The Houses That Inspired Nancy Lancaster

Mother used to take us to see the old houses in Virginia when we were children . . . They weren't museums then, and they didn't look as though they were polished up for an article in a decorating magazine, as they do now. When I was a child, Virginian houses were still occupied by the descendants of the people who built them in the eighteenth century. Many of them were ramshackle and their gardens were completely overgrown; that was their beauty, that was their charm. They had once been very grand, but the war and agricultural depression changed all that. Things were shabby, not shabby from poverty, shabby from use . . . You get the same sense in some English houses, the sense of survival of the fittest, of hanging on against everything . . . time, circumstances, progress. It was the most romantic thing in the world to me.

Nancy Perkins Field Tree Lancaster

Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art by Robert Becker.

As a girl, Nancy Lancaster visited Westover Plantation, the Virginia home of William Byrd I, II and III. Westover, a beautiful example of Georgian architecture, was built in the eighteenth-century and is now a museum that is open to the public. The home is located in Charles City County along the James River.

Photo via Westover Plantation website.

I recently read Robert Becker's biography of Nancy Lancaster, a native Virginian who is considered to be the creator of English Country Style. Her aunts included Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman to become a member of the House of Commons, and Irene Langhorne Gibson, who invited Nancy to live with her and her husband Charles Dana Gibson after the girl's parents died. Dana was a cartoonist for Life and the creator of the Gibson Girls. Lancaster's great-niece, Dana Gibson, lives in Richmond and is the creator of the home accessories line that bears her name.

Nancy Lancaster established the esteemed design firm, Colefax and Fowler, after she purchased an interior decorating establishment from Lady Sibyl Colefax at the end of the the Second World War. John Fowler was the true decorator in this partnership, but Lancaster possessed a personality and style that influenced renowned designers such as Mario Buatta and Charlotte Moss.

English Country Style is characterized by comfortable elegance - chintz and gilt and a layered look that appears to have taken shape over time. Robert Becker reminds his readers that Virginia was founded by Englishmen who created their own version of English country life through their plantations. Like the Virginia landowners who built them, these homes were "both refined and rugged, inspired yet languid in the tropical heat, formal but comfortable and at ease." Nancy took these Virginia qualities to England when she moved there with her second husband, Ronald Tree. She also carried within her a romantic attraction to the beauty of decay; as a girl, she heard stories of the Civil War, when women were left alone to care for the plantations, burying their silver in the garden under pea plants, and not knowing if their husbands would return.

Here is a look at some of the houses in Virginia and England that inspired Nancy Lancaster or served as homes where she dispensed her gracious hospitality . . .

Mirador

Mirador is deep in me, I feel it in my bones even now. Nothing else has ever been as important. I'm not really interested in England or America, only in Virginia and Mirador. They're my roots and my soul.

Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art by Robert Becker)

Mirador, the Albemarle County, Virginia, house and farm owned by Chiswell Langhorne, the grandfather of Nancy Perkins Field Tree Langhorne, Nancy and Ronald Tree owned the property for many years.

Photo of Mirador dated 1926 by American photojournalist Frances Benjamin Johnston. Image via Wikipedia courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Carter's Grove cost 500 pounds to build. I saw Carter's Grove as a child. Later it was for sale for only $3,000.

Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art by Robert Becker)

Halsey Minor, a Charlottesville, Virginia, native, bought Carter's Grove - pictured below - from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for $15.3 million in 2007. The 400-acre plantation on the north bank of the James River in James City County [Virginia] will be sold at auction on May 21, 2014 as part of a court order in a bankruptcy case.

The mansion and stables at Carter's Grove. The mansion is considered to be one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the United States.

"The plantation originally spanned 1,400 acres and was owned by Carter Burwell, a grandson of Robert 'King' Carter, Virginia's wealthiest planter. Construction on the mansion, less opulent than some plantation homes of its time, may have begun as early as 1700. Colonial Williamsburg dates it to 1703. The house was completed in 1755, though there have been renovations and changes over the years under various owners."

Photography by David M. Doody, Daily Press/April 12, 2002.

"Carter's Grove Plantation May Return to Colonial Williamsburg" by Steve Vaughan.

The Virginia Gazette (April 23, 2014).

