Apethorpe Palace, ‘the stuff of dreams’, and the spectacular renewal of one of England’s great Jacobean houses

Apethorpe Palace, Northamptonshire — a seat of Baron and Baroness von Pfetten — is as grand as a country house can get, especially since its recent restoration work. Jeremy Musson celebrates the spectacular renewal.

Apethorpe Palace, built in warm, golden stone, with its clustered gables, mullioned windows and tall stone chimneys, strikes the eye almost as a small town. Arranged around three courtyards, this great residence has grown incrementally over time (Fig 1). What was once a medieval manor house was massively extended in the early 17th century to accommodate royal hunting parties and further remodelled in the mid 18th century, before its adaptation in the early 1900s by Reginald Blomfield.

Since 2014, it has been subject to an exemplary programme of repair and refurbishment by Baron and Baroness von Pfetten and it is now once more a family home, for the first time since the 1930s, for them and their two young children, Charlotte and Maximilian. With its historic rooms once more elegantly decorated and furnished, the house has hit a pleasing milestone: the formal removal of the property from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.

Today, it is difficult to absorb that the main rooms of the house were considered on the point of collapse as recently as 2004, yet that was the case, after two decades standing empty and decaying. Before that, the house’s use as an Approved School (1949–82) resulted in unsympathetic sub-divisions and a park filled with temporary buildings that had fallen into grim decay. As with all good restorations, the house now feels lived in: riding boots in the stone-flagged hall (Fig 2); tapestries, portraits and prints by Aldin and Leech on the walls; good oak furniture throughout; horses in the stables and huge dogs pacing the stately courtyards. It is the stuff of dreams.

Perhaps dreams are what Apethorpe Palace has always been about, not least in its remodelling for royal use in the 1620s, when an extensive state apartment was created by the then owner, Sir Francis Fane, later 1st Earl of Westmorland. This addition was designed to host James I and select courtiers — the Fanes famously withdrew when he was in residence — and included rooms for the King’s favourite, the handsome George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. A royal grant of timber towards the building works describes the gift as being intended for ‘the more commodious entertainment of his Majesty and his company at his repair into those parts for his princely recreation there’.

Recommended videos for you

The house was, indeed, princely and the state rooms, which have been hailed as Britain’s best surviving example of early-17th-century Court taste, were completed in 1624. A vast light-filled Long Gallery was added at this time, with the roof level of this range designed to provide a convenient viewing platform for hunting in the park around the house. Sir Francis’s grandfather-in-law, Sir Walter Mildmay — then Chancellor of the Exchequer — entertained Elizabeth I at Apethorpe in 1566; the house had been one of her manors inherited from Henry VIII.

The remodelling by Roger Morris for John Fane, 7th Earl of Westmorland, in the mid 18th century was a leap of Palladian idealism and the combination of Stuart elegance with Palladian refinement today gives Apethorpe Palace something of the air of an Oxford or Cambridge college. In 1904, the Brassey family acquired the estate and, with Blomfield, restored the house magnificently. However, the Brasseys began to retreat from its occupation during the 1930s. The house was requisitioned in 1939 and sold in 1949, with its decline in the later 20th century becoming legendary, leading to its nadir in the 1990s.

The hope held in the early 2000s by many historians and conservators — led by Simon Thurley, then CEO of English Heritage — was that a single family occupier would, after urgent repair works, take the house on. This has been fully realised in the Pfettens, who were first introduced to Apethorpe Palace through the late Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury. The Baron acquired the freehold in 2014 and, in the contract, he generously agreed to open the house to the public for 50 days a year, during July and August, for the next 80 years, with guided tours managed by English Heritage. Baron von Pfetten wanted to bring this great house back to the status it once had and is to be congratulated on saving Apethorpe Palace for future generations, at considerable expense.

The Pfettens’ major restoration work follows on the work of English Heritage after compulsory purchase, to make the building watertight and secure; this included a major overhaul of the main roofs, and work on important Jacobean plasterwork ceilings attributed to Edward Stanyon. Since 2014, the Pfettens have fitted modern services throughout, with heating, plumbing and electricity installed to strict conservation standards — when they took over the house, there was only one functioning plug socket.

The state apartment has been decorated in pale, warm colours with specially made clay paint. It is hung with a selection from the 53 historic tapestries — including Aubusson, Gobelins, Oudenaarde and Brussels, as well as Mortlake and Windsor — collected from across Europe especially for the house. Baron von Pfetten’s ambition was to create a tapestry collection that both enhanced the rooms of the palace and provided interest for visitors. The tapestries reference stories from mythology and, with their elaborate borders, complement the early-17th-century plasterwork ceilings and overmantel carvings, which have their own subtle interplay of classical mythology alongside themes of Nature, war and kingship. Newly commissioned Murano glass chandeliers are hung throughout. The aesthetic is of an English country house in its Edwardian heyday.

The state apartment is now once again the hub of the house, with the Great Chamber on the first floor of the south range used for larger dinner parties (Fig 3). The Great Chamber’s walls are painted a soft ochre colour and are hung with significant tapestries, including what is thought to be the oldest surviving piece of Oudenaarde manufacture. There are two large 18th-century Aubusson verdure scenes in this room, too; these hang facing each other, creating a vivid and theatrical effect.

