Last week’s post looked at the creation of the picturesque landscape at Piercefield, near Chepstow.

Today I’m going to look at the decline  and fall of the estate and how all the conservation and heritage protections in the world still haven’t managed to save a Grade II* listed building and Grade 1 listed landscape from dereliction.

 The early part of the decline is sad, but the later part is more than sad – it is shocking.

 

 

Piercefield was sold in 1802 to Nathaniel Wells of St Kitts, another plantation owner but one with a difference.  Although he was the son of a white sugar merchant and planter originally of Welsh origin,  his mother was one of his father’s African house slaves, and he himself had been born into slavery in 1779. He was, however, his father’s only son and on his father’s death in 1794 Nathaniel was not only freed but received the bulk of his estate which included  three plantations and £120,000. He spent £90,000 of that on Piercefield and then  bought additional land taking the estate to nearly 3,000 acres.

In 1806 Wells became a JP and in 1818 was  appointed Sheriff of Monmouthshire, becoming Britain’s only known black sheriff and  apparently only the second black commissioned officer ever in the armed forces as well. Paradoxically he continued to own slaves and plantations, and in 1837  was paid compensation of £1400 9s 7d. for 86 slaves on his St Kitts estates.

Everything that Wells did on the estate, as had been the case with Valentine Morris, the “founder” of Piercefield,  was funded by the sugar plantations, a fact which would probably have gone unnoticed by the visitors. They went to experience the dramatic views of the river Wye, from the rolling parkland and cliffside walks, and probably went on to see Tintern and other local sites. However as Dr Victoria Perry, author of A Bittersweet Heritage points out “even the roads that bought them there had been funded by the profits of Antiguan sugar plantations, which obviously at that time used slavery.”

 

The  plaudits for Piercefield continued to flow in, with Feltham’s  Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing Places of 1802 calling it “one of the most illustrious [sites] that art and nature combined can produce”.  Soon, however,  there is an increasing sense of disappointment creeping into visitor accounts.

Was this another swing in the pendulum of fashion, meaning the charm of the rugged natural picturesque landscape was no longer enough?   For example, William Sotheby who visited in 1805 writing that “although this celebrated place, excited my Admiration, yet the sensation I felt on walking over the Grounds was far from pleasing.”  The same year James White “had some cause to be sorry for [visiting],  not that the place wants attraction, it abounds in the most picturesque views, but we were not exactly prepared for a toilsome march of two hours.”  While Mr Yorke also in 1805 thought Piercefield, “the seat of Mr Wells is not worth the trouble of going to, on its own account..[although] the points of view from it, are richly magnificent.”

Nevertheless tourists continued to flood in, causing disappointment of a different kind with Louis Simond  in 1810,  complaining  of too many tourists, “each with his Gilpin Cambrian Guide in his hand and each no doubt writing a journal”  and comparing it unfavourably to the Falls of Clyde. Amongst the visitors in the early 19th century were Lord Nelson, `the artist Joseph Farington who thought the house “a specimen of very bad taste” and Prince Hermann Puckler-Muskau who thought the park “without question the finest in England, at least for situation. It possesses all that Nature can bestow; lofty trees, magnificent rocks, the most fertile soil, a mild climate favourable.” If you want to know what they came to see then  Mark Willett’s ‘entirely rewritten’ edition of his An Excursion from the Source of the Wye, about 1818, is one of the most detailed descriptions of the park and its features, although sadly there are no illustrations.  The Sublime Wales website is even better, by compiling a mass of visitor comments on each feature. There’s a shorter summary version drawn up by Visit Wye Valley.

Visits were made easier with the opening of the new Wye Valley turnpike road in the mid-1820s. The Gloucester Journal in 1827 reported that “Sociables, phaetons, cars and pony-chaises for visiting Piercefield and Tintern Abbey, are increased [at Chepstow] at least tenfold during the last three years.” Increased numbers meant an increase in the number of garden guides required. Whereas previously it had just been the gardener on hand to show visitors around one account said that ” having found a woman (one of the guides) she showed me through the walks which are three miles in length and I was informed by all the money given by visitors went to the gardener and that he paid them a shilling a day to shew strangers the walks and that for that they had sometimes to go five or six times up and down the walks in a day.”

In both 1819 and again 1833 Wells tried to sell the estate, which  was advertised for  sale with more than 2,000 acres thought to bring in an income of £2,500pa.

