been demolished but unlike other members of the nobility the dukes of the clue seemed better able to cope with the pressures which the 20th century brought to bear on britain's landowners bowton sailed on regardless the seventh duke started a process of conservation at the start of the 20th century the eighth and ninth the present duke's father followed suit the ninth duke was once called a one-man national trust which is not so very odd when you consider that the family owns hundreds of thousands of acres in scotland and england and divides its time between drumlandry castle in dumfrica with its collection of rembrandts bow hill and the borders and bowsen in northamptonshire and at all the family properties the present duke continues the conservation work started by those who went before him [Music] such a magnificent treasure isn't it well it is glorious isn't it now it's very rich and very ornate and it's looking even more wonderful since a conservation program which took place two years ago when it was almost literally taken to pieces the conservation is necessary with this sort of furniture it's a cabinet by andre charles boole because this wonderful metal work marquetry as it's called with time begins to spring out and it's absolutely vital to to reattach it so that it doesn't tear tear away and if i open the door you will actually find inside the evidence of the person for whom it was made you look up here and you'll see a coat of arms and this is the coat of arms of a man called colbert he was an archbishop of reams you can see his cardinals hat there and colbert um lived at the end of the 17th century we believe he died i think in 1707. um and what's been wonderful about the uh process of conservation on this piece is that it's enabled a little bit of detective work to happen simultaneously so for instance it's been possible to analyze the brasses like this and within this piece of brass it's an alloy that includes copper using non-invasive technology ultra violet spectrography it is possible to discover that there are small quantities of silver within that now that would never have been left there but it wasn't until the industrial revolution that that could be extracted so we're able to say at least from that that this piece is an 18th century piece uh if not earlier and then if we look down here at this wonderful blue color you see ultramarine it is which is backing a piece of clear horn and again using scientific analysis um it is possible to identify that it is ultramarine made from ground lapis lazuli a very very rare and expensive product which furniture makers would have ceased using when a replacement cheaper color came along and that happened in the first decade of the 18th century when some german chemists accidentally came across a new type of blue pruss and blue it's caused called they stopped using the uh the the ultramarine and moved to prussian but because we know this the analysis of that uh we know that that is ultramarine we know that this whole piece is roughly contemporary with uh with colbert's dates and bulls dates so that must have been thrilling for you when you were told by the conservator of this you must have thought that it was christmas all over again well it is wonderful and it is very nice i think even though we all admire the artistry the craftsmanship of this piece of furniture and seeing it disassembled in a workshop when it literally comes into a thousand pieces and you go back to the oak frame at the heart of it and you see hundreds of nails and screws and everything used to make it all of that is fascinating but actually i think what is equally important is a sense of the people to whom it belongs how did it get into this english country house having originated in a great french palace what sort of man was colbert why did my forebears bite when did they buy it i think all these threads of the human story that accompanies a great work of art are really just as important and just as interesting well so tell me who restored it well we were very lucky to find a remarkable and appropriate enough a frenchman called yannick shastan who'd worked at the wallace collection in london and then a few years ago he set up his own independent conservation studio and yannick came to bite and he looked at all the french furniture and he identified the bits that were in most urgent need of conservation and he took it back to his workshop and he he took it all to pieces it was really rather scary to go in and see it literally in a thousand pieces with all the screws and all the nails and everything else right back to the oak carcass at the heart of it and then very slowly he began putting things back on gluing at the marquetry uh where necessary and cleaning um the the various brasses and i think one of the uh secrets of his success is the fact that he did it so slowly so that he was able to leave time for instance having cleaned the brass leave time for a little bit of oxidization so that it lost the gleam so that it didn't stand out too sharply before putting on a varnish cover and i think it is terribly important when doing conservation work particularly when you have a piece in a historic house like this where not everything is going to be restored that it doesn't jar you know with everything else and it applies not just to furniture like this but obviously to paintings um where you have the pattern of aids created by the varnish the slightly mellow feel and i think it's very important to find the right balance when you're doing conservation work and yannick surely did it with this [Music] piece we have our forebears to thank generation after generation for what they collected what they added to the collections um over 300 years and very slowly my wife and i we're beginning that process again of trying to renew so to speak the art collection and the landscape this is not a museum this is a living living place and we just feel incredibly lucky to be able to be part of it for however long we're lucky enough to live here [Music] bowsen is ravishing all the more so because you feel you're discovering history at every turn it's the history of the montague family [Music] but it's also our history the scots the montagues the clues their names ring down the ages and the houses and treasures they built and collected are part of the fabric of the nation something which successive dukes have recognized [Music] there's a charming post script to the story of bowton other dukes might be tempted to live with the furniture and silver and paintings amassed by their ancestors through the generations after all you can make it a life's work conserving some of england's finest houses but the duke of the clue was determined to add to his collection last year he commissioned this harpsichord by the english instrument maker andrew garlick it looks as though it's always belonged here in the morning room and is proof if proof were needed the belton continues to be one of the treasure houses of britain [Music] you

Channel: Real Royalty

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Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, versailles, english versailles, henry viii, french ambassador, ralph montagu, edward montagu, boughton house

Id: KDJYtOLSttA

Length: 41min 37sec (2497 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021