Continuing along the apartment to the Drawing Room — formerly the withdrawing room — there is a 16th-century Brussels tapestry of Marcus Aurelius’s war with Germanic tribes. The adjoining King’s Chamber, with its panelling, 1620s chimneypiece, and armorial display, is used for smaller dinner parties. It is painted a warm red-earth colour and hung with four pieces of tapestry (Fig 4); the larger is from Brussels and depicts Alexander the Great. To either side of the chimneypiece are single, 18th-century panels depicting musicians; one by Aubusson and one by Gobelins.

The linked Prince of Wales Bedchamber (also used by the Duke of Buckingham), is now the master bedroom and hung with portraits. The panelled room below, on the south-east corner of the house, has been converted into the family kitchen, with 18th-century Delft tiles of a violet colour depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments. A 17th-century Oudenaarde tapestry hangs in the Chapel (now consecrated to both Roman Catholic and Anglican worship); it depicts the conversion of Henri IV of France to Catholicism (Fig 6).

The Pfettens have worked closely with Historic England and the local authorities. They have also benefited from the experience of Nick Hill, who oversaw the repairs undertaken by English Heritage. At the same time, Nadia, Baroness von Pfetten, a conservation architect from Venice, has brought practical skills and experience to the management of the project. Directly employing the required specialist contractors and skilled artisans, the Pfettens sought the very best standards.

As well as the re-presentation of the state rooms — now in daily family use — and the fitting out of more intimate family rooms, the Pfettens have also restored three major lost interiors: the Library, Orangery and White Hall. Not many years ago, all these rooms seemed beyond rescue, which makes their present condition all the more astonishing.

Apethorpe Palace’s large Library was originally created for the 7th Earl of Westmorland, in 1740–42, but was partitioned up in the 20th century and its interior destroyed. The original design is firmly attributed to Morris, one of the architects of Marble Hill in Richmond, west London. Today (Fig 7), this is a gloriously re-created space with a new coved ceiling faultlessly realised on the evidence of early-20th-century photographs and other period examples, such as the North Hall at Stowe in Buckinghamshire. The coved ceiling now contains the Pfetten-Iseux arms in the flat centre panel, also echoed in the specially commissioned marquetry parquet.

The Orangery, which was designed by John Lumley for Thomas Fane, 6th Earl in 1718–19, was likewise ruined by being subdivided into various rooms across two floors. It is now a wonderful, light-filled space used for entertaining and associated with the gardens on the south side of the house. On the east wall is a memorial to the Baron’s cousin and close friend Prince Georg-Constantin of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, who tragically died in a fall from a horse near Apethorpe.

The White Hall, formerly Arkade, created in the 1740s out of the rooms under the state apartment, had been entirely lost to 20th-century concrete and subdivisions. Opened out and repaired, it is now a fine space (Fig 5) in which Baron von Pfetten plans to display an international museum collection devoted to hunting and falconry, recalling the original purpose of the house as a royal hunting lodge. Baron von Pfetten is a master of foxhounds — of his ancestral family hunt, with the hounds kennelled at his Burgundy estate at Château de Selore. Two St Hubert Masses have been said in the Chapel, in 2016 and 2017, and a puppy show was held in 2019, with foxhounds brought from Selore in France.

Baron von Pfetten has based the renovation of the formal gardens on an 18th-century plan, published in Apethorpe, edited by Kathryn A. Morrison. To the south of the house, a central vista has been re-established along the yew tree avenue, guiding the eye to a 9ft-tall 18th-century urn, acquired especially for the purpose. The family has also renovated several cottages and lodges, outside the walled garden and in the stable range, which now provide additional guest accommodation.

Since 2014, Baron von Pfetten has made Apethorpe Palace a venue for informal international ‘track two’ diplomatic meetings, exploring conflict resolution and nuclear disarmament. He has himself served as a diplomat, ambassador to the UN and a senator in China. In August last year, a major meeting in the Great Chamber involved top military representatives from China and NATO. This may give Apethorpe Palace its real place in the history books, with echoes of the role of Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire. Baron von Pfetten is also chairman of the Institute for East-West Strategic Studies with the University of Oxford and a bye-fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (he read postgraduate degrees at both universities).

No less importantly, the Pfettens have made liberal use of the house for concerts and recitals. In 2016, there was a concert by the London Philharmonic in the presence of The Duke of Kent and, in 2023, Apethorpe hosted a performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, staged by students at the University of Northampton. There are plans in discussion to stage other masques, including one written by Ben Johnson. Masques of that era were part dance, part poetry recital, part play, with the spectators drawn into the stories, in costume, to take their parts in mythological tales. Such masques were, like Apethorpe Palace itself, the stuff of dreams.

---

Northamptonshire: Why this county of spires and squires is more than just a backdrop to the M1

There’s much more 
to Northamptonshire – including the great houses of Althorp, Boughton and Easton Neston – than meets the