Brandon Plantation

"The land was granted to John Martin from the king of England in 1616, and the tract was named Brandon after his wife's family. The center section of the plantation house is said to have been designed by Thomas Jefferson. The back of the house facing the river is pockmarked where cannon balls hit it during the Revolutionary War and . . . the War between the States."
Brandon Plantation in Spring Grove, Virginia.

Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch, 2008.

"Brandon Plantation Goes on the Market" by Carol Hazard.

Richmond Times-Dispatch (September 26, 2013).

Brandon made the biggest impression on me. I went with my mother on a tour with the Colonial Dames. The Harrisons still owned it and were still living there after 250 years. It had survived despite four years of war at its gates and the total destruction of Virginia's way of life. But the dignity of its beauty surpassed the difficulties.
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)

Brandon Plantation in Spring Grove, Virginia.
Photo via Premiere Estates Auction Company website.

Nancy was twelve years old when she visited Cliveden for the first time. Cliveden was the home of her Aunt Nancy - Lady Astor - in Buckinghamshire, England:

Cliveden was on a much bigger scale than any house I'd ever known before, but it was a center for the family, the doors were always opened wide, and from the first time I went there it was a second home.
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)
Photo via Cliveden website.

"The famous parterre was laid out in 1855 by John Fleming."

Cliveden.

Photo and text via Cliveden website.

"The grand parterre at the back of Cliveden enticed the eye along its lawns and beds into a stunning vista of the River Thames."
Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker.
Photo via Cliveden website.

Cliveden had the best smell of any house I've ever known . . . the staircase old Lord Astor had built was made of sandalwood, which smelled delicious. . . . On the stairs he had had carved on the newels the people who were connected with Cliveden's history . . .
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)
Photo via Cliveden website.

Nancy Perkins married Ronald Tree after her first husband, Henry Field, died mere months after their wedding. For a time, Mr. and Mrs. Tree rented 7 East Ninety-Sixth Street, the New York City townhouse designed and decorated by Ogden Codman, who wrote The Decoration of Houses with Edith Wharton:

It really was the most beautiful house in New York. . . . The front door . . . was wrought iron and plate glass . . . Inside there was a stone entrance hall and the most lovely staircase going up to the main floor . . . We took the house from Ogden Codman furnished, and the drawing room was filled with lovely French furniture . . . Codman had perfect taste. I remember the curtains were made of unbleached sailcoth or muslin. It was all very smart."
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)

Photo via StreetEasy website. Currently listed for $23,000,000 by Corcoran.

According to Robert Becker, Ogden Codman was a decorating pioneer because he felt museum-quality pieces could mix with non-pedigreed furniture to create living spaces in which people could really relax. "Codman's layering of different periods and this inclusion of comfortable furniture in his rooms left a lasting impression on Nancy Tree." Codman also advocated elegant simplicity - a major departure from the "overcrowded opulence" favored by the Victorians.

Nancy Tree bought Mirador, the Virginia home once owned by her grandfather, in 1922. She renovated it with the help of architect Billy Delano, who taught her that "the garden should relate to the house." Nancy liked a formal garden that was planted informally, as seen at Kelmarsh Hall, the home in England that the Trees rented and renovated:

"Kelmarsh bore 'the stamp of history . . . the romantic essence she loved so in the houses of Virginia."
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)

Kelmarsh Hall, Northamptonshire, England.
Photo via Kelmarsh website.

Nancy Tree spoiled the many guests who stayed at Kelmarsh to hunt. Most English estates were cold with few bathrooms. Nancy warmed her bedrooms with both lit fireplaces and radiators and added five bathrooms to the home. Visitors enjoyed dressing rooms, fresh flowers, writing paper, and drinking water next to their beds. "[S]ilk bellpulls with gilded tassels could be used to summon a maid or valet if anything was ever wanting."
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)
Kelmarsh Hall, Northamptonshire, England.
Photo via Kelmarsh website.

The Chinese Room at Kelmarsh - as it appears now.

Nancy found the faded, late-eighteenth-century chinoiserie wallpaper at another English estate. "Hand-painted and mounted on canvas stretched over wooden frames . . . [l]eaves and fruit-tree blossoms washed the walls in subtle pastels; exotic birds hovered and perched within the branches."
Nancy Lancaster (Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her Work, Her Art by Robert Becker)
Kelmarsh Hall, Northamptonshire, England.
Photo via Kelmarsh website.