Despite the lavish description, especially in 1833, it didn’t sell, and I’ve seen one report which said that was because it was found to have dry rot.  Nevertheless  Wells moved to London anyway sometime after 1840 and  let the house to tenants who closed the walks.

It was the beginning of the end.  When Wells died in 1852 worth £100,000 the estate was sold to John Russell, a neighbouring landowner,  who occasionally allowed access to the walks again but now only for a fee.

The problem was that public taste was changing. Long walks, even with views, were no longer popular, especially if all the buildings were decayed,  and maybe the allure of the picturesque had faded.  Emily Hall visited in 1847 and noted in her diary: Fine hot day, walked to Piercefield and feel that we have had our labours for our pains … I do not think I have ever been more utterly disappointed. There is really nothing to repay the fatigue of walking so far and after having seen the Wyndcliff there is nothing at all to see. For the arrangement of the place itself is nothing like so pretty – the fatigue much greater and the views not so good. … I should certainly say to anybody wanting to go to Piercefield – “Don’t” …‘it is very disappointing …It is not by any means worth the 3 shillings which you have to give the woman.’ … The next month she went “to see Mrs Oakley’s grounds [Tanybwlch] – a 1000 times more worth seeing than that odious Piercefield.’”

The Russell family didn’t stay long either and in 1861 Piercefield was sold again,  this time  to Henry Clay, another banker who seemed to do little to the estate and in time it was inherited by his son who lived at Piercefield until his death in 1921. Thereafter things really started to go downhill. The family moved out  and in 1923 put the estate on the market, selling a lease on the house and most of the land to  Chepstow Racecourse Company, which incidentally was owned by the wider Clay family. A racecourse  opened on the lower section of the park in 1926.   The company had little interest in the house, and so, as was usual for the period, stripped it of all saleable fittings and then abandoned it.  Unsurprisingly it quickly fell into ruin. It didn’t help that the park was commandeered for military training during the Second World War, with neglect continuing long afterwards. Lack of woodland maintenance meant that tree growth soon blocked most of the  views and even the paths, destroying the original idea behind the construction of the walks.

Restoration of some semblance of the Georgian landscape was begun in the 1970s when the woodland overlooking the river became  a nature reserve. From the early 2000s footpaths were cleared and re-opened using the 1790s layout as the basis, but this did not include the clearing of the sight-lines through the trees  that offered the spectacular views  so any sense of the original surprise for visitors  has largely been lost.

The woodland is  not in public hands and the walks are “permissive” ie they remain in private hands with the owners allowing the public to use them with permission, but able to shut them if they so choose. Nevertheless this has brought increasing numbers of visitors to the site which means that the state of the mansion is now even more apparent.

 

At least the views could be re-opened at some point but Soane and Bonami’s mansion remains a complete ruin.  The Clay family remained  involved with the management of the race course until the company was eventually listed  on the stock market in the late 1990s. A majority stake was built up by Sir Stanley Clarke a self-made businessman, property developer, philanthropist and racing enthusiast who already controlled 7 other race courses through his  Northern Racing company.

It looked as if things were going to improve, with plans apparently being made for the mansion’s restoration reported in 2004 with a letter in Country Life saying “there were plans by the racecourse owners to restore the property to its former grandeur”. Apparently architects had spent 18 months working on the project  “to ensure the restoration remains faithful to the surviving work of Sir John Soane”.

This was Cardiff based architects Davies Sutton, who have carried out many high quality conservation projects.  According to them: “The first phase of this restoration was a programme of emergency works to secure the ruinous shell and many collapses that have taken place in recent years. The majority of work consisted of various methods of stone consolidation, propping openings and recording the building at high level. A delicate and dangerous operation, particularly from a health and safety point of view, and which required a high level of management.”

Then in 2005 Country Life carried a whole page on the  proposed restoration scheme with the estate agents quoting a sale price of £2 million for the ruins and 129 acres. Davies Sutton say that  by 2007 there was detailed planning consent in place to restore the house and ancillary buildings to Soane’s design as a single dwelling. Costs were estimated at up to £10m.

Nothing came of the plan. This maybe because Clarke died in 2004 and in 2006 Northern Racing was acquired by the Reuben Brothers and merged with Arena Leisure another racecourse  company they already owned  to form the private Arena Racing Company.   The company is a tiny fraction of the Reuben Brothers property empire.

