Tea at Trianon: The Last Grand Country House in Wiltshire

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, December 16, 2021

The Last Grand Country House in Wiltshire

Zeals. From Country Life:

According to its Historic England listing, Zeals, has evolved over many centuries. Built on a rambling L-plan of limestone rubble with Welsh slate roofs, the earliest range consists of a two-storey, 14th-century hall house, probably re-built around an earlier dwelling acquired by one Matthew de Clevedon in 1372.

The Chafyn family (later the Chafyn-Groves) acquired the house in 1452, extending it to the north-east in the 17th century. Their descendants further extended the house in the 18th and 19th centuries.

During the Second World War, an airfield was created at nearby St Martins Farm and Zeals was requisitioned as a base and mess for RAF officers. After the war, Zeals became a school for boys until, in 1956, the family, now the Troyte-Chafyn-Groves, ended the lease and moved back in.

The unbroken ownership of Zeals by the Chafyn family was ended in 1968, when Alex Garnet Phippen bought the house and restored the 17th-century orangery and the dovecote. (Read more.)