Page 22 - C.A.L.L. #40 - Winter 2015

The stateliest commune in England

By Vaishnavi Brassey
12 Jun 2015

Daily Telegraph

Kings Weston House has appeared in
Jane Austen novels, been occupied

by secretaries of state and is now
the site of a very opulent exercise in
communal living.

'All the surveyor could say was, “Don’t buy it! It’s a money pit. This is going to
be the end of you,” ’ Norman Routledge recalls, but he was already in too deep.
In his pursuit of Kings Weston House in Bristol, Routledge, a businessman, had
visited numerous banks, sold shares in his security company, put his house on
the market, borrowed from family
and solicited investment from
friends. ‘The reason for doing all of
this has always been to save a
fantastic building from a dubious
future,’ he says.

Completed by the architect of
Blenheim Palace, Sir John Vanbrugh,
in 1719 with a crown of castellated
chimneys, Kings Weston was the seat of the Southwell family, secretaries of
state for Ireland for three generations. But it was sold off in the 1930s and

fell into decline. The house was used
as a hospital, stripped of all
ornamental fixtures to become a
school and later converted into
police offices. By 2010, the Grade I
listed ‘national treasure’ languished
in desuetude, with five of its eight
roofs leaking.

Routledge’s idea was to start restorations and invite a group of people to live
with him as part of a 21st-century shared-living solution to stately-home
sustainability. The boiler was on the way out, so lodger number one moved
straight in: Neil, a plumber. ‘There were pipes going through the cornices in the

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