Emergency work was carried in 2008-10 on the house and some of the landscape features but then in 2012 SAVE Britain’s Heritage reported that ownership of the site had been divided with the mansion  separated from the park and parcelled off into an off-shore company. This divides a site that should not be divided – the house was built to complement the park and the park landscaped to showcase the house.

The following year 2013 SAVE started a campaign led by its president Marcus Binney to protect the building.   A press release they issued then was clear that the temporary repairs five years earlier were simply  holding measures and in need of replacement.  But there were, they thought, signs of hope following a well-publicised walk through the landscape and a picnic in front of the mansion. Guests at the picnic included local conservation officers, and people involved in the restoration of the Piercefield Walks, local museum directors and architectural historians, Sir John Soane’s biographer Gillian Darley, a curator from the Soane Museum, entrepreneur Edward Strachan, architect Michael Davies who had worked on restoration plans for the house, and many others.  Binney appealed to the Reuben Brothers, property developers of immense wealth, and patrons of a generous foundation,  to follow the example of the great rescues of other Soane ruins, such as Pell Wall and Boconnoc House.

Afterwards several people came forward who had already made offers to intervene or made offers on the house, and that year a new cash offer was made on the house by  Edward Strachan, backed up by a pledge of three million pounds towards repairs, with half a million every year until the house and interiors are fully repaired and restored. When nothing happened Strachan went on to save Halswell Park in Somerset, whilst Piercefield remains a ruinous shell.

Since then there have been a few sporadic press reports while SAVE and others have continued to campaign  for Piercefield, which is now in a ‘dangerous state’ and shut off to public view by security fencing.   Time is clearly running out. Sinclair Johnston,  chairman of the Forest of Dean Buildings Preservation Trust argues that while there used to be a recognisable, structurally viable house, with two pavilions connected by corridors,  over the years the vegetation has been allowed to grow up and thats been near-fatal because “what kills buildings like this is that shrubs grow up between the stones and burst them apart.  Now the two pavilions are almost completely overgrown and the house has lost an enormous amount of stone.” “Buildings like this work like a box,” he said. “Once one side comes off, they’ve really lost it. It’s got to the state where it is seriously distressed.”

In September 2023 SAVE hosted a lecture by  Victoria Perry,  who hoped to get together a collection of individuals and institutions to transform Piercefield and its grounds to  create a centre of learning and understanding,  in much the same way as happened on several former planation sites in the USA.

One has to ask why since the owners are not safeguarding this hugely significant building – the only house by Soane in Wales and that stands in what is one of the most significant Picturesque and Romantic landscapes  – the authorities aren’t intervening.   After all its Registered at grade I by CADW, the Welsh Heritage body as an early and outstanding example of a ‘sublime’ landscape, and as such it ranks, according to Elizabeth Whittle as one of the greatest pioneering wild landscaping schemes of the mid-eighteenth century, alongside Hackfall and Hawkestone in England, and Blair Castle and Dunkeld House in Scotland, and later with Hafod and Downton.

It’s not as if ideas and schemes haven’t been forthcoming, but I think  the answer is horribly simple.  It’s about money and playing the system. Any potential rescue of the house has been rendered much harder because the house, now separated from the surrounding parkland,  is owned by Mondello Investments Limited, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. That must have been a deliberate and cynical move because while Monmouthshire Council could theoretically issue a repairs order, obliging the owners to take action or could even carry out the work itself and charge it back to the owners –  doing so would be extremely expensive and there is no guarantee that the legal owner – ie the offshore company –  has any assets other than Piercefield House.  That’s despite the fact that campaigners firmly believe the house remains under the control of the Reuben brothers.

The last major news update was by James Tapper in The Guardian in September 2023, which  summarises  Piercefield’s history before ending that “neither Chepstow racecourse nor the Reuben Foundation responded to request for comment.” Such silence  suggests that the house’s  long decline will soon be fatal. Shame on them.

For more information good places to start are the very detailed reports, including all the known accounts of   Piercefield on the Early Tourists in Wales website, and  ‘All These Inchanting Scenes’: Piercefield in the Wye Valley, by Elisabeth Whittle in  Garden History, Summer, 1996, Vol. 24, No. 1 and  some interesting photographs of the cellars and drains from earlier this year taken by “Westcountry Explorer”.